I know all about it, I was there and was 50' away when it happened. I also saw the boat being repaired here in Sarasota and have pictures of it under repair. They were doing a lot more work than what your describing.

American Express was indeed a Chris Cat and ran at an APBA divisional race that I was Race Director for here in Rochester, NY back in the late 1980's. If I recall correctly, it ran Richie Zuhl small blocks and flat out flew. Sounded pretty awesome too.

Any one that know of any "project/cheap" shadows/chris's feel free to email me. I want to sell my boat for one but don't want to until I have one in mind. [email protected]

I heard since they were 6" narrower the shadows did better with small blocks/outboards while the chris's were good with big blocks.. Any truth to this?

This is true. The Chris cats were built with big blocks in mind. And my Dad's shadow with triple 2.4's was faster than the Chris cats with the same power. He did not race the regular season in '84, but had a bye into the Key West worlds because he was defending champ. Went down there and whooped all the Chris Cats. It was especially satisfying because apparently all the Chris cat guys were talking smack to the Lake X guys about how they were going to unseat the "Black Duck." Nope...

Then in '85 we had a Chris Cat with 454's delivered as our pleasure boat...

If I recall correctly, didn't a Chris Cat win in 85? I can't be 100%, but I'm pretty sure.

Maybe, but by then my Dad had sold his Shadow.

Yes.........

Shadows are faster wih O/B's and small blocks, but don't handle big blocks as well as a Chris Cat.

The last decent Shadow Cat (Marlboro) was built before George and I left the company in 1982.....after that the quality went down and the number of boats sold to racers dropped. Most of the potential Shadow buyers followed George to Chris Cats or me to Conquest.

By 1985 the Shadow Cat glory days were basically over...

Hi ryan, Can you post a pic of the repairs that were done in sarasota? It ended up at chicago yacht yard and was repainted white and repaired again. We must of been standing next to each other because I was sitting on the concrete wall also when they got run over.

I can't post pics here anymore.... it was repaired here in Sarasota at the shop the Phantom is in now, off of University and OLD 301. I wanna say the guys name was Terry, who did the repair.