Greetings..

I am not new to boating - but its mostly been lake boating - and not terribly high performance lake boating...

Anyway - I have always been and still am extremely fond of older Carlson, Reggie Fountain, Aronow, Kramers, etc.. The whole late 70's early 80's smuggling arena, etc....

I have a question though.. I notice that in the early days (it seems) of Magnum, Cigarette, Fountain, etc.. There was frequently poles on the topside deck just forward of the controls, and moving forward to the bow... I am *assuming* these were there for safety's sake.. But it seems like after a short period they were gone..

Was this because boats became mandated to have either a center rail or side rails to grab on to? Just wondering if there is a story behind what it is I am asking about - and if so, what is it...

Thanks for enlightening me...

doc

back then the rule book stated we needed a rail or life line, no also back then we had to race the entire distance ,inother words if you were on 1 eng and on the 3rd of 10 laps you had to finish all the laps inorder to be scored and i can attest of many a ride with 1 blown eng on the bow hanging on for dear life for hours at a time, the throttle man became the driver and the driver and sometimes navagator became the ballast to hold the nose down and thats the rail we CLUNG to

Thanks for the info Ironhead... I can certainly understand the requirement for a lifeline - i had absolutely no clue about people climbing on top to hold the bow down though... 60-70mph in seas that would be a feat i would think...

Thank you again!

Doc the early races in the 50's were basically period era sports fishing boats. Bertram changed that with the deep vee hull design. The British were the first to really get it organized by Sir Max Aitken who was wealthy and a former ace fighter pilot from WWII. The rule showed up there first and the line was used for safety purposes. A lot of the early racers in Europe were from the sailboating side...as was Bertram, so safety lines were common for them.

Another thing the Europeans had was a three number system for raceboats vs our two number system. You can tell by the number on the side if the photo was taken of a USA race or a European one.

Check out HORBA's website, there are a lot of photos from the early days on there. www.historicraceboats.com

The previous answer re ballast of a crew man holding on to those poles was very true and very hairy, especially when we figured out how to,get a one engine race boat on plane.....but someone had to be up there to keep the weight forward....until it came over and got on plane.

It was a,fun era.

Thank you again..

Charlie is the photo section still working on HORBA? I get an error when i click on photos section?

We are redoing the whole site, so some areas may be shut down while they are being transferred to the new look site.

We have a major restoration with a very famous race boat starting in the near future...lots of photos of,the process. Special sections will be covering the restorations of this boat and three more coming behind it.

Famous sons of a former racer, doing the same thing that the boys did with the Velocity last year.....pretty cool.

looks like a vbulletin error when i try to hit the forums.. im assuming that also has to do with the site being migrated? looks interesting - cant wait to check it out..