I guess my point is that I am trying to see the picture from another perspective, other than solely Mercury.

The Buzzi drive is not the most popular or successful surface drive, compared to anything, yet you place it at the top. Compare the Scism's with both drives and which team has been the more successful? Despite Team 57 being far heavier, they have performed better.

The fixed surface drives historically have a longer propeller shaft, which allows the thrust angle to lessen as it is lengthened. BPM made a longer propeller shaft for the Arneson and they accomplished the same thing, and at the same time kept trim ability of the drive.

In the world market for surface drives, Arneson is the leader with Hamilton and Kamewa water jets following.

Mercruiser owns the domestic market due to one single factor; they support the market with dealers and engine packages. In the domestic race circuit, Mercury has the series to themselves due to rules that require a Bravo or a #6. If they were the best choice then why were the surface drives banned?

You have flown in a helicopter over them, have you ever driven them?

Boatless:

As a matter of fact I have and found the steerable/trimmable Arnesons to be very "spongy". They wandered like an old Pontiac...but that was in the 80's. The only Chris Cat to ever run them...turned over.

Am I mistaken or did you say the "Scisms"....is Randy making drives now?

The reason that the fixed surface drives.......not steerable, slightly trimmable (and comparable to our last "project" 4 engine cat)..... are doing so well is the lack of parasitic loss....They are faster...which is precisely why they should not be in a spec class (Super Cat) in the first place...and would not be, if there hadn't been some waivering on the part of the LLC in the past year. Now if the spec class had mandated surface drives in the first place and not #6 drives, I'd agree that this would be a level playing field. Allowing unequal drive adaptations in racing, tilts the result and disturbs the equilibrium. The real drive issues should be:

1. Which ONE drive can all boats in a class use?

2. Why were certain boats "grandfathered" with a non "spec" drive.... thereby destroying the equal equipment concept before it was allowed to mature.

Yes, I am a Merc guy......But, as I said go ahead and specify BPM's....or Weissmann's for that matter....just make sure that one type/brand is mandated...without exceptions.... Let's be realistic..true racing can only occur between evenly matched equipment.....If I can run 7% more horsepower at the prop than you can....and everything else is equal.......I'm gonna beat you.....

By the way, I had a chance to watch Pat Patel run his magnificent new V-12 Torque engined, 2 speed transmission 46 Skater today. It is equipped with the new SAGE surface drives. I might have driven that in the next few days, except that there are still some substantial "teething" problems and it looks like it will be laid up for a while. My only impressions were BIG roostertail, and it is the most beautiful hull Peter has created to date.

[ 10-13-2001: Message edited by: T2x ]

T2x wrote:

"As a matter of fact I have and found the steerable/trimmable Arnesons to be very "spongy"."

Andrew Corn wrote:

I don't know about that, I put a set of ASD18s on a 140' and it didn't seem spongy. Fact was it was pretty solid, I never once spilled my drink even in 6'seas.

I always mounted mine about 1 1/2 higher than Howard wanted and they worked a lot better. Howard always yelled at me after the work was done and Keith Sparks kept telling me to do it how I know it will work best.

"Spongy" and "Hard Steering Knocks" were mostly because very few had the patience or expertise to setup the steering geometry correctly and most of all the bleeding of the steering and hydraulic tiebars. Another thing was the use of the wrong hoses and the expansion of even some of the most expensive hoses was too much for the tie bar pressures. Reduction of the hose lengths, high quality hoses that don't expand and contract and specialized trim pumps and steering pumps go along ways to helping those problems.

Bad thing about most fixed shaft drive pleasure cats is that you cannot run on one engine....they go in circles.

Andrew Corn

To T2x, greetings again from Tx;
Can you fill us in on the SAGE drives, what do they look like, any literature, who makes them, address of the factory, any pictures?
You still are MVP.

T2x, Is Pat's boat over at Doug's shop? I seen a Skater there with some paint work on it that ranked right up there w/TomCat. Great looking boat!!!

T2: remember, tell your bud to 'stay out of the headlines' with that thing.....

The 80’s were 20 years ago.

Design problems have been addressed across the brands, even Mercury has changed from the #5 to the Keikaffer to the #6 and they are currently changing the design of it as well. I am certain that someone has come up with a means of bleeding hydraulic steering by now. Everyone is using hydraulic steering nowadays.

I thought Supercat was designed to be a spec engine class, not a spec boat class, else there should only be a single hull, engine, drive and propeller. No choices.

I do not know why certain boats were allowed to have certain drives and others not. The real question would be, “how many would really rather have which if they were allowed”. There are rumors, shaft drives are faster, shaft drives use less power, shaft drives are less expensive, etc. But how many would actually use them if they could? Not many…

Andrew,

I will keep this short and in the first person (and the present tense).

My compliments to the manufacturers whom have build the "weightless" swim platform. I assume by your post that the 33 foot boat (with the three foot swim platform you do not measure) has managed to defy this particular law of physics and matter. Excellent work.

If you feel that you can look anyone in the eye, and with a striaght face say that Foutain has not been intentionally legislated out of competition you should consider poltitics.

If you sincerely believe that there is not a dominant hull in East Coast competition, you should reexamine your race results. There may be a trend there. Smoke a cigarette on the front steps and think about it for a second.

By the way, could you please explain the 39 foot hull you have homolgomated into F2, I have looked into it and can find no record of it's existance. How can you homolgomate a boat which has never been built and, if it is/has, it would not fit within the rules of the class? Wait - this sound like supercat.

Clearly, Mr. A - the discussion which Andrew and I have been having has been regarding F2. In that class, according to the posted results for the east coast races, there have been an average of two fountains and a maximum of three in the class. Quite a change from last year.

Adivanman wrote:

“My compliments to the manufacturers whom have build the "weightless" swim platform. I assume by your post that the 33 foot boat (with the three foot swim platform you do not measure) has managed to defy this particular law of physics and matter. Excellent work.”

Andrew Corn wrote:

I don’t follow you here. Swim platforms are not measured per the rules. I believe your example had a 36’ boat that had a 3’ swim platform. But let’s go back to your methods of calculations of 30% wetted surface on the boats. The 36’ boat would support 8050lbs on 10.80 lineal feet of wetted area or 745.37lbs per foot and the 36’ with the swim platform with an official measurement of 33’ would support 7675lbs on 9.90 lineal feet of wetted area or 775.25lbs per foot. By the way I believe your methods of calculations are oversimplified but they do indicate the difference in the two boats.

Again I will stress that while hydrodynamic calculations of length and weight are one factor in parity considerations they are not the only consideration.

Adivanman wrote:

“If you feel that you can look anyone in the eye, and with a striaght face say that Foutain has not been intentionally legislated out of competition you should consider poltitics.”

Andrew Corn wrote:

I have approved several projects headed by Ben Robertson of Fountain Powerboats this year. I’m not sure of the basis you make you accusation on that they have been legislated out of competition. In fact I still have some open projects awaiting final documentation from Fountain. All of their models are still homologated and can race.

Adivanman wrote:

“If you sincerely believe that there is not a dominant hull in East Coast competition, you should reexamine your race results. There may be a trend there. Smoke a cigarette on the front steps and think about it for a second.”

Andrew Corn wrote:

Again, I’m not sure you know all the teams and boats that are racing. Maybe your definition of dominance and our’s differ. We do extensive review of every race with regards to parity. There are a lot of factors that go into the review other than just the model and manufacture of the boat.

Adivanman wrote:

“By the way, could you please explain the 39 foot hull you have homolgomated into F2, I have looked into it and can find no record of it's existence. How can you homolgomate a boat which has never been built and, if it is/has, it would not fit within the rules of the class? Wait - this sound like supercat.”

Andrew Corn wrote:

You are correct, we apologize, it should have been 40’ and it should be in the Super Vee class. We don’t have any currently racing in F2 and none have applied because as you have stated it is not a legal model for F2. Thank you for bringing this typo to our attention. It has been corrected on the website. If you see any more, then please bring them to my attention.

Be aware the lengths that are on the website are not the official lengths that are used to measure a boat for weight.

Again, I’m not sure where you are going here, but it seems that you have some ax to grind with the organization and are grasping at straws while trying to create or expose some perceived inequity being applied by APBA Offshore or this office to either the teams or manufactures that participate.

Sorry, I don’t see it or maybe it’s more appropriate to say I’m glad I don’t see it, it does not exist from this office.

I have talked to all or most of the participating manufacture’s representatives during the year. The manufactures are required to contact me for any changes to approved model race boats from Supercat to F1. They are required to submit any change requests in writing. They also must contact me on the homologation of new models throughout the year. In fact if you have read the rules they are required to contact me prior to construction of certain models that are intended for APBA Offshore Racing. I have probably 10 to 20 projects on my plate throughout the year with different manufactures. So I’m quite sure no one is receiving unequal treatment.

I talk to racers all week long. Most new and old racers will call either the Competition Director or me prior to making any purchase or decision about what class they run. In fact all racers are required to contact this office for any modification of any boat and receive an approval in writing prior to the change.

So as you can see we do take a proactive role in the fleet.

I see you live in St. Petersburg, FL. I’m quite sure Mike, Steve (Competition Director) and I would make time to meet with you anytime if you wanted to participate in APBA Offshore Racing, however, I’m not sure that is part of your current agenda.

Andrew Corn
Director of Homologation and Documentation
APBA Offshore LLC

(Edited because of misspelled words, no other changes to the original post)

[ 10-14-2001: Message edited by: Andrew Corn ]