What was your earliest perf boating memory?
 

I was talking about this with WMF on the phone last night. Is there something that sticks out in your mind as your earliest memory that made you look at offshore boats and go WOW.

For me as we drove to our beach house in southern Md, we always drove past Newburg Marine sales, there was an all black Scarab there that just made me speechless, ever since that I was always looking, I would sit at the end of the pier and watch them go through on the way from the wicomico to the Potomac river.

21 ft Brownings w/ a v-8 on Lake Lanier.

When I was a kid (10 years old), my dad and his friend, Dick Strefling, past owner of multiple large RV/Conversion companies and Torque racing engines (aluminum v12 marine).... took me out in his 38+ fountain and hit 115mph. This was back in the late 80's but what a thrill. We have been boaters since 1984 and that one ride in that go-fast spelled my fate out... Love the rumble... love the speed...

I got the bug in what is not an offshore boat but was fast. I met Mark Gallagher (Specialized racing owner) when he was working for a small Saab repair shop. He had a 18 foot Hydrostream with a 225 on the back. He was working on it and I hung around to help him fix the thing. We got it running and he asks me if I can drive it down to the ramp, turns out he had lost his license, I will find out why later! :D We hit the lake and I am HOOKED.

My first trip on an offshore was also with Mark. He purchased a Veloce with tripple outboards. We wrenched on that thing for a while, got it up and running and again first ride I was hooked.

114mph ride with Ed Ferro(former owner of American Offshore) on Grand Lake, Ok. in a 3100. That was my first and I was hooked!!

I predict this thread will be an OSO Classic!

June 1992..... My uncle invites me out in his 1991/92 Sonic 38SS named "Seeeee Ya" that he ran all winter in South Florida and had shipped up to NYC for the summer..... ten minutes after pulling into the marina I am hooked for life........ I have tried a few times here on OSO to locate this Sonic with no luck......... I wonder if it is still out there somewhere........??

1976... Hanging w/ Don and Brownie and eventually Theodoli at Magnum.
1977, Being in 2nd Grade wearing Magnum and Cigarette shirts and jackets.
1977, going for a ride in an 18 donzi holding the grabrail under the rear bench seat.
1977, ride on the 1st 53magnum... no cabin, no engine hatches.
1983... last time i saw don. He was bragging of his son...'belches just like me!'

I was born in 1970 and my parents were not boaters so I first wanted a boat when Miami Vice came on the TV.

Wow .How did you manage that connection?

Before i poped out of my mom i was already ridding go fast and hearing BBC. The first boat i ever rode i was like 6mth ( I was told this by fam) my dad at the time had a 38 flatdeck. They bought me my own fast boat at the age of 12 which was an SVT with a 275 Black max:evilb:

in 1980 i took a ride on a 20ft jet boat.not sure of the boat mfg,but will always rember the motor,a 413 max wedge w/a tunnelram and dual quad set up,and of course,chrome ,over the transome headers.what a ride.

Mine was running around a 35 sonic with a good friend of mine. I thought it was the coolest this ever.

But the one i remember as the best was my first boat race at Cambridge races in 2004 racing the formula.

My father built a Magnum that was delivered in 1976... last mag delivered by Don before Ted took over.
Try to find me in the picture... (hint... i was a jets fan)

Also... back in mid 70s there was a 28cig at my club... the Nah Nee. Then this guy upgraded to a 35cig...all black w/ red "SAMARAI"
There was also a light blue 28... can't remember name.

The first time I watched Miami Vice with my father, I believe I was around 9 or 10 years old. I saw the 38 Scarab KV and was hooked on performance boats!!

I also have a ton of memories from my childhood at my parents beach house. There were around a dozen performance boat's in the area, they would run up and down the coast every weekend, and dock at the Indian River inlet Marine. I have a ton of really old pics I will scan and put up today. Here is one of the baddest boat ever built that was kept here, Smokin Joe.

As a kid, I used to ride my bicycle down to the public luanch ramp in Philly. There was a boat named 'Wild Cherry' there being put on it's trailer. The owner of 'Wild Cherry' gave it a little goose to the throttle to make sure it was on th trailer right and he proceeded to push the crew cab dually up the ramp while in park. :eek: Tire screeching about 3 feet up the ramp. I was done for life. :hitit:

Don't think I can top that! I learned about the boats in books and magazines. Never forget my first trip to Everglades and Fort Apache Marina in the mid 80's.

5 years old ocean city nj cigarette called "wild cherry"

Well, it seems my connections were all early on. I don't have a boat currently.

But here is another good one...
1985... Drove to see Reggie at his shop in NC. My dad was going to discuss building a Fishing boat w/ OBs. After a tour of the shop and sitting w/ Reg at his desk for a while, he insists that we sleep at his house and not in a hotel for the night. We ended up going waterskiing on his ski boat w/ a good friend of his who happen to be a ski champ from a few yrs back. And dig this, his ski boat was a Ski Nautique(or similar) w/ a beak glassed in, and painted like a executioner.:lolhit:

Later we went to dinner w/ Reggie and a few guys from the factory at a small seafood dive near the shop, food was great and the bill was insanely cheap.
Lastly... spent the night at Reg's house. He has the series of his famous hydroplane accident photos as you walk up the flight of stairs to the second floor.
I was 15.

We should find this 'Wild Cherry' guy. Seems he is responsible for more than one addiction. I don't know if I should :kiss: kiss him or :angry-smiley-038: kill him. :lolhit:

Not sure if it had anyting to do with the reason I'm into powerboats but earliest memory and I don't even know how old I was (possibly 3-4?, most memories at that age were pictures for me like the one below)...

We were on my fathers boat going somewhere and I remember sitting next to him. As we were going along we must have hit a wave and the water soaked me and scared the crap out of me! I can still visually remember the scene like it was yesterday!

My mother told me that I had a habit of stairing out the side of the boat whenever we were running... She assumes I would go into some sort of a trance with the combination of engines and wind noise... (too this day I can only fall asleep if a fan is running and the wind is blowing):lolhit:. Nothing could break my attention...with the exception of a dousing of salt water from a wave!:drink:

About 10 years old. There used to be offshore races on Lake Michigan from Saugatuck to Grand Haven. My family used to vacation there every summer and it usually happend that we were in town that weekend....all those big go-fasts firing up to head out the channel....I was hooked for life!

WMF, does Pizza Tugo's still have a go fast? I lived in OC around 91-93, I think it was a red fountain

My uncle had a record holding drag boat. It's his fault.:angry-smiley-038:

Summer of 1986

1965 thinking a 13' Bosten Whaler with 33 HP was a performance boat:lolhit:

I was hanging with my buddy from school and his dad. His dad had a 21' Cobia with a 350 mag and thru hull exhaust. the sound of that exhaust echoing off the sea wall is what hooked me. I'm still more intrested in how much power we can make than how fast we can go.

My family had always had a boat as long as I could remember but it was an old Checkmate boat (still have it, I gave up on it but my brother still tinkers with it). In high school started using it with my friends on the local lake, it was one of the fastest on that lake so I thought I was king ****. When I was 19 made a trip with some cousins to Lake Erie and that opened me up to a whole new world. I was out on the jet ski and kept seeing these big ass boats with a number '1' on the side of them and they were unlike anything I had ever seen! There was a no-wake bridge (Cedar Point causeway bridge) everybody had to idle under and I sat there for about an hour just watching these boats come and go.

The next time up I got introduced to Put-In-Bay, and a friend of a friend had a brand new Hustler 388 (this was in 2000) and he took us for a ride on it. When we left the dock at PIB it seemed like everybody there was watching us and when it took off it was like nothing I had ever felt before, blew my hat and sunglasses off and screamed across the lake. What took us an hour to get to PIB in the first place took us 15 minutes to get back in that 388. That was it, still see that guy a few times a summer and he still has the Hustler, a little older but still a sweet looking boat.

There are plenty of ways to spend the summer, and I've had my share of different big boy toys over the years but nothing compares to big blocks screaming across the lake!

What a great blog!!
My first powerboat memory started with watching Miami Vice (loved that Chris Craft Stinger then the Scarab).
When I was 12yo, my parents took me to Florida for vacation; one day we drove throughout Ft. Lauderdale stopping at different marinas to check out boats. The most memoriable was Everglades Marina; have home videos of walking around checking out all the performance boats--early model fountains, formulas and apaches. That pretty much started my obsession with high performance boats.:cool:

lol must have been the same boat:evilb:

Back in '79 or '80.....when I was 9 or 10...we were boating out of Oshawa on Lake Ontario, and did 2 weeks in the 1000 Islands...caught up with someone that was a friend of the people we were travelling with who had a '58 Hatteras MY, and a 20' Cigarette as a "tender", along with the typical 13' Boston Whaler. Bill decided to take "the men" out in the Cig...and we proceded to jump all of the tour boats, and freighters wakes in the St. Lawrence!! What a day! After that, once my parents moved the boat up to Lake Simcoe...they were boating with a guy who had a 26' Formula....circa late 70's/early 80's....with re-worked 454's. At the time it was the fastest boat on the lake pushing mid 70's easily. On a weekend trip back from an annual marina get-together, Jim took myself and my friend Mark for part of the trip, and we had the opportunity to drive the boat, with Jim very close at hand, for a bit. What a rush at that age!!

Growing up spending the summer on Lake erie I was on boats since birth. But there were a couple sweet boats that just sealed the deal. There was a cat names air express with 4 eggbeaters on the back, and then a matching white one. I heard they had raced in jersey, but I never knew for sure. Then there was the apace ultimate warrior which sounded like the most amazing thing I had ever heard. I know where ultimate warrior is, but I never heard of air express again. anyone know? used to be on the east end of lake erie near buffalo?

seems lots of us got bitten early...

I grew up down the block from "Muscle Boats", which was the big Hydrostream distibutor on LI in the late 70's and early 80's. Everytime we drove to go anywhere, you would have to pass the shop, and usually every two months or so, you would see a new stack of boats lined up in the lifts. Occassionally, we would ride our bikes down there to get a closer look, and the guy who owned it was pretty friendly and let us walk around (its now a podiatrists office). Occasioanally some neighbor would buy one, and you would see them racing around the Great South Bay, and just stand there in awe. Then when I was around 16, my nieghbor bought a brand new 22' activator, and another one bought a 21' Superboat, and I was hooked ever since

Linder and I were standing next to the Nile when the annual Pharoah's river races were starting. Let me tell you when the slave masters began to snap their whips and the oars started flashing, we were hooked.

Soon after that, I got my first whip and it comes in handy to this day.

T2x

and Cleopatra blew you a kiss went they went by? :D

I grew up on the Susquehanna River in Williamsport, PA from the early 70's thru the 80"s. Our first river lot consisted of about 10 families and one of the guys had a 73 or 74 Glasstron with a 115 Merc. At about 40 mph it was the fastest boat on the river. A few years later we joined another river lot with only 1 other family. The son who was in his early 20's at the time bought a 18' jet boat with a 454 that would do about 70mph if I remember right. His father took me out for a ride one day and let me drive. An experience that I'll never forget!!!Being around 12 years old I could barely reach the gas pedal and the father kept encouraging me to go faster. WHAT A RUSH!!!!!!!!!!!

My father had a Ventner& Fincraft with Ford motor 50 MPH in the 1960's you were top gun!

about 10yrs old my oldman took me to Detroit to the the races and planted the seed...

Ms. Simon my third grade teacher....

Back in 1976 my dad took me to my first Offshore race on Lake St. Clair, got to see Lil' Rhino, Wolverine and all the the old gang race, within the year we moved out on the water and I got my first ride in a 27 magnum jumping a couple cruiser wakes and I was hooked ever since.