---- What follows is a bit of a story and a request, if you are not into the "longer posts", please don't bother reading this and getting frustrated you wasted your time ------

As odd as the 70's were, there were a lot of cool things happening in offshore racing. As a kid from the midwest much of what was going on was foreign to me (yea, there was a time before the internet).

In college (early 80's) I had the opportunity to spend a week at a personal residence on the intercostal in North Miami. I can't say for sure that "Thunderbolt Row" was a neighbor, but I can say I was told all the "drug boats" were built and tested right across the channel....and while I was there, there were enough go-fast boats flying by that I believed it. Homeowner also told me that at night planes would occasionally swoop in low to the water and immediately after "garage doors" would open and boats would haul ass out a few hundred yards, do what appeared to be fishing something out of the water, then fly back into the protection of these "garages".

I never saw that happen, but the neighborhood was littered with homes having "garages" for their boats with direct access to the intercoastal.

Now I know some are sensitive to some of this history, but it is what it is and in some form it has been going on for centuries, but that is not why I tell the "sexy" part of my story. My takeaway from all of this was a passion for these fast boats!

Other life commitments kinda kept me from pursuing this passion beyond always having some form of "family speedboat", but the nostalgic lust for these "vintage" boats is back!

Is there a place where I can find a bunch of pictures from this era...say 1970-83'? Is there a place where stories of that era are told, i'd love to read them?

This sport/hobby/passion has a lot of cool history yet it almost appears to be undocumented?

I'm kinda a newbie & lurker here so it is probably a lot to ask, but if you could point me to, or attach to this thread, pictures or stories from this era I would greatly appreciate it and I suspect many others would as well.

If you want more stories from that spring break trip, I can tell you about the little (short) old lady we saw in the local grocery store who loaded up on cans of tunafish which she then used to throw at other goods on the shelf (so they would fall down) because she was not tall enough to reach them LOL. Lesson here is, that if you then go and help her so that she is no longer throwing tuna all over the place, she will follow you through the whole store and when she sees something she wants, she will yank on your shirt-tail and say "honey, can you grab that for me" .

Thanks and i'm really curious to hear what sort of feedback this thread may see (hoping for some awesome "vintage" sort of pictures and maybe even some stories...30-40 years have passed, history should be shared :-) ).

- scott -

You tube "cocaine cowboys" and look the the classic offshore section, tons of old school pics.

+1 Great movie/documentary. Those stories were probably not that far fetched. In the movie they say that the cocaine trade built the Miami skyline.

Go watch the movie.
These guys had their crap down and I don't think they were riding out from their own house to a couple hundred yards off shore to pick a square grouper or 2 in front of everyone.
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One of the reasons people had garages for their boats was because everyone had lots and lots of money to spend. Where did it all come from? Drugs. But just because a lot of money came in that way most folks that ended up with it had nothing to do with it. Once the money was spent on a fancy car or even a office building it became part of the economy and everyone got a slice.
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Most of Thunder boat row folks were trying to keep a race team together, not run drugs. But as long as your money is green they would build you anything you wanted. And just like the rum runners back during prohibition, you build the cops a fast boat and the runners want a faster boat and so on and so on. Lots of legal money to be made if you did it right.

I just happen to have that movie in my library, I'll have to watch it again :-)

The boats I was referring to did their work at night and back then there were occasional news stories of "bails" washing ashore in the neighborhood only to be found by a citizen.

I can't say I am into the commodities or violence these guys dealt in, but the trafficking, be it cigarettes, liquor, weed, etc., had to be one hell of a game!

The movie referred to above was a disappointment, it was about $ and drugs....I want to see the "romantic" side cool boats in action LOL