So what brought Saber down ? Did they get tied up or shutdown by the illegal actions Vorce had done or was it just a combination of bad publicity from Vorce being somewhat associated with them and than the economy going to hell?

I think WW got sucked into it after being traded in on a new 41 saber center console that never materialized.

The publicity was the culprit. Saber is still building boats I believe someone can order a 41 if they wanted to.

You maybe right I don't know how that all went down. I will say the powerboat community around here is a small group and that was a HUGE deal.

No it was not a stretch as the 39 does not have the famous crease in the side of the boat. No other 39's were made by Bobby before I bought the mold and yes it was used for some other layups one of which has proven to be a very good 36 foot center console. The mold was blocked down for that size.....36.

The concept for doing that .......blocking down to a 36 was a pretty smart idea and we intend to do the same and come out with a 36 also. There is a hint in here Tommy.

I can see clearly now the rain is gone............

subtle...:D

Well he didn't quite have a Rocket Genius to work with:D

Jury? What jury found Ben guilty of manslauter?

No Jury as he took a Plea. By jury i really meant the consensus .

But wasn't/isn't that acutally a 33'?

The former owner of ww traded it in to saber to build a cc. Vorce bought it from Saber but never paid Doug so the money for the cc was not there. He then got several bogus loans against ww and when he went down the bank got the boat, not Saber.
The cc is half done and never got delivered.
Voice was in the process of buying Saber but never finished before he went down. He never used Saber to do anything with boats. He screwed me in many ways I prefer not to rehash
Saber boats bought the 41 mold many years ago legally, how they have come in possession of the 47 is another matter entirely.
Saber is still in business, recently built a 28
I have nothing to do with them any more and wish no association.
NK

Thanks Parnell

Sorry for bringing all this old chit up . Just curiosity.

Yea I finally found a thread that mentions that Doug had bought the 41 mold at the government auction of Ben's Apache company.

Sucks what happened at Saber , great guys I met them when they were building their very 1st 28 many years ago.

Your 21GT is beyond Awesome . So whats the next work of art to come?

Did you go to FHN or FHC ? I am a graduate of FHN 1982.

? so where did legacy boats come into play in this mold sharing? (aka White lightening)

Very interesting thread here, what I don't understand is where Jerry Kilparticks 39 came from if it didn't come from the mould that you have Charlie? I had also thought that the Saber 41 was taken from a splash.................I see both are wrong now!!

[ATTACH=CONFIG]531209[/ATTACH]

This is the 2 and 2 I have put together on the Saber version of the 41.

In Mr Saccenti's quote that the original old 41 molds that Ben had were auctioned off to a company in Ohio that was advertising 1/2 price Apaches , That company must have been Saber ,and they spent 3 months straightening the hull bottom of the 41 mold.

I have yet to find much more information about the 47 mold other than that yes people have seen it and Saber has it , but I guess there is some bad feelings about how it was acquired.

WOW as the Hull turns in this Industry

I have been thinking about the Kilpatrick boat......it must be a Squadron XII built by Aronow but rigged by Bobby S at Race HQ. So this would be a stretched version of the Cig 38, which Don was then going to evolve into what has become the Apache 41and totally seperate to the 38 mould which Bobby S was having built which Charley now owns??????? Sound about right?????

Looks right except that 38 was really a 37.5 but also sometimes a 39 and the 38 mold Charlie has is really a 39 that is building a 36 that looks like a 33 but also could have been or will be a 42 with Bustle.

All Clear Now?

That's much clearer thanks, I think I need a beer and a lay down after that!

You guys are giving me a headache! Good read tho.

So...is Ben getting out or not?

Correct, the Apache was a Squadron XII. Technically it was the same size as a 38 Cig which was a 37.6. The famous 41 came from the 39 that was stretched to build the step deck before it was the bubble deck.

My 38 which was a JC Simon design, was built by Banana as a 33 but at the same time by Coyote as a 34. Sonic added a swim platform and called it a 42.

The 39 mold I have now we will build a 36 now. The mold was formerly used to build a 36 as a center console, that is still in production.

My original 24 Cigarette molds were stretched and widened to make the Magnum 63. LOL Just kidding! But the Magnum 53 was made by taking the Cary 32 that Aronow called ...... The Cigarette in 1969.....measurements and multiplying them by 1.5 and building them out.

Are you trying to confuse the issue or what ?:evilb:

How long ago was the 36 hull pulled from your mold to build the currently produced 36cc Charlie if i may ask and to be perfectly clear the 42 thing still has me baffled.

http://www.autoracing1.com/markc/200...psonMurder.asp

Another icon that was murdered in the same era.

Great thread! Lots of interesting info I did not know..... I'm gonna have to get high to fully understand everything that's going on with the boat molds though! Lol

Very interesting, thank you Charlie. It is all very convoluted but I do find it fascinating!

Interestingly, last year we had one of the two bubble deck 39's on its trailer in my friends shop, next to his race Cig 35'. You could see that the 39 was a stretched version of the 35 because the spray rails on the 35 are slightly different on the Pt side to the Stbd side where they join at the bow. We were surprised to see that it is exactly the same on the 39, which told us that they must have come from the same tooling. I meant to check whether this was in fact translated through to the Apache 41 but kinda forgot about the whole thing until just now.

Charlie, are you going to OFF this year? I told you a story once about my father with the Magnum 28' that sank in the CTC race in '68..........he is going to OFF this year with Jeff Hall, it would be good if you guys could meet up......

Anyway, someone was talking about some Ben guy..........????

Yes, to your OFF question, I will be there on Friday and Saturday for sure. I want to get my Blue Water Warriors book back from Jeff's brother, I have to send him an email. If I forget ask your dad to remind him to bring it with him to OFF.

The famous meeting of the strakes on the bow. Aronow used to laugh at all the new designs that came out as we walked through the pits or a boat show. He would walk up to the bow of the new design and simply point at the strakes. If they are going to take the time and trouble to splash my design, the least they could do would be to correct it here. I am not sure if he had that put in the design on purpose, just to entertain himself later. His method was to keep going with new ideas that seemed better, until he found something he liked. One year he showed up at almost every race with a new race boat, or a variation of a former design made into a new race boat. He knew whatever everyone else was copying, he had already improved on so he wasn't too concerned.

That 36 was pulled back in the 90's.

JC Simon design 38 added swim platform by Sonic became a .....42

Apache 39 design that I am changing the deck design on to include a bustle similar to Outerlimits will become a 42

Now that's funny, I can't believe we noticed something that Aronow used to point and laugh at, we genuinely had absolutely no idea, I do find this amusing!

I'm in regular contact with Jeff, I'll email him now.........shame I can't come along to OFF, very jealous!!

All the best!
Christian

Voila!

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Charlie if length was better for racing than why dam down a mold such as your JC Simon mold. ?

Was it a weight to power ratio you were trying to stay within?

We made the 34 foot size mainly for Production class race boats. They were only allowed to use twin engines with a max 350 cu in small blocks.

Early in the mid 70's the Cigarette and Magnum 28 and 27 were king of Production, then the 30 foot Sutphen, then the 32 Cobra and the 35 Cigarette were the best to run. By the 80's one needed at least a 33 foot boat to be competitive in the Production classes. The engines were getting more HP by then and could move the heavier boats too.

I built a 34 for myself as a pleasure boat with twin big blocks. Being a smaller size and lighter, I could run with the 38 Scarabs of the day with KAAMA engines. A photo of that boat is on the website with the Coyote deck on it. www.bananaboatco.com

The guy that built White Lightening pulled a mold off a 38'cig made it a 41'. The mold ended up at kryptonite on Long Island. If you look on YouTube White Lightening has short center strakes.

Wow you were only running small blocks in your 34 ? For some reason I thought that boat was running Open class. Was your 34 Race boat a cored boat or built light if it was how was that achieved back than. What kinda power and drives were you running to achieve what speed?

Ok the 38 footer Top Banana was running two 496 big blocks and ran in the Open class. Speedmaster drives.

The 34 footer Gone Bananas was running two 350 small blocks and ranin the Modified Production class. TRS drives.

Kevlar and very careful squeezing of the resin in the glass only boats saved weight.

As soon as we get this new boat model business sorted out. Two, maybe three lifetimes.

Does it really matter? This has turned into one of the most interesting threads I've seen on here. Carry on I'll shut up again.
Amazing no one caught the clue on the molds, but brilliant! :food-smiley-007:

After An Infamous Period Of Crime And Drugs, `Gunboat Alley' In Aventura Struggles To Return As Boatbuilding Empire.
Mean Street
October 20, 1996|By PAUL SCOTT ABBOTT Special to the Sun-Sentinel
AVENTURA - — Thunderboat Row. Gunboat Alley.

The images conjured by those names and the several variations used to identify Northeast 188th Street between Biscayne Boulevard and the Intracoastal Waterway are fitting for perhaps the most famous - and infamous - stretch of road in this recently incorporated city.




"It was lots of money, macho men, beautiful women, performance boats - what more could you want?" said Katrin Theodoli, president of Magnum Marine at 2900 NE 188th St. "The street has quite some aura about it."

Theodoli, who with her Italian marquis husband Ted bought Magnum in 1976, noted that the street has changed a great deal over the past 20 years.

It still is lined with boatbuilders and related facilities, but a shady element of the industry that included drug-runners and mobsters has all but disappeared.

"The boatbuilders are definitely an integral part of the business and industrial part of the city," said Aventura City Manager Eric Soroka. "The street certainly has changed over the years, and we look for it to improve and possibly entice additional boatbuilders into the city."

In the mid 1960s, a wealthy real estate developer turned boatbuilder, Don Aronow, moved to South Florida from New Jersey. He developed a family owned tract on then-desolate 188th Street into the first of several boatyards he subsequently would sell.

"Don Aronow created the street and built practically every boatyard that is on it," said Theodoli, who assumed the reins of Magnum following her husband's death six years ago. "Don Aronow created this street and he died in it - sort of tragic."

Aronow, 59, was gunned down in broad daylight on Feb. 3, 1987, as he left a 188th Street race shop. Court documents support rumors that a rival boatbuilder had ordered a hit, but the man allegedly responsible for Aronow's death never was charged in connection with it. Instead, the man was sentenced to life imprisonment for drug smuggling.

"The druggies would land in there nightly," said John Crouse, a former powerboat race organizer and author of a 646-page book chronicling the history of that sport. "At one time, two-thirds of the people involved in offshore powerboat racing were directly or indirectly involved in drugs. You had guys running around there racing boats without any source of income - or at least not any source that was reportable."

In the 1980s, more than a dozen leaders of powerboat racing were convicted of drug charges and related crimes, and Signature owner-driver Tommy Adams was shot to death on Interstate 95 from a passing car full of drug traffickers.

"Regretfully, it [Adams' murder) did not happen on this street," Theodoli said with a snicker. "Now, the wild days of Thunderboat Row are gone. It's now just boatbuilders - no longer the macho man's reverie."



Magnum, which annually builds about 10 high-performance yachts, each priced at more than $1 million, was bought from Aronow by the Theodolis because Aronow did not see a future for 53-foot-long high-performance vessels. That is nearly twice as long as the racing craft Aronow built under the Formula, Donzi, Cigarette, Squadron XII and USA Racing names, according to Theodoli. Magnum clients include pianist Victor Borge, the king of Spain and various Kuwaiti royalty.

With demand for super-fast powerboats declining, business on 188th Street may be past its heyday. But at least one industry veteran, Bobby Moore, is confident that commerce along the street will rebound. He blamed the depressed powerboat market on laws that require fast boats to operate at idle speeds in many waters, as well as overzealous law enforcement tactics against anyone in a fast-looking boat.

"But I have hope for the street," said Moore, 55, who recently acquired a Mercury outboard franchise to augment the boat sales and service business he operates at 3016 NE 188th St. "I've put a lot of energy into this. I haven't thrown in the towel yet. It's a good location midway between Fort Lauderdale and Miami."

Moore, who began working along the street in the early 1960s under Aronow and offshore racing pioneer Dick Bertram, sometimes is visited by Norris "Knocky" House, 76.

House, who served as Aronow's throttleman for world championship victories in 1967 and 1969, said he does not believe Aronow was involved with the drug trade. He said Aronow, with whom he worked for nearly 20 years, once ordered him to stop building a boat and gave the customers their money back when he learned it was to be used for drug-running.

"He [Arrow] wasn't dirty." House said. "You live with a guy and travel the world with a guy and you know there's things said that just aren't true. A lot of untruths are said, and I don't want to repeat them or I might be dead. "I'll say this: Thunderboat Row is not the same as it was. It just don't seem to have the, uh, glamour it had."

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