Originally Posted by Top Banana

Once upon a time in a galaxy far far away, there were real offshore racers that actually raced offshore..........

And so the story begins.

The original races were from point to point, like Miami to Nassau, or Cowes to Torquay or Long Beach to San Francisco. Think in the same era of the fins on cars, late 50's early 60's. Most of the boats of that period were pretty un-seaworthy at any kind of speed,




But the racers took them over the horizon and the legends grew, Someone sank, another boat caught fire, another crew was stranded all night on a remote Bahamas island. These races were getting a lot of attention in the press and with the boating public, so the manufacturers decided to try their hand at making boats and engines that could survive and thrive in real open ocean crossings. It was also the era of fiberglass. No longer dependent on wood for the construction of boats anymore, some builders reached out to embrace the new technology and the glass boat was born and baptized in a fire storm of offshore racing.

A giant of a man was wining everything, Sam Griffith. He won the Miami to Nassau race so many times they were going to name it after him. He drove the first deep vee hull with Richard Bertram to a victory that was hours faster than the previous record.
Sam was WWII vet who was a full bird Colonel and survived a parachute drop where the parachute didn't open. He was the man behind the Miami to Palm Beach boat race up the Intracoastal. He drove a 3 point hydro in that race.

Time marched on and Sam was diagnosed with cancer and passed on in the early 70;s. Everyone wanted to honor him, so John Crouse, the PR man and boating writer of the time, created a World Championship with the winner getting the title of World Champion and winning the Sam Griffith award. He was also granted the right to use the number 1 on his boat for the following racing season.

BUT.....you had to race all over the world to win enough points to win the title. You took your little boat and raced against other racers in Europe and South America and the Bahamas and both sides of the USA and the Great Lakes too. Yes, it did cost a lot of money to do this, but many people stepped up to the plate and participated. When you see the photo of Don Aronow flying his 32 foot Cary called The Cigarette. That photo was taken in the Bahamas 500 miles race. Don won the World Championship for 1969 that year. How did he do it? To start, he had 4 boats made up and he took three of them and placed them at various spots around the world, so he could just fly to the next race. One boat for the east coast of the USA and the Bahamas, one boat for the West Coast and the races into Mexico and third boat placed in Europe with a land team consisting of Knocky House and Don's son Michael, who would travel all over Europe with the boat and have it ready when Don arrived for the next race.The fourth boat stayed in Florida as a spare in case one of the other boats was destroyed in a race.

That lasted until the mid 70's's when Bob Nordskog thought it would be better if each country qualified their top drivers and send them to the final race to be held at the end of each year, at a new location. As he was APBA President, he could pull it off. The first WC race was in 1977 in Key West and Betty Cook won it, the 1978 race was held in Argentina and Francesco Cosentino, an Italian won that. In 1979 the race was held in Venice, Italy and Betty Cook won again and ..... the 1980 the race went to Australia and was won by Michel Menard.

A few years later the sport included Super Boats to replace Open Class. Super Boats were allowed to have up to 4 engines. Sweet kiss goodbye to everyone.... as only the very rich could afford these boats and the top class dropped down from maybe 25 or 30 Open boats racing for the top prize..... to maybe 3 or 4 of the new Super Boats. But even though there was no competition and the rules even allowed boats to compete at the last race of the year even if they had not raced anywhere else all year......the winners still wanted to be called WORLD CHAMPIONS.

So there you have the story of WORLD CHAMPION. That is how the title started and was fought for all over the world, but it evolved to a shadow of the sport .......that now operated on harbors and small lakes and rivers.

It is like comparing a big game hunt in Africa, to shooting for the stuffed animal at a carnival in your hometown. Both events use guns, but one is a bit more challenging than the other.

Originally Posted by Full Force

I think people are reading way too much into this lol

Originally Posted by 33outlawsst

I will agree that enough is enough, you don't need to have fifty logo's or Cigarette writing on a single boat, it becomes gaudy and over stated