You have to remember that state of the art was a Nordskog speedometer that hung down at the transom. The accuracy of GPS wasn't even dreamt about.

All we have are the average speeds to look back on for the various races and they are skewed due to the courses being in the open ocean, ie currents, tides etc.

By that I mean, that a race from Miami to the Bahamas was not the straight line it is on a chart. You could always tell the new guys....they would come out of Government Cut and head straight out. The old guys, would turn south to pick up the Gulf Stream that flowed north and ride it across....that way when you got across, you were about where you wanted to be and you could see all the new guys boats coming back down from the north because they had gone too far.

A good example of speeds would be the Bahamas 200, which was actually 205 miles long. Jerry Jacoby in Ajac Hawk and I were dueling side by side over the last 25 mile run from Bimini to Freeport. One of my my engines let go and he went on to win. We came second by 30 seconds. For the entire race they gave us an average speed of over 83 MPH.

Now the interesting fact about this is that the seas were so big the day before a lot of us filled our fuel tanks....total about 550 gallons. Race day was not as rough and we had set ups to pump over the side to dump the extra fuel (sorry, not politically correct) My pumps jammed and we finished the race with over 160 gallons still on board...about 960 lbs.

The best speed I ever saw on my boat, a 38 foot deep v, was about mid 90's with a very light fuel load. So the cats, once they were straightened out and working correctly had to be over 100 in the right conditions.

With all due respect....offshore racing and marathon racing had the same roots...and many of the boats were much smaller back in the day.....(George Linder and I ran in the original Hennesy Around Long Island races in 18' Eltros)...the first successful offshore cats were way before Souter and Jones started mucking around with the big stuff. Here's Johnny Bakos and Odell Lewis , two legendery offshore pioneers, in a typical Powercat. Boats like these and early Ted Jones cats raced offshore in the late 50's and early 60's.

T2x

FYI.........I ran Powercats in 1963 and 1964

T2x

FYI....The Shadows hit the race course at least a year before the sleek Arneson Cougar.

T2x

How about this one....typical Mercury team boat when the team went offshore racing.


Photo courtesy of Mark 75H

T2x

T2x....sorry, I should have been more specific.....inboard or sterndrive cats I was talking about.

If you go back to the era you are speaking about, then you can remember the Gold Coast Marathon from Miami to Palm Beach inside on the intracoastal with the Switzer cat wings. Also many Power Cat outboards.

Also the early Power Cat outboards with Chuck Mercereau (spelling?) who not only ran ocean and marathons but he ran the inside passage up to Alaska.

Even Walt Walters designed a 20 foot cat outboard long before Maui Kai for Tom Sopwith in England. He raced it in the Cornish 100. That was used for a lot of the research for Maui Kai.

Many cat innovations that ran both outboard and inboard set ups at the Salton Sea and Parker 9 hour races I did not include as it was not offshore.

If we want to go way back, Gar Wood had a big cat that he used for a cruiser and he ran it offshore.

can't let it die

Boat # 70 I believe was powered y a turbine run by Odel Lewis

Remember Ghost Rider????

Any old stories?

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