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history tid bit

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Bill Cooper's "Spooky" with Darrel Jenkins strapped in the back seat....
Long Beach to San Fran Race. And you thought Reggie invented the beak :drink:

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What on earth!!? Could you tell us about that boat?

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please yes -why is he on a perch sticking out over the drives...and where are the motors,??

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Awesome thread Mike.. I too am a fan of late 70s / 80s racing. Aronow, Magluta and Falcon.... The good ole days... Even though my family and I were not involved in performance boating back then, I loved them. My dad has always had fishing boats and we would see these guys thunder through as we were fishing... I thought it was awesome... Great thread man...

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Even though it was pretty much a wide open game, they did have minimum length requirements. This boat was a way around the rules. With the beak and the extension out the back they made the minimum length. The boat was actually one of those little Formulas....Donzi also had a small boat like this

A big block engine driving a single shaft with a spade rudder. It was a pretty hairy ride for the guy in the back. If youlook closely you can see a plexiglass greenhouse right in front of the guy in the boat, the engine was under that.

Cooper was a great boat racer....he did a lot of the original tunnel boats with the big block sterndrive set ups. He would fly them on the last 6 inches and just balance them there hour after hour. He used those boats in the old 9 hour marathons.

Sadly he died very early in life with cancer. He was a lumberman out of the west coast....one of the good guys.

When you think of the technology and how crude it was and these guys still ran in the open ocean....it was pretty amazing.

Brownie won a Miami Nassau race in a 28 foot Donzi with twin engines....one in front of the v-drive other in back of it, drivng through one v-drive and coming out on one shaft. He designed it, he engineered it, built it and raced it and....yes..... won with it. Can you think of anyone today that can claim something like that? :cool:

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While everbodys on the old school theme i was wondering if any body could tell me where the original 26 monza design came from . It looks a lot like a 24 cigarette or a scaled down 36 cigarette hull to me.

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Ron P,

Good job !

L.S.

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Do any of you remember any part of the informantion listed in the thread

"Turbines before their time"
Thanks

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Looks like the "Good Ole Days" ended when the cats took over.

So,,,who knows which cat was first , where it first raced and who raced it?

I think I know the answer.

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Today we were up by Bear Mountain,Hudson River area at a marina & found a piece of history,a 38' Bertram raceboat named" DYNOMITE", no power but in good shape! Anybody know this boat?

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81,
I think DYNOMITE is the old "Benihanna".

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Bob, If it is , It's still in good shape, Hull is in good shape, No power or drives, fuel tanks, driveshaft covers, misc. parts,some interior,no hull #'s. Do you think it's worth investigating? Dave B.

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Okay Ron.....what is the answer?

And how far back are you going?

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For offshore I think it was Ron Jones 33 cat "zippy" later bought by Paul Cook "Betty's Husband" renamed KUDU started out as shaft driven converted to stern-drive by Cook

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I'd say the first successful cat would have to be "Yellow Drama".

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I'd trust T2x's answer more than my own, but the first time I ever saw a cat was Howard Arneson's red/white and black cat called ARNESON. Of course it also had surface drives.

I remember it clearly becuase I thought it was two matching boats running side by side. The following year, the Shadow cats started showing up. This would have been around the late 70 or early 80s.

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Back in the sixties there was a very successful 28 foot deep v monohull named Ghost Rider...it was designed by Walt Walters and Jim Wynne. Jim drove it to many wins including the Cowes Torquay.

The boat was wooden, built by Souter in England of cold molded plywood. It ran two big block Daytonas on shafts. It was actually owned by a sportsman named Hugh Doyle. He donated it to his College as a gift.

He then contracted Walt Walters to design a catamaran capable of winning an offshore race. That boat was 28 feet also and powered with twin 427 Mercruisers with sterndrives. Carl Kiekhaefer was an early admirer of the design and pushed to have his engines included in the package.

Instead of England, Hugh chose a local buiulder in Osprey Fla by the name of John Holmes to build the boat. The name of that boat was Maui Kai.

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I was involved with the failed Miami to NY race last year. I met the owner of Ghost Rider that was going to bring her out of mothballs to racing again. He said it's in a cacoon in his CT warehouse. He was ready drop in some new engines and do it again.

I also found a bunch of old photos. I'll post a few.

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:drink:

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:cool:

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:chimp:

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:bunny:

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:d

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:rolleyes:

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Mary K is still racing today. In fact it just won the Worlds in KW in P3 - WAZZUP!!!!!!

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:chick:

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:eek:

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:bunny:

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:p

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Nice job


Mike

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awesome pics

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Real NICE!!

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Thanks Ron.....those are some great shots.

Post #196 show Rampage with a young Eddie Trotta as the driver.

I recently met with Eddie in regards to having him build me a chopper.

He is one of the featured bike builders on the Discovery channel. He is living in Fort Lauderdale and doing well building motorcycles.

I was speaking with Pepe from Pantera about the Miami New York race. What is it, that these races just can't seem to get off the ground. I think there is still a desire to race in the open ocean and I am sure a lot of the younger racers would love the experience.

There is nothing in the world like the feeling of bringing a boat home through really outragerous water knowing that all the hard work of preparation and expense has paid off. Especially if you know that you were not the fastest boat out there.

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www.miami-newyork2004.com They got a real nice web site, and a neat idea but it's gonna take close to 1mil to make it happen with the proper support personal.

I wish I took a shot of the Sea-Ray with a flybridge that raced one year.

Here's the rest of them.

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:p

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:drink:

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:rolleyes:

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And the best for last.