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Biloxi Musings
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T2x
Icon/Charter Member
They probably should today as well...If a v can't compete....buy a cat...if it can...check to see if the motors were overhauled in North Carolina.
boatme
Charter Member
My wife was risk manager for the GLSCS it was a cool group and a lot of fun To bad it was like most other groups
it ate itself alive the last year or two before it went away
The funny thing is that the regions and national structure is still basically in place with the different groups. And if everyone came together it could very easily be divided back up and we would lose very few boats or sites. BUT the groups are divided by wants and personalities and unless a purge occured across the board nothing will change.
Ratickle
Founding Member / Super Moderator
They probably should today as well...If a v can't compete....buy a cat...if it can...check to see if the motors were overhauled in North Carolina.
There you go again.....:rofl: :sifone: :rofl:
Fast Shafts
Competitor
Rich,
Just out of curiosity, what boats and what year(s) did you race? I am specifically asking about offshore, not tunnel.
I remember the first race for your twin outboard 30 Shadow in Barnegat Bay, and thought this was history-the first production cat with two engines beating triple engine V hulls.
Just out of curiosity, what boats and what year(s) did you race? I am specifically asking about offshore, not tunnel.
I remember the first race for your twin outboard 30 Shadow in Barnegat Bay, and thought this was history-the first production cat with two engines beating triple engine V hulls.
BRAD SCHOENWALD
Charter Member
MOBILEMERCMAN
Founding Member / Competitor
Pretty cool.
I talked to Chris this past weekend. It is great to have someone with his enthusiasm and resources covering our sport. I can't wait to see everything he talked about.
I talked to Chris this past weekend. It is great to have someone with his enthusiasm and resources covering our sport. I can't wait to see everything he talked about.
Ratickle
Founding Member / Super Moderator
Very nice.
Sean Stinson
Founding Member/Contributor
Does anyone know what the future of Miami Stadium will be....
Ratickle
Founding Member / Super Moderator
Here's a link to the group handling it. I think T2x and Brownie are both involved.
http://www.marinestadium.org/
Sean Stinson
Founding Member/Contributor
I only have one gripe.......In the future renderings photo #49 why do they have to use a stinking blow boat!!!! I mean come on blow boats are Rhode island.....Miami is the birthplace and home of the muscle boat!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sean Stinson
Founding Member/Contributor
BTW thanks for the link Rat
T2x
Icon/Charter Member
I didn't do that much Offshore racing. We got busy building boats for others with Shadow and Conquest, plus I had the TV announcing. That plus my "real job" was a full time career.
On the other hand, earlier (1964-1969) off and on, I ran in races like the Around Long Island race (pre Benihana), The Miss America (Atlantic City Marathon), Chicago-New Buffalo and Milwaukee-Chicago-Milwaukee back when smaller boats were the norm and I was racing OPC full time. Later, after I left the tunnel boats and started Shadow I raced a couple of seasons with various dual engine 21 Vee Shadows (see below), and later raced the first two seasons in a couple of our factory Shadow Cats (also below) to get us established (and apparently it worked, the white hull pictured is Wayne "quicker" Vickers and me qualifying first in the, until then all fuel injected, inboard, Sport Class at the Key West World's-the engines busted off in the final.. That hull, powered by Mercury's super secret, EFI T-4's, was among the fastest in the entire sport at that time). I also throttled Black Duck in its first two races. So maybe 5 full years of Offshore spread over 20+ years of racing( OPC, Outboard, and once in an Inboard hydro) . In truth I found Offshore racing a bit boring at times and hated the concept of driving by committee. You have to remember that I had just come out of 120 mph, 250 lb tunnel hulls with trim on the wheel and under one foot, and a foot throttle. We raced within inches of each other and swapped positions constantly. Later as the Offshore speeds went up another 50 mph that opinion changed.
When you have people like Pete Aitken and Tom Akoury, Willie Diaz, Davey Gilmore, Dom Palumbi, and the Lavin brothers in your boats, you're better off working behind the scenes on set up........ There was a lot of time spent working/testing with Mercury Marine and I did a lot of the test driving on boats like Love-It and Black Duck.
I'll be the first to admit that people like Billy Sirois, Bobby Moore, and Richie Powers had a lot more Offshore seat time than I did. But I did okay, I guess.
I remember that race well. There was so much belly aching from the Vee bottom guys (Bill Gazelle, et al)that the referee kicked us up two classes to Sport from Production. We still went fast enough for second overall or some such and not only walloped all of the triple outboard vees, we also beat every inboard save one.
I actually had more fun with the little 80+ mph, 21 footers, because we got to race against 30' and larger boats. I actually "hip checked" a 32 footer in a race as we approached a turn when he tried to come over and force me into the infield. I had both the wheel and the throttle in those boats and hit the other boat hard enough with my gunnel to scare him 5 lanes out and away from me on that turn (it did very little good for my co-driver's blood pressure however and he was white knuckled and near hysteria for the remainder of the race). That was normal when racing tunnel boats in Canada, where everydody grew up playing hockey. The first turn in Canadian heat races sounded like a chorus of carpenters framing a house.
The one thing that made us so fast back then, aside from George's marvelous hull designs, was the fact that we were the very first to raise the prop shafts (x Dimension) to OPC heights on both our Outboard and Inboard hulls. Howard Arneson was just starting to do the same thing with his unique drives out west, but we were following traditional proven outboard race boat technology. When we first showed up at both Oshkosh and Lake X the Mercury staff thought we were nuts....until we ran the boat through some speed trials. Within a few months almost every drive in Offshore was either shorthened or remounted.
The best moment, however was a test ride I gave to Gazelle, Jerry Jacoby, Joe Detore, and Dave Gilmore in the Shadow prototype (Beige and Brown hull below) before a race in Freeport, Long Island. As you leave the inlet at Jones Beach going out into the Atlantic there is a 1/4 mile long sand bar to the west of the main channel with surf like breakers and about 3 feet of water. As we headed out the guys were all very nonchalant in part because the boat was so docile at 75-80 mph in a mixed chop and they didn't realize how fast we were going. I figured I would get their attention so I aimed the boat right at the middle of the bar. As I approached there was suddenly a lot of shouting and scurrying for cover amongst the "passengers" ...... Needless to say, we cleared the surf head on without much ado...... and after a lot of cursing, I sold two boats and made two other guys cat "believers".
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Sean Stinson
Founding Member/Contributor
When you have people like Pete Aitken and Tom Akoury, Willie Diaz, Davey Gilmore, Dom Palumbi, and the Lavin brothers in your boats, you're better off working behind the scenes on set up........
I saw Tom Akoury down in Key West this year while at the worlds at the crab place just before you get to Murray Marine on the southside of US-1 talk about some great stories!!!!!!!
Ratickle
Founding Member / Super Moderator
Too funny.......:rofl:
T2x
Icon/Charter Member
Right now it looks good legally, but given the current budget crisis, the funds may not be so easy to come by.
Having raced their myself a few times, I can't tell you how important this piece of history is to the sport.
T2x
Fast Shafts
Competitor
Thanks T2
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