In 1965, I was at Donzi with Aronow. We built lots of experimental boats. One of them was the 14' Donzi "Peanuts". We built the first one with a racing Volvo on a model 100 Volvo drive. Don was driving everyone to finish the boat in time for the famous 9 hour race at the Miami Marine Stadium. He had sold it to a French Canadian. We finished it at 11:00 at night, after a lot of beer drinking. We launched the boat in a driving rain, and Don immediately jumped in, and roared off down the canal, wide open in the dark, pouring rain. We heard the noise fade away, and sat around and drank a few more brewskis. Soon, we heard the unmistakeable exhaust note of the little Volvo, and Aronow flashed by at about 50 mph. He idled to the floating dock, and said "Brownie, this is the best f**king boat I have ever built. It is fast, and turns on a dime. Give it a try"! Reluctantly, got in and squinted my eyes into the rain. I didn't intend to go very far in the dark, but when I gave it some throttle, I was surprised how zippy it was. When I got to the end of the canal at wide open throttle (which I could barely see) I cranked the steering wheel hard over. The boat hooked immediately, and threw my ass about 50 feet down the bay! Fortunately I had hooked the deadman switch, and it shut the boat down, but I couldn't see it in the dark. I thought to myself, "S**t! Aronow is going to shoot me"! I had visions of the boat in the rocks, etc. Finally, my heart slowed down a bit. I swam in a circle and located the boat, floating happily, about 100 feet away. I swam over and climbed aboard. It started up immediately and I gingerly ran back down the canal at about 30mph, and idled over to the dock. I said, "I tried a hard left turn, and threw me right out"! With a huge grin, Aronow turned around and showed me his ripped shirt. "Me too"!
