Long time ago in the factory in Rhode Island where it all began

[Top Banana]

Cleaning out some files and happened upon some of the original factory photos from Rhode Island. Amazing how many of these boats are still around.

The blue boat with the 280 TRS, was my wife's boat....Fast Lady. Original placement of exhausts was at the water line, but later moved them above the sterndrive. That boat later became the plug for the newest set of molds we made a few years ago. It is sitting now waiting for a restoration.....can't decide to go with a bracket and outboard or another sterndrive setup.

The long red hull became Second Choice. I understand that someone who is the Great Grandson of the original owner just purchased the boat and is restoring it.

The white boat was being rigged for delivery to San Francisco, California. It was delivered by a frined of mine who just bought a new Jeep and wanted to go no a road trip with it.

Last photo shows a day at the factory with some finished boats and some boats under construction. Second Choice back for some changes to make it more raceable, the black boat way in the back is being rigged as a twin 200HP outboard pleasure boat, the black hull to left of Second Choice, is being rigged with a 454 sterndrive

 

[Ratickle]

I gotta ask, why "Second Choice"? What was the First Choice??????

 

[Top Banana]

The fiberglass work was done in Bristol Rhode Island. The same place was the very first shop used by Outerlimits when they started in Rhode Island. The hull and deck was then brought to our shop in Providence. We had a 10,000 sq ft open span building that we used for the birth of Banana Boat.

The decks were taken off and the hulls were prepared for the fuel tanks and the electrical wiring and the carpeting for the cabin walls and floor. The decks were flipped over and the carpet for the ceiling was installed and then flipped back upright while the windshield and various deck hardware was installed. Imron painted engine rooms were prepared in the hull and sterndrive cuts were made to the transom.

Engines were put in before the deck, so the work would be easier.

 

[Top Banana]

The original owner, Larry Pitts, was 65 years old when he bought the boat. He had been involved in boat racing for a number of years, but always in the smaller OPC size boats. He fell in love with Offshore Racing of the time, point to point and he said if he was younger and had more money, he would have chosen a 36 foot Cigarette with twin sterndrives as his First Choice.

 

[Top Banana]

The shop as we called it, soon became a place for the offshore racers and wannabees to hang around. There was always plenty to look at and the number of races in the North East at the time were plentiful enough to always have a fresh story or two. Gloucester and Plymouth and Around Cape Cod in Massachusetts. Frenzy had a bunch on Long Island sound and then New Jersey had not just the Benihana, but a lot of smaller races on Barnegat Bay for smaller Production class boats.

This is a sampling of what was sitting in the shop one day in Spring. The race boat was getting ready to ship off to Miami for the Bacardi Race from Miami over to Bimini and back. We broke a motor mount and then a transmission in that race. However, that race was on Mother's Day weekend in May and I had promised the promoter of the Gloucester, Mass race which was two weeks later, that I would bring a banana boat and race. So, I pulled my wifes boat, the blue boat out and we raced that in the along the shore division. We raced against SK type boats and multi engine outboard JJ Class boats and in the end came in First Overall. Luck of the Irish for sure.

The photo that is framed here is a photo taken by a Boston Globe photographer of us winning that race that day. I was able to get a copy of the glossy and framed it. It was the shore run, but it wasn't too calm.

 

[Top Banana]

The race boat cockpit was set up for me to drive, throttle, trim and navigate if needed. This was very common back then, as most of us came from racing smaller boats and always did all the jobs in them.

To my left was the navigator who would use the deck space to tape charts and instructions on. My right side was the mechanic who followed the gauges and fuel tank times for switching tanks. All three of us had compasses in case one of them failed....that happened back then.

As you can see by my youngest son, some people just didn't qualify to be navigators due to height issues.

Notice the sharp edge on the windshield, this was before the bad accident in Detroit after which, they made us have padding on the windshield edges and any other sharp pieces that could get you if you were thrown around or out.

Don Aronow rigged this boat for me when it was first built. We raced in the Modified class of Production division. We had twin 350 cu in engines with a single carburetor. Stock exhaust sytems, TRS drives, cleaver props. Some modifications were allowed to the engines in this class and Don sent the engines to Custom Engine Service in Miami. The shop was owned by Stan Irwin and the same guy and place built the engiens for Doc Magoon's record run from Miami to New York in 22 hours a year or so earlier. They dynoed around 400 HP each and the boat with perfect conditions could run 88MPH. We carried 140 gallons of fuel.

It was a quick boat and punched up beyond it's class.

 

[Bobcat]

Great posts !!

 

[Buoy]

I love threads like this!

Thanks Charlie!

 

[Top Banana]

Thanks guys, appreciate the comments. I hope it helps give some insight into the high performance boat world before computers and CNC machines. Most of it was seat of the pants from hard won experiences.

I mentioned about the new safety regulations that APBA enforced in regards to sharp edges on the windshields, here is an example of what I meant. Later on we just integrated the padding into the windshield design, but the early days were a bit on the rough side.

We just split pipe insulation and secured it with duct tape and told ourselves that it would look great at 60 / 60. Sixty feet away at sixty miles per hour.

Top left was pre race prep on my Top Banana 24 footer. My navigator is left of me and left of him was a neighborhood kid that we brought to the races. He bought a single engine outboard banana when he was first married..... later, he ended up as a team leader with local SWAT team in Rhode Island.

The guy in the middle, who is smiling like he waited his whole life just to be a boat racer, is you know who..... and to my left is my oldest son, Charley, who came to every race and was on first name terms with guys like Aronow and Crouse and Knocky House. Just a few years before he died, Knocky and my son worked on some new prop ideas for my son's banana and picked up a few miles per hour. Knocky had so much knowledge he was amazing.

The other photo shows the guy with the Banana Boat Co shirt on was Mike Perette. He was the sales manager for Banana Boat and also the grandson of Larry Pitts, the owner of Second Choice. He was also on board for the races when Larry ran the boat.

Here are two more of the racing outboards that we made. Obsession was powered with Mercury outboards and Breakaway was powered with Johnsons.

 

[Top Banana]

Here are some early shots of boat number 1 the Top Banana and........ boat number 2 Banana Split.

Notice Top Banana does not have a production deck on yet and the steering is on the port side rather than the middle. We tried to improve each race and we finally decided we could make a lighter deck with one of our own production decks laid up light and with the bottom of the cockpit cut off.

My oldest son, Charley found the Banana Split a few years ago and totally restored it down in Miami.

You can see how low the Top Banana sits at rest with twin engines and all that fuel on board. These photos were taken at the Mimai to Bimini Bacardi race. Photos in this series have the new deck on. Notice in the background....the Benihana Bertram of Rocky Aoki. Also you can see some of the pleasure boats in Miami at that time...mid 70's...that showed up for the start of these races.

 

[Top Banana]

The company grew and before I knew it we actually had people all over wanting to buy these boats.

The original idea was to come up with a price point that appealed to the part of the market that liked the Cigarette 28SS that had twin 280 TRS power. So I made the deck and windshield design a copy of the 28SS and the power held the price down as we only offered a single sterndrive as the only power option.

It was a hit. Remember now the times I am talking about. These high performance boats were very rare in the world of boating. Offshore racing was getting a lot of coverage by the media especially Sports Illustrated. We had famous sports figures coming over and trying the sport and they brought even more media coverage. Roger Penske brought Mark Donohue right after they won the Indy 500. Astronaut Gordon Cooper ran in a race with Sammy James.

The photo here shows my 28SS Cigarette sterndrive with my sons 24 Banana outboard. You can see how big the 24 actually is, compared with other 24's that only have a 7 foot beam. Once we started using the bracket / swim platforms with outboards, we noticed the ride was just as good at speed in rough water as the 28 was.

 

[Top Banana]

The newest boats with the brackets and the latest in technical power, are a step ahead of the first and second generation boats. Starting with the layup we now use, the boats are lighter and quicker to respond. The new boat here is the outboard.

The sterndrive boat is a resto of one of our older boats with a new engine with a blower. There is a video of this boat running on our website down in Texas. www.bananaboatco.com Last I heard this boat was for sale, don't know if it ever sold.

 

[Top Banana]

View attachment royal knight conn race.bmp

When the APBA allowed the Superboat into competition, a lot of guys just dropped out and the top field had just three or four boats at most races. A few of us went into sports car racing with IMSA but there was still a lot of interest in the sport, so I approached the APBA with a single class boat idea.

I met with the President of APBA and worked out a deal that I would build a 24 foot single engine boat that would be a whole new class for people who just wanted to get into the sport. APBA in turn would grant me an exclusive to build the only boat for that class. Here is a drawing of what it would have looked like. Power was going to be a stock Mercruiser small block and sterndrive. Politics reaered it's ugly head and the class never happened.

In hindsight, the power probably should have been twin outboard as once we made the first one, Second Choice, it really caught on as can be seen here in some of these shots. Gone Bananas is the old Top Banana with a new life and going for the win again.

 

[fund razor]

This is good stuff.
Extremely interesting.

Thanks.

 

[rschap1]

X2

 

[old377guy]

:iagree::iagree:

 

[Ratickle]

Too bad that class didn't happen. It would be a fun entry level class yet today.

Can you get your buddies at Merc to assist in making it happen now?

 

[Top Banana]

So as the 24's were taking on a life of their own, we moved up to play with the big boys. A new 38 footer was tasked to French designer JC Simon. I wanted a race boat that was the latest in design and could also be used to build a pleasure boat version.

We were able to block the mold at 4 feet shorter and take both 38 foot and 34 foot boats out of the same mold. JC Simon wanted to build boats oput fo the mold also for his European customers, so we agreed to share the molds. He would call his boats Coyotes and they would be 34 feet long. Mine would be called Banana Boats and would be exactly the same size, but for marketing purposes for sales to the USA customers I called mine 33 footers.

I built one 33 footer for myself, to see how it would turn out and these are the photos of the boat from beginning to end. The boat was delivered to me in all white gelcoat. I had it painted black with a tan boot stripe and left the deck white. I put in twin Mercruiser sterndrives of 454 cu in and 370 HP ratings with TRS drives and cleaver props. This was going to be a pleasure cruiser not a race boat. I kept it in the water in Newport RI to watch the America's Cup races that summer.

I wanted to change the standard interior of these go fasts with a little more comfort. The cockpit floor and cabin floor was done with a wood parquet. Extensive use of teak through out the cabin area was used. Upon entering the cabin, you were greeted with a circular couch with a pit for your feet. You could seat 8 people in this first cabin. Above your head was a skylight that flooded the cabin with natural light. The next area forward was for clothes storage and the sound system. Then the next cabin forward has the vee berth with porta potti under and a teak arch above to support the long deck span. The interior fabric was corduroy and suede in various shades of brown / tan. The hulls sides next to the berth held teak shelves for watches or billfolds or whatever. Standar large hatch was over the berth. The rear seat carried a deflated 10 foot Avon raft tender and a small 4HP Merc outboard for the tender.

 

[Top Banana]

Here are some shots of the boat in the water in Newport RI at the America's Cup races.

The big Magnum, 53 footer, is for the English team headed by Peter De Savary. The English boat can be seen hanging in the lift behind the Magnum. The Italian 12 meter can be seen under sail, with us very close to it on the way out to the start.

A lot of hot boats came to Newport that summer and many had the new 38 foot Scarab with the KAAMA engine set-up. By the end of the summer, my boat had run all summer, every time I wanted to use it, and many of those hot boats broke. A good simple boat that runs all the time is what I wanted and is what I got, this was a great boat and a very enjoyable summer.

 

[Top Banana]

Too bad that class didn't happen. It would be a fun entry level class yet today.

Can you get your buddies at Merc to assist in making it happen now?

Freddie K has retired and so have most of the other guys.

Plus it seems the one class idea has been taken by the P1 boys.

I think my 8 foot wide boat would have been more stable for competition than the P1 design.