Top Banana
Icon/Founding Member
Once upon a time three young men, Bobby Saccenti, Sonny Miller and Jon Varese wanted to go racing. They remembered the boat built by GARA and called Impossible Dream....they liked what they saw there. They designed a 44 foot boat that had a very narrow foot and many strakes on the bottom. The boat originally had a round V at the stern because they intended to use shafts and inboards rather than sterndrives......fast forward, cause it didn't work....they changed the bottom to a real V, installed sterndrives and brought the boat to New Jersey for a newly sponsored race called...The Benihana.
It wasn't the fastest boat in the race, but boy could it eat up rough water. End of race and a lot of people couldn't navigate and some others couldn't find the right side of the checkpoints and the new 44 foot MSV, named La Tortuga won the race.
Of course, the crew of La Tortuga couldn't believe it...... and when the helicopters came over them close and gave them the one finger for first place, our boy Bob gave them the finger back.
Well the boat just didn't have the power back then to move all 44 feet very quick, but it beat everything in rough water and left no doubt that our trio was on to something. A Frenchman by the name of Jean Claude Simon comes along now and rents the mold from them and blocks it at 38 feet...but puts on a deck design that he copied from Paolo Caluiri...and voila....the 38 foot Cobra Open class racer of Joel Halpern is born....named Beep Beep.
This boat now goes out and wins US1 for the next two years and runs, really runs, in rough water. So during this time Joel and JC Simon have a falling out and JC is out in the cold so to speak. But a new opportunity comes his way......Mr Top Banana wants to move up to Open Class after too many years in smaller boats and is looking for a fresh design, so he and JC Simon hook up to build a newer version of the old favorite.....the new 38 Banana has one less strake on the bottom, but the remaining strakes are wider and the foot of the boat remains narrow. Once again a magic wand is waved, dollars change hands and ...Top Banana is born.
We trailer out to California for the Bushmills race and lead from start to finish, with the exception of Bill Elswick in Longshot, getting ahead for 30 seconds or so, while I tried to drive and throttle as I always did in the smaller classes....couldn't do it. Second boat in that race was Ajac Hawk, throttled by our friend Mr Bob S. Third place was Betty Cook in KAAMA.
Back to JC Simon...remember the falling out he and Halpern had? Well, JC wants to build boats out of my mold and call them Coyotes....remember how the Coyote always was after the Road Runner who said (Beep Beep)? So for a while Bananas and Coyotes are made from the same mold...both 38's and we blocked the mold for 34's too. Some like Gone Bananas in the photo below ran with both names on it, Coyote and Banana.
Fast forward again....Banana is out, Coyote is out.... and the molds now are sold to Sonic, where with the addition of a swim platform, they become the Sonic 42 footer. It all started with a 44 footer at the Benihana race.
So there you have the bloodline.....Gara, MSV, Cobra, Banana, Coyote, Sonic.
It wasn't the fastest boat in the race, but boy could it eat up rough water. End of race and a lot of people couldn't navigate and some others couldn't find the right side of the checkpoints and the new 44 foot MSV, named La Tortuga won the race.
Of course, the crew of La Tortuga couldn't believe it...... and when the helicopters came over them close and gave them the one finger for first place, our boy Bob gave them the finger back.
Well the boat just didn't have the power back then to move all 44 feet very quick, but it beat everything in rough water and left no doubt that our trio was on to something. A Frenchman by the name of Jean Claude Simon comes along now and rents the mold from them and blocks it at 38 feet...but puts on a deck design that he copied from Paolo Caluiri...and voila....the 38 foot Cobra Open class racer of Joel Halpern is born....named Beep Beep.
This boat now goes out and wins US1 for the next two years and runs, really runs, in rough water. So during this time Joel and JC Simon have a falling out and JC is out in the cold so to speak. But a new opportunity comes his way......Mr Top Banana wants to move up to Open Class after too many years in smaller boats and is looking for a fresh design, so he and JC Simon hook up to build a newer version of the old favorite.....the new 38 Banana has one less strake on the bottom, but the remaining strakes are wider and the foot of the boat remains narrow. Once again a magic wand is waved, dollars change hands and ...Top Banana is born.
We trailer out to California for the Bushmills race and lead from start to finish, with the exception of Bill Elswick in Longshot, getting ahead for 30 seconds or so, while I tried to drive and throttle as I always did in the smaller classes....couldn't do it. Second boat in that race was Ajac Hawk, throttled by our friend Mr Bob S. Third place was Betty Cook in KAAMA.
Back to JC Simon...remember the falling out he and Halpern had? Well, JC wants to build boats out of my mold and call them Coyotes....remember how the Coyote always was after the Road Runner who said (Beep Beep)? So for a while Bananas and Coyotes are made from the same mold...both 38's and we blocked the mold for 34's too. Some like Gone Bananas in the photo below ran with both names on it, Coyote and Banana.
Fast forward again....Banana is out, Coyote is out.... and the molds now are sold to Sonic, where with the addition of a swim platform, they become the Sonic 42 footer. It all started with a 44 footer at the Benihana race.
So there you have the bloodline.....Gara, MSV, Cobra, Banana, Coyote, Sonic.
