Miami Herald

July 23, 1982

MAGOON READIES FOR RECORD TRIP

ERIC SHARP - Herald Boating Writer

Sometime between Saturday and Monday, Bob Magoon will open the twin throttles on his 45-foot, diesel-engined offshore power boat and begin a run during which he hopes to set 3,000 miles worth of speed records between Miami-New York, New York-Bermuda and Bermuda-Miami. Magoon, a prominent Miami Beach eye surgeon who dominated the offshore power boat racing scene a decade ago, hopes to average about 60 miles per hour on the 1,257-mile trip between Miami and Manhattan to break the 54 m.p.h. record he set for that course several years ago.

If the boat holds together for the New York run, Magoon then will try to establish records for the 750-mile dash from New York to Bermuda and the 1,050-mile route between Bermuda and home.

"We've set a tentative date for Monday to start the record run>," says Magoon, 48. "The U.S. Navy says a big Bermuda high a climatological condition indicating good weather> has set up, and the weather should be good for the next 10 days. We may leave a day or two earlier, if weather conditions change, but we won't make the final decision until late in the week."

Magoon's navigator on this trip will be another physician, Dr. Jack Greenberg of Miami Beach, who is best known for racing at seven or eight knots aboard his offshore sloop, Jacknife, and who was with Magoon during an abortive attempt to set a transatlantic speed record aboard a 36-foot offshore boat powered by outboard engines.

Magoon had hoped to make another transatlantic try this summer in the diesel boat, but he wasn't able to get the financing required and figures he will try it again next year.

The crew chief will be John Stenback, the electronics technician will be Tom Packard, and General Motors has lent Magoon a diesel mechanic, Cliff Souza, who will help Stenback nurse the engines prepared for the speed challenge by Roger Penske of auto racing fame.

The boat is called Parker Meridien for the New York City hotel that is a major sponsor of the run. It is a custom design, 45 feet long and 14 feet in beam, and was built in kevlar as a one-off four years ago by Don Aronow, founder of Cigarette Racing team and several other successful offshore power boat factories. The boat has a twin Arneson Drive surface effect system, in which the propellers are mounted on long shafts that extend several feet behind the strern.

If all goes well, Magoon and his crew could be celebrating back in Miami by next Friday or Saturday. The plan calls for them to reach New York in 20-22 hours, spend a day there resting and tuning the boat, and then make the open-ocean run to Bermuda in about 12-14 hours. After another day's rest and repair in Bermuda, the crew will head back to Miami via the Bahamas, a run they hope to make in 20 hours or less.

"We plan to run about 100 miles offshore from Miami to North Carolina passing just west of Cape Hatteras' infamous Diamond Shoals>, then follow the rhumb line to New York.

Magoon says the boat will carry enough fuel to make the run non-stop, but calculations indicate he will average about 5 m.p.h. faster if he starts out with a light fuel load and refuels at Beaufort, N.C.

Parker Meridien has far more navigation gear than the average pleasure craft. The boat is equipped with a satellite navigation system, two Omega navigation units, a Loran navigation set and two automatic direction finders.

"We've also developed an auto-pilot that will hook into the Loran unit and work at more than 60 m.p.h.," Magoon says. "We're really overnavigated for this effort. The systems were designed for the transatlantic crossing."

This is a boat with space-age electronics and stone-age passenger accommodations.

"Mostly, we just lie down on the cockpit floor to sleep," Magoon says. "There's as a crawl space that leads to a little cabin up forward, but it's so uncomfortable at high speed that you really don't use it. To tell the truth, you don't really sleep on trip like this. You just sort of grab an hour's rest whenever you can."