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Miami Herald October 6, 1985
OFFSHORE POWERBOATS GET BACK TO BASICS OCT. 19 APACHE RACE WILL BE BLUE-WATER TEST
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The first time they ran this race, on a cold, blustery day 20 years ago, only two boats were still running when Dick Bertram's 31-footer crossed the finish line. His average speed for the 145-mile course was only 21.1 miles per hour. The most recent time they ran it, on a rough day in 1983, Jerry Jacoby's 37-foot Cigarette averaged 71.8 mph for a slightly longer course. Now they're going to run it again -- on Oct. 19. And although the race's name has changed again, from the Sam Griffiths Memorial to the Bacardi Cup to the Apache Offshore Challenge, one thing remains the same: two crossings of the Gulf Stream makes it by far the toughest offshore powerboat race in North America. Bob Saccenti, a partner in Apache Boats of North Miami Beach, which is sponsoring the 160-mile race, says he and partner Ben Kramer decided to reactivate the Miami--Bimini--Fort Lauderdale course because "it gets us back to offshore racing." "A lot of what we've been doing in the past few years really wasn't offshore racing," Saccenti said. "Because of the effort to make offshore racing more visible to spectators, a lot of what we were doing was inshore racing, and it wasn't a real test of what these boats were designed for." Saccenti is a proponent of running offshore boats out where the water is rough. He and Kramer won the 1984 Class I national title in a 42-foot deep vee when conventional wisdom said deep vees, with a top speed of less than 100 mph, could no longer compete against cats that topped out at 125. Saccenti and Kramer proved that theory wrong by building a mechanical package so reliable that it won race after race while faster catamarans broke down, and by getting enough races with seas above four feet that they were able to hammer through at 80 mph while cats were forced to slow to 60. The Apache Challenge is scheduled to see the fleet, probably about 60 boats, cross a starting line in the Atlantic three miles north of Baker's Haulover at 11:30 a.m. The superboats, open and modified classes will head for a mark near Bimini, 57.5 miles to the southeast. The smaller pro stock, stock and club classes will head for a mark off Port Everglades. The small boats will do five laps up and down the shoreline between Port Everglades and the Sunny Isles pier and complete the race at the start-finish line. The superboats, open and modified classes will turn the mark off Bimini and then head back across the Gulf Stream to their second mark off Port Everglades. After turning that mark, they will run three laps between Port Everglades and the Sunny Isles pier and finish north of Haulover. The boats can be seen by the public the day before the race and on race day until 10:15 a.m. at the Turnberry Isle Marina in North Dade. At 10:15, the racers are scheduled to parade down the Intracoastal Waterway, out Baker's Haulover and then turn north to the starting line. Given modest seas (under six feet) and a little luck, the first of the big boats should finish in two hours or less. Spectators should get a pretty good view of the boats from the beaches between Sunny Islands and Port Everglades, but the best viewing position will be from a boat on the eastern edge of the course. That's the side to seaward, and the Coast Guard and race committee patrol boats will be on hand to keep spectator boats from getting too close to the start-finish line or the north and south check points. This race has a long history of separating the men from the boys -- and the men from their boats. When Bertram won that first Sam Griffith, his Miss Moppie finished with one crewman trying to staunch the blood from a broken nose. During its return crossing, the boat hit a wave so hard that John Donnell was thrown from his perch at the stern all the way through the cabin to the bow. It was unfortunate that he had to open the cabin door with his face. In 1966, Bertram showed up with Brave Moppie, a twin diesel boat in which he had won the offshore world championship the year before. But the race ended for Bertram with him standing in the cockpit of a king boat and stepping to a rescue vessel just seconds before Brave Moppie disappeared stern first beneath the blue waters of the Gulf Stream. Texan Roger Hanks added a little excitement to the 1973 race when he lost his steering while cutting a corner a little too close. Hanks' Cigarette, Blonde, skipped sideways and smashed like a 36-foot spear through the bow of the 41-foot Hattaras that was acting as the mark boat. If there's any wind at all Oct. 19, chances are that fewer than half the starters will complete the race in the three big- boat classes. A finishing field of 30 percent or fewer wouldn't be surprising in really rough seas. For the past couple of years, offshore racers have run such protected courses that some of the toughest racing has been at the new Great Lakes events, where the boats have had to cross open water. That has been something of an embarrassment to blue- water racers. In recent years, the move has been toward bigger boats, smoother water and higher speeds. But that's not what offshore racing is supposed to be about. If you want high speed in flat water, go to an unlimited hydroplane race. Nothing can match those monsters for sheer speed and excitement. Offshore racing is supposed to be rough. If the boats don't go as fast as flat-water racers, it's because they're not supposed to. This is the sport that brought us the deep vee hull, a modification that now allows thousands of family cruisers to operate safely far off the coast. We're not going to see continued development in that direction if the sport turns its back on the waters where it was born. |