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Miami Herald November 16, 1984
WARPATH ENJOYS A SMOOTH TRIP IN ROUGH WATER
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The boating forecast for the Offshore Power Boat World Championships at Key West was miserable. Northerly winds of 20 knots would produce boat-battering seas, five-footers inside the reef and up to 10 feet outside. It also looked like it would rain. Bob Saccenti, who would be racing a boat at 90 miles per hour on those seas, looked at the forecast and smiled. As far as he was concerned, it couldn't have been better. Saccenti is the throttleman on Warpath, a 41-foot deep-vee offshore race boat he builds at Apache Boats with partner Ben Kramer, who is the boat's driver. Saccenti, Kramer and crew chief Tom Evans had run only four races on the offshore circuit this season, and they had posted three second-place finishes and a third behind catamarans that simply had more speed in flat water. "Going into the world championships, I was pretty sure we were going to win," says Saccenti, who lives in North Miami Beach. "Don Aronow was sure of it. He knew all along we were going to be the world champions." Aronow's prediction held true as Warpath romped through the heavy seas that are her element to the American Power Boat Association title, leaving a trail of broken and beaten catamarans in her wake. Aronow is an Olympian figure in the offshore pantheon, the man who founded the Magnum and Donzi speedboat companies and gained everlasting boating fame by designing the best-known offshore racers of them all, the Cigarettes. He collaborated on new designs with Saccenti, his former employee and protege, when Saccenti decided to open his own yard a couple of years ago. And Monday, Saccenti and Kramer will move into a new boat factory on NE 188th Street in North Miami Beach -- next door to Aronow's USA Racing Team plant. Saccenti is a believer in deep-vee hulls, those needle- nosed, powerful shapes that cleave the water like a machete while the twin-hulled catamarans skip across the surface like a stone. In smooth water, a cat is faster than a vee. Simple laws of physics dictate that. A top-notch, 40-foot catamaran with perfectly tuned engines will skitter over a two-foot chop at about 125 mph, while the best a 40-foot deep vee can manage with the same engines is about 95. However, when the seas build up to the point where the cats have trouble keeping the tunnel between the hulls filled with air instead of water, the tables are turned. The badly battered cats are lucky to be able to maintain 75 mph in a five-foot seaway, while Saccenti's vee hull continues to drive along at close to 90. 'BIG SEAS' HELP "We don't have many real offshore races any more," Saccenti complains. "They're sort of inshore races. We just don't see big seas that often. If we went back to offshore racing the way it used to be, you wouldn't see half as many cats as you do now. "We just went crazy at Key West. We went to the drivers' meeting with big smiles on our faces. Then we just murdered the cats when we got out there in that rough water." Saccenti, Kramer and Evans won a championship in a sport that has been badly divided the past couple of years. Class I at Key West was the superboats, 45- to 50-footers powered by three or four 700-horsepower engines. There are only four in existence, all in the United States. Saccenti was the champion in Class II, 36- to 42-foot boats limited to maximum engine displacement of 1,000 cubic inches. This was the glamour class until the advent of the superboats two years ago, and these boats are still listed as Class I boats when racing in International Motorboating Union events in other parts of the world. The APBA also recognizes Warpath as the Class I world champion, but the UIM recognizes an Italian boat that finished first in a European series two months ago. BOAT HOLDS UP Warpath, sponsored by Palm Peterbilt Trucks, proved as tough as any 18-wheeler and didn't suffer a single hull or engine failure in three hard days of racing. For each race she was given a new set of Apache-Eikert engines built by Keith Eikert, one of the sport's top powerplant experts who was formerly with the KSW shop. Crew chief Evans prepares the boat for races, and he and Saccenti are capable of making any repairs on the water for which they have the tools and spare parts. The boat does not list a navigator among its crewmen. "We all navigate," Saccenti grins. "Everybody knows how to point." In the opening race, a 90-miler, Warpath reached the first turn at Sand Key Light south of Key West almost last behind a half-dozen cats after a seven-mile run across smooth water. "But once we turned the corner at Sand Key and hit the rough water, we just passed every one of them and stayed there. In the second race it was almost exactly the same thing. But on the second lap I looked back and saw Cabrera, the German catamaran, coming up on us in the smooth part and I made a mistake. I decided to make a mad dash to get back into the rough water first." The throttleman controls the speed of the boat, and Saccenti tweaked the levers forward until Warpath was doing better than 90 mph. Then the boat hit a big wave, shot straight up (the bow reaching 50 feet in the air), and dropped straight back onto her transom, smashing the trim tab system that is crucial for keeping the boat running level at high speed. "We were OK in the rough stuff running at 70 or
75 mph, BEAUTIFUL SIGHT A few hours before the start of the final race, a 160- miler, Warpath's crew flew over the course in a small plane. They saw breakers on the reef at Sand Key. At Smith Shoal, northwest of Key West, the water was so rough the could see the bellies of shrimp boats as they rolled at anchor. All in all, it was a beautiful sight. "It was just like the first one," Saccenti says. "We were just about dead last to Sand Key and then just ran away with it. When we came back through Key West Harbor at the end of the first lap and saw that Cabrera wasn't behind us, I figured he must have some troubles and we backed off to 5,000 revolutions per minute (about 80 mph)." Warpath crossed the finish line with about 15 gallons of fuel left in her tanks, enough for about nine minutes running time with engines that each gulp 50 gallons of gasoline an hour. "That was one thing that was worrying us a little," Saccenti admits. "We knew we were cutting it close. We were cutting it so close that we motored out to the starting area on one engine just to save fuel." Saccenti and Kramer build Apaches in sizes ranging from 33 to 60 feet, and they say they are going to offer a pleasure version of their world-championship boat, this one equipped with twin diesel engines. Equipped with such amenities as berths and a head, it will offer 80-mph thrills and overnight comfort -- for anyone who has $140,000. |