A Jolting Ride in a Power Boat

 Don Aronow Wins a Feverish Race In the Bahamas by

 Only a Second

Freeport, Grand BAHAMA By: John Peterson – Fall 1969

Most of the crowd on the Lucaya Ma­rtha fuel pier bunched admiringly about the millionaire Florida sportsman who had just climbed slowly out of his jet-black power boat with red-leather interior pad­ding. Standing off to one side a wrinkled skipper of a sailing Moop muttered softly, ‘No man should ask the sea for trouble— unless he’s touched.”

To some, Don Aronow may seem a bit mad, but he had just won the most punishing of ocean races, the Bahamas 500. “The $60,000 in prize money Is somehow sup­posed to justify this,” Aronow grinned.

For some eight hours the rugged racer had hurtled at speeds of 70 m.p.h. and higher over shoals, through reefs, and, of course, through thunderstorms and rain squalls. His 32-foot Magnum, powered by two Mercury inboards generating 475 horsepower, had crunched into wave after wave with bone-jarring jolts.

Don Aronow averaged 64 m.p.h. and lopped 2 hours and 35 minutes off the rec­ord time (new record: 8 hours, 24 minutes), but Incredibly, after th6se 541 miles,  he beat rookie driver Mel Riggs by only one second / four and one-half feet. This wasn’t surprising though; the sports buffs had expected the showdown.

The wealthy Aronow is America’s fore­most power-boat racer, world offshore champion in 1967, and now the winner of three straight races. He had never before won this race, however. Two years ago in its first running, Aronow’s boat had caught fire and finally sunk; last year illness had kept him out.

Odell Lewis: Out of Action

Riggs, a 31-year-old redhead, Is the last man to have beaten Aronow—in the ­Miami to Nassau race. Although a rookie, he drives the only factory entry In ocean racing, Kiekhaefer-Mercury’s Mona Lou III. Mercury’s top driver, Odell Lewis, who won the first two Bahamas 500s, has been out of action since he injured a disc in his back during an early-season race.

In Riggs’ last two races he has been plagued by injuries to his crew members, a common occurrence in the grueling sport. In both races his co-pilots lost their grip on the wheel and wound up unconscious. In the last race the third member of his crew tore cartilages in both knees. “They looked like bluish-black watermel­ons,” says Daniel Immel, one of Riggs’ mechanics.

Yet Immel expects to ride co-pilot with Riggs In the next race and looks forward to the challenge. “Those boats will leap 10 or 15 feet above the water and fly for 40 or 50 feet,” he explains. “A 70 m.p.h.-boat smacking into a white cap gives a real jolt. It’s a real kick if you can hang on.”

The race here had been postponed one day to June 14 because of high seas. But it was calm when the race started, the seas rolling softly with no white caps. Riggs jumped to an early lead and after rounding Bimini for Nassau on New Providence Island, across the Tongue of the Ocean, he was catching the rolling, rhythmic waves perfectly and surfing ahead. Just outside of Nassau he had a six-mile lead, but the racers had yet to circle the island and Golding’s Cay.

‘That Man Loves a Challenge’

“Aronow cut inside the cay,” said Riggs, shaking his head with a knowing smile. “That man loves a challenge. Even the natives steer clear of that water—it has piled up plenty of boats. When he came shooting out we were running dead even.”

   For the last 250 miles the two boats were always within a few boat lengths of each other, miles ahead of the other 28 en­trees. As they roared toward the finish, both were In the power boat’s “porpoising” rhythm. A wave would lift the bow high out the water, slightly slow­ing Its speed; then gracefully the slim hull would settle back down. “It looks great,” says Mercury’s Immel, “but it can wham you.”

First Aronow would forge ahead by a few feet and then Riggs would grab a momentary lead. “You’ve got to save a little for the finish. That’s called pacing yourself,” Aronow says. “But I thought Mel had won.”

Explained the easy going Riggs: “Either one of us might have won It. It just depended on whose turn it was out in front when we hit the finish. This race, well I’m plenty happy to be second. I’m just happy to have finished.”

Aronow smiled wanly at that. The wind had ripped his shirt to shreds and whipped away his racing helmet. When his wife, Shirley, kissed him after the race, he grinned, “I had to skip out on you, honey.” She said that at 2:30 that morning he had been running a 101-degree fever and didn’t believe that he could race. “When I woke up again this morning, he was already out in his boat, heading for the starting line.”