Sports Illustrated
HOP, SKIP AND KERPLUNK
By: Hugh D. Whall – Sports Illustrated September 6th 1971
What goes up—in the spectacular world of offshore powerboat racing — always comes down hard. In November the “Double-O-Seven” of Britain’s brave Tommy Sopwith, scion of the Tommy who built the legendary Camel plane, catches fire between bounces and sinks near the Dry Tortugas. Sopwith bails out into shark waters and is saved by world-champion-to-be Vincenzo Balestrieri of Italy. In April a fearful greenhorn grasps the sissy-bar so decisively in a rough South African race that his fingers split open like overdone franks. In May a 1,000-hp 36-footer swaps ends at 60 mph off Fort Lauderdale. In July another loops the loop off New Jersey. In any season, in or out of trouble, these seagoing missiles provide the color camera with scenes of extraordinary power and beauty, as the following pages show. Read on for the story of one champion who has found the formula for the quickest way across the bounding main.
IN
THE OLD DAYS SHE RAN FULL OF RUM………….
Along the Brooklyn waterfront they still remember a
rum-running boat called The Cigarette. Long,
lean and rapid, she was built by one Benny Higgins for thirsty Irish-American
free-enterprisers whose business was booze in the days when it was both
profitable and illegal. One day, however, the gang lost The Cigarette to some other inventive businessmen who liked her
lines and speed. Why waste time and fuel running Out to meet suppliers
offshore, they had reasoned, when it was much easier to hijack other boats as
they sped home. Embarrassed by
The Cigarette’s gangland fame, the
Coast Guard ultimately captured her and made an honest boat of her.
When he began building his latest, fastest
crop of ocean racers, Miami’s Don Aronow recalled the infamously quick Cigarette
and named his new hulls after her. And why not? He was a Brooklyn boy
himself. Most recently a Cigarette piloted by world point leader Bill Wish-nick
won the race across the strait from Sweden to Finland and back. Earlier,
Cigarettes captured the Key West race, the Sam Griffith and the Bahamas 500,
among other events, while putting together a remarkable victory string, including
every race this year. In fact, they have been undefeated since the 1970 Miami-Nassau
crossing.
Among men who know their boats best, ocean racing has
reached the point where, to win, it seems one must have a Cigarette. The present
world champion, Vincenzo Balestrieri, has two—a 32-footer and a 36-footer.
Dr. Robert Magoon drives a 36-footer, as do Wishnick and the Bahamas 500 winner,
Doug Silvera. Roger Hanks of Texas duded up his model, called Blonde
II, with handsome teak decks and an $8,600 set of tuned exhausts.
‘Aronow is the house,” says one driver. “No
matter how the dice roll he’s got to come up winner.’
Like the original rum runner, Aronow’s Cigarettes
are long, low and lean. His 36’ hull has a beam of only 9’ 4”. By
comparison, the stock hull nearest in dimensions is four feet shorter but nearly
1½ feet broader. This leggy slimness permits the Cigarettes to span the waves
rather than pitch from crest to crest as a stubbier boat might. ‘These boats
ride on their tails and the props stay in the water where they belong, always
grinding,’~ says Aronow.
Aronow also gave the Cigarettes wider than usual
strakes, those lift-providing corrugations. “With wide strakes the boats do
not roll from side to side the way they used to,” he explains.
Finally, Aronow provided “the most refined deep-V
bottoms we have ever made.” In practice this means a Cigarette is supposed
to settle back into the water after a flight, not with a slam but a bouncy sigh.
As a result, speeds are up and drivers’ fears of’ cardiac experiences
down.
Twenty workmen craft the basic 32-foot and 36-foot
racing models at Aronow’s North Miami Beach plant. Each boat costs about
$43,000 complete with either outboard engines or an inboard I outdrive setup.
Aronow achieves lightness—the 36-footer weighs only 7,700 pounds—without
sacrificing strength. If, occasionally, a Cigarette rips apart under the
stress of pounding the seas at nicely competitive 75-plus mph, that is part of
the game. “It’s bound to happen,” says Aronow.
As a spin-off from his racers Aronow also molds
several stock Cigarettes a year. They bear a close resemblance to the race
boats, but in addition to containing more creature comforts, they also are
smaller and heftier. When amateur drivers run them into things, Aronow doesn’t
want his “civilian” Cigarettes to buckle.
When Aronow shows up for work of a morning—usually
at the executive hour of 11 a.m. or so—he rolls up the sleeves of his
open-throat silk shirt and goes out onto God’s own test tank, the open ocean.
He concedes that conventional tanks, like the one at Stevens Institute in New
Jersey, are O.K. for testing models of sailing yachts, but he fails to see how
a tank can tell how hard the ride is going to be for an ocean race-boat driver
and his crew. Nor does he see how a tank can tell whether or not a boat will
roll at top speed under varying sea conditions. He believes in performing
full-scale experiments with full-scale models. “When I get that boat out there
in the ocean,” he says, “I know what it can do and I know what we have to do
to make it a faster boat and a better boat. So far we haven’t been wrong.”
Since he first began racing in a wooden hull built
in 1961, Aronow has acquired a unique fund of knowledge on racing boats and
their behavior plus the customary collection of broken bones, bumps, bruises and
a network of scars. He started building the hulls himself with a number called
the Formula, progressed from Formula to Donzi, from Donzi to the Magnum. From
Magnum he switched to Cary, whose boats he designed and raced but did not
build. And with Cary he set a single-season record of eight major victories.
Nine months ago he began anew with the Cigarettes, the culmination of his
amazing decade in the sport.
But Aronow is not standing pat. He may even have a
catamaran in his future. Until now, catamarans like the Zippé II on page 33 have been erratic performers, but as soon as
someone discovers how to make them light enough to get up on a plane when
fully loaded with fuel, there will be a 100-mph ocean racer. Or, at least, so
Aronow believes. Of one thing you may be sure: no cat of Aronow’s will be a
dog. —HUGH D. WHALL