1987/88 OFFSHORE RACING ANNUAL - By John Crouse

We Yanks like to think we invented everything. We didn’t! But who can argue that the creators of electric lights, jazz, the phonograph, atomic power and the 55mph speed limit haven’t been busy?

For a long time we even thought we invented offshore powerboat racing!

Many say it first arrived with the auto­cratic and imaginative American promo­ter Capt. Sherman “Red” Crise’s 1956 Miami-Nassau race.

Actually, the English and French ran the first recorded offshore powerboat race so long ago that we Yanks were still counting RPM’s at sea, on our fingers!

OFFSHORE POWERBOAT RACING IS BORN

The first recorded offshore powerboat race was only 22 miles long and called the

International Cross Channel, which made sense since it ran across the English Channel from Calais, France to the white cliffs of Dover.

If you’re reading this on August 8, 1987 it was exactly 83 years ago and was won by an M. Sauer in the 39-foot Pitre hull Mercedes IV with an 80-hp Daimler engine.

Amazingly, 21 of the 22 starters, which were flanked by warships and yachts packed with dignitaries and royalty from several nations, were able to finish. The winner averaged 22mph and the runner-up was awarded the newly created Brit­ish Harmsworth Trophy.

For a long time it was virtually impos­sible to distinguish any “offshore” type of hull in the dozens of races run over both open ocean and on closed courses. They ranged from weak-lunged runabouts to the awesome, long, thin craft raced by the likes of Car Wood, Carl Fisher, Capt. Jack Manson Sr. and England’s Noel Robbins.

This’ll come as a shocker to Red, but the first “Flag to Flag” Miami-Nassau race was actually scheduled in 1907 but was cancelled twice, the second time in 1917 because of World War I.

GAR WOOD ERA

In 1919 the late and legendary Gar Wood who was dominating the Gold Cup closed course races and the interna­tional Harmsworth Trophy competition like he owned them, got his wee five-foot, four-inch frame into ocean racing.

He won the Miami-Key West race that year in a 50-foot Chris Smith hull, powered by two huge 425-horsepower Liberty World War I aircraft engines.

Chris Smith, who would acquire fame of his own as the founder of Chris-Craft, built the boat and modified its engines.

Two years later Wood won the 259-mile Miami to Havana, Cuba race taking 9:23 in the same boat with the same engines.

The first major continuous offshore race was the Catalina Island challenge off Long Beach, California, an event that began in 1911. It attracted everything from experimental craft from Boeing Aircraft Company to exotic machines owned and driven by movie moguls.

But it was the 184-mile run from Miami to Nassau on Providence Island in The Bahamas, aided and greatly abetted by a more-colorful-than-life character named Sam Griffith, that gave the sport true voltage.

With owner Dick Bertram (a world sailing champion and sometimes fore­deck man on the America’s Cup chal­lengers) aboard, Griffith would win four of the first six Miami-Nassau’s using three different make hulls and four brands of engines!

After Griffith disdainfully said”.. .looks like ‘a damn sailboat,” the grizzled sea warrior and Bertram climbed into an odd looking deep-V prototype hull built in Bertram’s Miami boatyard, and stunned the fast boat world with a record eight hour victory run to Nassau!

From then on, the Ray Hunt concept with its slightly rockered bottom, would revolutionize small boating, reigning supreme for 19 years until the 100 mph English Cougar Cat catamaran hulls took over.

In 1961 the first modern European race, the English Cowes-Torquay event, was backed by British publisher Sir Max Aitken, a 22-plane ace in the Battle of Britain. He and his wife Lady Aitken would race in them for years, while the Americans battled in vain for years to win the event.

The first race was won by Tommy Sopwith, scion of the owner of the cele­brated British aircraft firm, in a 25-foot Campbell named Thunderbolt using two 325 hp American made Crusader engines.

It took Dick Bertram until 1965 to win the race in his 38-foot Brave Moppie using twin 550 hp Detroit Diesel engines.

By 1964 the Italians had created their Viareggio-Bastia-Viareggio race which was won by Bertram in Lucky Moppie, a 31-foot fiberglass boat built by the new company in Miami. The win had a hol­low ring since his rustic sidekick for many years, Griffith who had survived a free fall from a sabotaged bomber in World War II and numerous auto and boat crashes, had died of cancer in a Miami hospital the previous summer.

Shaken by the seemingly indestructi­ble Griffith’s demise, the author who had ridden in races with the most unforgetta­ble character the sport had seen to date, founded the Sam Griffith Trophy in the fall of 1963 to be presented to the world champion based on the three races in existence at the time.. .the Miami-Nassau, the Cowes-Torquay and Viareggio events.

A fourth, the Sam Griffith Memorial added in the winter of 1964, was first won by American Jim Wynne, then fittingly by Bertram. The Sam Griffith Trophy provided the voltage the sport needed to really catch fire. By 1977 there were 35 races being staged worldwide, most of them point contests for the trophy.

In 1962 a new super hero burst upon the scene. Cast in the same mold as the late Griffith, retired millionaire Donald J. Aronow would become not only the most successful offshore racer of all time winning two world, three U.S. and a handful of European championships, but would gain a reputation as the creator of the most successful high performance hulls the world had ever seen.

ARONOW WINS WORLD TITLES

By 1969 Aronow had founded the Formula, Donzi, Magnum and Cigarette companies, each time putting his own neck on the line by race-testing his pro­ducts. He won the 1967 world, U.S., French, Italian, English and Swedish titles switching from single-engine craft to inboard/outboards in a series of his Magnum hulls.

While the Aronow-built deep V’s were replacing the Bertrams as the dominating factor in the sport, some hardy and, for­tunately wealthy, souls were determined to prove that there was another way to go. . . the then cumbersome and fragile catamarans.

The Italian, Francesco Cosentino, then the Secretary General of the Italian parli­ament, would be the first to win a major offshore race in an inboard-powered catamaran finishing first in a 1971 race from Bellaria, Italy to Patia, Yugoslavia. The only other conquest for the then highly finicky design was that of Paul Cook’s 36-foot Ron Jones designed Kuda II, in the ‘74 San Francisco race.

But the victory was labeled by many skeptics as a quirk and the deep-Vs con­tinued their march by sea until 1977 when the Englishman Ken Cassir astounded everybody, and most likely himself, by winning the rugged Cowes-Torquay race in the 38-foot Cougar Cat Yellowdrarna III. He did it with a pair of second hand 625-hp Kiekhaefer Aeromarine engines bought from world champion Carlo Bonomi, at a course record of 75.1 mph! Cassir proved the run was no fluke by coming back the next season and captur­ing two more races, the San Feliu, Spain event and the Needles Trophy in Eng­land in the wooden cat. He also set a new offshore straightaway mark of 92.167 mph.

The year 1977 was an epic one for the sport and the English. Aside from Cassir’s win at Cowes, London commodities broker, Michael Doxford, was able to better Aronow’s eight-year-old, most wins in a-season, record. Aronow won eight races in his successful drive to the ‘69 world title.

Ironically, Doxford’s record nine came in a pair of 35-foot and 40-foot Cigarettes designed and built by the former record holder!

It was a particularly strong blow to the seafaring English who had tried so gal­lantly and unsuccessfully to capture the Sam Griffith Trophy, that the year they appeared to have it in the bag, the format was changed from a circuit concept to a winner-take-all, single event.

BETTY COOKS KAAMA

While Doxford and his British compa­triot Cassir were doing their thing in Europe, a 56-year-old American grand­mother standing all of five-foot, f our-inches and tilting the scales at a whop­ping 114 pounds, was earning her first piece of fame in a career that would ulti­mately match that of Aronow and the late Griffith, by winning the Bushmills Grand Prix off Newport Beach, Califor­nia, in her 38-foot Scarab Kaama.

It was the first time that a woman driver had ever won a major offshore race. It was also the first offshore race boat made from Kevlar. The fact that she was awarded the win, after the apparent victor Billy Martin’s 40-foot Cigarette Bounty Hunter was bounced for missing a check point, left some skeptics.

When the little lady went on to win the next to last race on the U.S. circuit at San Francisco six months later, she collected some more believers but it was the 1977 world championship race in Key West, the first on the new one-event format for the Sam Griffith Trophy, that really cast Betty Cook into the legend mold.

In an event shortened from 183 miles to 127 miles because of horrible weather conditions that broke up both boats and men and left her bloody-faced, Cook defeated the best ocean powerboat rac­ers in the world.

It was the first time that one of her gender had ever won a world champion­ship in motorsports, and most likely in any open competition with men!

Betty Cook was now an established and forever-more piece of sports history. She came back to win the American offshore open class crown the following year, admittedly the toughest in the world, and three more races at Cedar Point, Ohio; Freeport, Long Island, and England’s vaunted Cowes-Torquay race.

Her performance overshadowed a daz­zling eight-win season and an unofficial offshore competition record of 89.9 mph at Panama, Central America by the same Martin who was DQ’ed at. Newport Beach, the year before. Like Doxford had done in ‘77, Martin drove a pair of Cigarettes.

Seemingly improving with age, Cook and her crew of throttleman John Con-nor and navigator Bill Vogel, Jr., would get even better and tougher in 1979. Using the near ancient deep-V Scarab Kaama and one of the new 38-foot Cou­gar Cats by the same name, they not only won three U.S. races at Miami, Detroit and Oakland, California, but with them her second world championship in three years in Venice, Italy.

Her victory in the Manufacturers Bank/Spirit of Detroit race in her new Kaama cat set a new U.S. record of 83.9 mph. She won the world championships at Venice, Italy in the same boat at the same speed!

After gathering dust for the 19 years it had been retired from unlimited hydro­plane competition, the 77-year-old British Harmsworth trophy returned to interna­tional competition as an offshore award in 1980 under the guidance of an Anglo-American committee chaired by the author.

Bill Elswick, a Yankee giant virtually twice the size of Gar Wood.. .the leg-ended long-time winner of the coveted British bronze. . . once more brought it home in a year which saw the 230-pound, ex-night club bouncer also win the world’s four top offshore battles and the elusive American national title.

Driving Long Shot, a 39-foot Cigarette with special engines, Elswick’s average speed of 79.8 mph in the English-Tor­quay-Cowes race still stands today for the oldest continuous offshore race in the world.

THE COUGARS ROAR

The English designed and built Cou­gar catamarans won five races in 1979 and four more in 1980 while averaging almost nine mph faster per victory, and five in 1981.

With that, the orders poured into its English factory... many from former skeptics of the design!

Within three years those orders would materialize into the bat-like hulls, actually posting more world victories than the deep-V hulls!

Beginning with Tony Garcia’s historic first-time-ever major victory with surface drives in the Aug. 14, 1982 Coral Gables Challenge race in Michigan, Cougar cats won every U.S. National race through March 1984!

By 1987, Cougar cats and big deep-V Superboats had won 75 races, by-passing Bertram for second place in all-time vic­tories by a manufacturer.

Betty Cook added to her fame when she won the U.S. season opener in New Orleans in her Cougar cat Kaama at a new American offshore race record of 86.8 mph and French shoe designer Michael Meynard became the 1980 world champion by winning at Melbourne, Australia in his 38-foot Cougar Fayva Shoes.

Cook would go on to capture her third U.S. championship earning a tie with the retired Don Aronow and Dr. Bob Magoon.

The end of 1980 saw the first world championships for production classes held in Key West.

Shock of another nature hit the Ameri­cans minutes before its first ‘81 race in New Orleans as two-time national cham­pion Joel Halpern was crushed when Al Copeland’s Cigarette Popeyes ran into Halpern’s brand new aluminum catama­ran Michelob Light. Halpern died almost immediately. No one else was injured.

It was the sport’s eighth fatal race acci­dent and its best known victim. This brought on a major revamping of U.S. offshore racing procedures. Minutes after the Halpern tragedy, another boat rolled over at 90 mph, seriously injuring driver Vince Fasano and throttleman Sammy James.

Although his win in the Michigan race the following year would get more fan­fare for the same reason, Californian Tony Garcia made offshore history when he won a 92-mile club race in his home waters of San Francisco in 1981 using a set of his partner Howard Arneson’s new surface drives.

The drivers would in time greatly advance offshore racing speeds. . . espe­cially for the catamarans.

Politics continued to hamper the sport internationally in 1982 when the Ameri­cans, reportedly unhappy with the mid­summer dates allocated the English for the 18th annual running of the Sam Grif­fith Trophy for the Union of Interna­tional Motorboating’s world drivers championship, announced their own in Key West, Florida at year’s end.

American Al Copeland went to Eng­land where he clinched the British Harms-worth trophy but by the edicts of his own national authority, was not allowed to run for the world championship.

The Italian Renato Della Valle swept to firsts in all three. UIM world cham­pionship races in England that summer and four others for the year tying him at seven with Britain’s own Ted Toleman for the most offshore victories that season.

Back in the states Garcia won the American’s version of the world cham­pionship with a record-rattling 90 mph average speed. It was his fourth straight victory in his 38-foot Cougar cat using the hot new Keith Eickert KSW engines mated to Arneson Drives.

THE ARNESON DRIVE SURFACES

The writing was now firmly on the water about the new surface drive sys­tems that Arneson had perfected, now being built by Gary Garbrecht’s Florida-based Second Effort. Clearly superior to the conventional outdrives, especially when used on the flat riding cat tunnel hulls. . . the drives boosted their speeds by 10 percent! Within weeks after the first Arneson victory in mid-1982, Mercury had its own version of the surface drives on the offshore circuit, and they too, would prove highly effective,

In England, millionaire Ted Toleman who almost single handedly kept the big boat class alive in British offshore racing in the early 80’s, gave it another shot when he broke the vaunted 100mph bar­rier for the Open Class with record 110.4 mph two-way average in his 40-foot Cougar cat, Peter Stuyvesant.

Garcia continued his amazing victory streak of the previous year winning the season opener in New Orleans for his fifth calendar consecutive victory on the U.S. circuit spanning two seasons. Even the sale of his boat by owner Bernie Little and with it the loss of his ace throttleman Sammy James, didn’t slow his pace. Switching over to another Cougar cat with different make engines but with Arneson surface drives, Garcia won his sixth in a row seven weeks later at Cape Coral.

Better yet, a new APBA offshore ad­ministration made major strides in mak­ing peace with the rest of the offshore world. Meanwhile the eldest son of the American President, Michael Reagan, was adding to the sport’s glamour by setting a new Chicago-Detroit endurance record.

Driving Bud Light/7-11, a 38-foot Well-craft Scarab with three 350-hp Evinrude outboard engines, Reagan and his crew averaged 48 mph for the 605-mile trip over Lakes Michigan and Huron.

A DIESEL DOES IT

In Italy, another milestone. The Euro­pean continent’s most innovative offshore machinery creator, Fabio Buzzi, became the first ever to win a major offshore race in a diesel-powered catamaran. He did it in the 1983 Naples Trophy race in a 38-foot catamaran of his own design with a quartet of 480-hp turbocharged Iveco/ Fiat diesel engines.

Back in the States, Morales raised the world offshore competition mark when he won the 171.3-mile Stroh Light race in Detroit at an average speed of 94.8 mph in the former Meynard owned 38-foot Cougar cat Fayva Shoes, footed out with big MerCruiser engines with surface drives.

Continuing the trend where machin­ery rivals the men running them for head­lines, Copeland’s giant new 50-foot alum­inum Cougar superboat class Popeyes­ Pepsi Challenger with four 700-hp Mer­Cruisers with surface drives, gave the new class its first victory when it finished first in New York’s 164.2-mile Chrysler Laser “200” averaging 82.8 mph.

Despite the controversy they generate, the big boats will go on to justify their existence in a simple manner. . . by win­ning nine more major events in the U.S. during the 1983 and 1984 seasons.

A review of the ‘83 American circuit reveals a startling stat if you’re an owner or builder of deep-V ocean racers. Catamarans. . . all of them English Cou­gars. . . won all nine regular season U.S. races!

1984 proved a showcase for the super­boats... mammoth in size but anemic in numbers. . . the “S” boats then won six American races overall. Morales’ triple engined MerCruiser Special took its class in the APBA’s world championships in Key West displaying the awesome effec­tiveness of the deep-V in white water seas. Floridian Ben Kramer bagged the APBA’s unique offshore International Class II crown in one of his finn’s own 41-foot Apache hulls appropriately named Warpath, with engines from the same shop.

Popeyes-diet Coke, proving the new monsters a viable design despite their outrageous expense and sporting another soft drink co-sponsor, went on to win three more 1984 races after New York, erasing Morales’ ‘83 comp record with a 97.5 mph run in the Popeyes New Orleans Grand Prix.

England’s Toleman had raised the world offshore record to 120.95 mph in a heroic effort in late ‘83, but it didn’t last long. New Orleans driver Mike Drury astounded the marine world on March 4, 1984 when he twice flashed through the speed traps on New Orleans’ Lake Pon­chatrain at an average of 131.1 mph in his own make 35-foot Maelstrom catam­aran Innovation.

The fact that he used three 425-hp Evinrude outboard engines prepared by speed whiz Garbrecht’s Second Effort shop, made the feat all the more im­pressive.

1984 also saw a rash of long distance record attempts, most of which were attempted with outboard power. There were three successful ones.

Reagan averaged 50.3 mph run for the 700-mile Ketchikan, Alaska to Seattle, Washington record in the 38-foot Well-craft Scarab 7-Eleven with three 400-hp Evinrude outboards. Publisher Bob Nordskog’s 64.5 mph average in the 440-mile Long Beach-San Francisco run in his 39-foot Cigarette Powerboat Special with twin Nordskog engines set a new mark in that attempt. Cuban-American boat-builder Julio deVarona’s 40-hour, two-minute time from Miami to New York in his own manufactured 32-foot Scorpion with three 240-hp Mercury’s, set a new outboard record for that famed 1,257-mile sea path.

Perhaps the most significant year in the sport’s history was 1985.

MORALES SETS THE MIAMI-NEW YORK RECORD

The first Miami-New York race in his­tory was captured by Columbian George Morales for a record $500,000 cash pur­se. . . the biggest in boating history.. .in a giant 46-foot English Cougar cat Mag­gie’s MerCruiser Special with no less than four 600-hp MerCruiser engines mated to surface drives.

The big cat, the first to ever run so long so well, trimmed three hours and 10 min­utes off American Bob Magoon’s 1974 record!

It was also the year that the seemingly invincible English Cougar cats met a true challenger, the sleek new American Conquest Marine cats from the same designer. . . George Under. . . and people, Rich Luhrs and Don Lostumbo.. . who gave us the great little Shadow cats.

A daring brace of brothers, Chris and Mark Lavin, used a 30-foot Conquest named Jesse James to steal almost every national circuit race they ran in, while collecting the U.S. crown and two world championships in Key West at the end of the year.

Sal Magluta failed to win a race in his 36-foot Cougar Seahawk but gathered in the ‘85 U.S. Open title on points while unknown Tony Roberts, driving the same boat that Halpern was killed in, since renamed A.J. Mr. Roberts, Jr., won the UIM’s Sam Griffith Trophy in the first of two bloody season-end races in the nation’s southernmost town.

The Yank’s suffered their worst off­shore racing tragedy on the first of three days racing at Key West when the giant ex-Canadian pro footballer Dick Fullam and his throttleman Mike Poppa were killed when their 38-foot Cougar Still Crazy stuffed and sank in less than two seconds.

The following year proved as dramatic. The Lavin’s showed up in a flashy new state-of-the-art Jesse James Conquest cat complete with the first really serious attempt to protect racing crews in the sport’s history. Both the Lavin brothers wore restraining harnesses and sat surrounded by a cockpit safety cocoon.

In March, Jesse James whistled home first at an all-time record 104 mph plus in the U.S. season opener at Treasure Cay in The Bahamas. . . and lost. The race refe­ree nailed the Lavin’s with a time penalty for getting on plane before the start, set­ting the stage for another development.

The runner-up boat of fried chicken impresario Copeland’s was even wilder than Jesse James with its six 300-hp Mer­cury outboard powerheads belt driving two shafts connected to surface drives.

The 35-foot wooden Popeyes-diet Coke Cougar cat had been designed to

hold eight such mills for kilo record runs. Copeland would have been happy to leave Treasure Cay with a third or better to qualify for the coming APBA kilo attempts in Sarasota in July.

He left it with the fastest victory in the sport’s history... and as the first driver to top the mythical 100 mph competition barrier. Popeyes-diet Coke’s official speed was 103.2 mph!

If the Lavin’s and Copeland’s amazing runs left any skeptics, the 102.3 mph turned in by Willie Falcon in his 38-foot Cougar Team Seahawk three weeks later at Marathon, Florida eliminated most of them.

MIAMI- NASSAU REVIVED

The middle of the summer saw the author revive the world’s original mod­em era offshore event, the Miami-Nassau race, as a “no-holds barred,” 382.3-mile round tripper with only one check point.

With the six 90mph plus racing engines all breaking down, the Italian Marquis, Ted Theodoli, better known in the States as president of Magnum Marine, won the race in one of his stripped down 63-foot Magnum cruisers named General’s Titan. It’s power was twin 1400-hp, 12-cylinder Steward & Stevenson GM diesel engines connected to Arneson surface drives.

General’s Titan was the largest hull to ever win a major offshore race and its crew of nine which included former world champion Jim Wynne as co-driver, was the most manpower aboard to ever crew a winner. Its average speed of 48.5 mph, although not fast by racing standards, was quick enough.

Floridian Ben Kramer, driving Maglu­ta’s Cougar cat, edged out Bob Kaiser in his own race, the Apache Grand Prix off Miami Beach to capture the 1986 U.S. Open title. Kramer had smashed his 41-foot Apache cat in a stuffing accident on the Great Lakes’ Lake Ontario that almost killed his veteran throttleman Bob Saccenti.

Although absent from the U.S. off­shore racing scene since the mid-60’s, the oil burners had a fabulous year in Europe where the Italian’s and their Iveco-Fiat and Isotta Fraschini diesels won no less than nine of 15 races. They dotted the “i” when Antonio Giofreddi won the World’s in far-off Auckland, New Zealand in Mededil, a tiny 29-foot Buzzi cat using twin turbocharged 500-hp Iveco/Fiats.

Sadly, the Americans ended their sea­son with the 1986 Key West World Cup where they left off in 1986... with a fatality.

After easily winning the first of three races in their fleet new 35-foot Jesse James, the flying Lavin brother’s luck ran out when their boat stuffed and subma­rined at 90mph as it streaked north on the outstide leg of the second day’s race.

Tons of water rushing into Jesse James’ cockpit as it drove in at an angle, gave throttleman Mark Lavin a mortal blow to the skull.

Seemingly mesmerized for 12 months after 1986’s double deaths, the Americans came alive this time and launched a mas­sive safety program that would see its. offshore racers take to the sea in 1987 armed with safety cockpit capsules, restraining harnesses, aircraft F-16 fighter plane canopies and a score of other mod­ifications to save life and limb offshore.

Then the sport was shot with two thunderous blows. . . one an awful minus and the other an awesome plus. . . before the first race of 1987.

On Feb. 3, 1987 the legendary Don Aronow, the most dynamic figure in the history of world powerboating, was murdered by an assassin in the very shadows of his most famous company Cigarette Racing Team and a stone’s throw from his current and sixth high performance shop. The strapping legend bled to death from a clipfull of .45 caliber bullets on North Miami Beach’s N.E. 188th Street.. .nicknamed Fleet Street USA after its most famous tenant!

The creator of Formula, Donzi, Mag­num, Cigarette, Squadron XII and U.S.A. Racing Team and a two-time world and three-time U.S. champion who’d set course records in 15 of his offshore victo­ries, Aronow was to have returned to racing at age 60 after an 18 year absence. He was going to race in the 1987 Miami­Nassau-Miami Searace in a new triple-engined 45-foot deep-V hull.

On March 6, 1987 the veteran ocean racer Tom Gentry blew the world off­shore straightaway kilo record sky high when his 48-foot Cougar catamaran Gen­try Turbo Eagle, powered by a quartet of his own make 850-hp turbocharged Gentry engines, averaged 148.2 mph in two runs past the timing blocks on Lake Pontchartrain.

It was 17.1 mph faster than the old overall record for the sport set in 1984 by Mike Drury in a 35-foot Maelstrom cat named innovation using three 425-hp Evinrude outboard motors.

Copeland, whose Popeyes fried chick­en chain hosted the New Orleans speed runs, was timed at 138.5 mph.. .7.4 mph faster than Drury’s mark. . . in his novel 35-foot Open Class Cougar cat Popeyes­diet Coke with its eight 300-hp Mercury outboard powerheads and surface drives.