ramrod
01-16-2008, 10:12 AM
Hello All: I am looking for scans of the race results from the 1968 Outboard Racing season and especially the Nationals held on Seattle’s Green Lake that year. I have been searching for years on the history of my ClarKraft A/B Runabout and then I received an email from Bill Rosado that really put the pieces of the puzzle together for me.
Bill Rosado has been a weath of information to me and I really appreciate all of his help.
Apparently Mike Boon campaigned this boat in the A Stock Runabout class and dominated the class that year with his win at the Seattle Nationals complementing his great season. If you have any memories or publications that document that season’s result I would love to see it. I have attached part of Bill’s email that gives additional details.
Thank you and I appreciate anything you can come up with.
Sincerely
Don
Redmond, WA
Hello Don: I believe that is a 1968 Clarkraft A-B Runabout. I would say that there is a good chance that boat belonged to Mike Boon from Hartford, Connecticut. Mike was my team-mate for a few years and I set up his rigs and taught him to drive those rigs. In 1968, I went into the military reserve and Mike, who had become the second best A in the country, moved up to take my place and dominated the season, including winning the 1968 A Stock Runabout Nationals in Seattle, WA. Unfortunately, I got off active duty and raced him two weeks after he won the title and throughly dominated him with my previous years engine and an experimental 1968 Clarkraft duck that Clark Maloof loaned me. Mike moved west with some of my best propellers to the Seattle area and took up with Craig Selvidge. He gave up the A class and sold me his engine as had been agreed on in previous years when I built it for him. He eventually returned the propellers. Mike showed up at the 1969 Nationals in West Virginia running the B Stock Runabout class. He dropped out of the racing scene after that and I believe his equipment was probably sold in that area. There were not many, if any other Clarkrafts on the west coast in that time period, which is why I believe that was probably Mike's boat. Clark did not put any identifiers on his boats back then, so an educated guess is the only way to tell. Other numbers that would have been on that boat would have been 7D, 1D, and 1US.
Bill Rosado
http://users.infoconex.com/~ramrod/13-r.5.jpg
Bill Rosado has been a weath of information to me and I really appreciate all of his help.
Apparently Mike Boon campaigned this boat in the A Stock Runabout class and dominated the class that year with his win at the Seattle Nationals complementing his great season. If you have any memories or publications that document that season’s result I would love to see it. I have attached part of Bill’s email that gives additional details.
Thank you and I appreciate anything you can come up with.
Sincerely
Don
Redmond, WA
Hello Don: I believe that is a 1968 Clarkraft A-B Runabout. I would say that there is a good chance that boat belonged to Mike Boon from Hartford, Connecticut. Mike was my team-mate for a few years and I set up his rigs and taught him to drive those rigs. In 1968, I went into the military reserve and Mike, who had become the second best A in the country, moved up to take my place and dominated the season, including winning the 1968 A Stock Runabout Nationals in Seattle, WA. Unfortunately, I got off active duty and raced him two weeks after he won the title and throughly dominated him with my previous years engine and an experimental 1968 Clarkraft duck that Clark Maloof loaned me. Mike moved west with some of my best propellers to the Seattle area and took up with Craig Selvidge. He gave up the A class and sold me his engine as had been agreed on in previous years when I built it for him. He eventually returned the propellers. Mike showed up at the 1969 Nationals in West Virginia running the B Stock Runabout class. He dropped out of the racing scene after that and I believe his equipment was probably sold in that area. There were not many, if any other Clarkrafts on the west coast in that time period, which is why I believe that was probably Mike's boat. Clark did not put any identifiers on his boats back then, so an educated guess is the only way to tell. Other numbers that would have been on that boat would have been 7D, 1D, and 1US.
Bill Rosado
http://users.infoconex.com/~ramrod/13-r.5.jpg