little hairs on your neck will stand up !

[mr fun]

brousung around found this,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o94ZHLXzTZM&feature=related

:cool:

[mt1973]

:thumbsup:

[Instigator]

Awesome stuff! Too bad we'll never see it again.
Pretty funny too that it then switches to the turbine boats running WFO on a farm pond ;)

[SCT]

Pretty cool video, Fun. I would rather see a V hull running 90-100 in the rough then a large cat running 120+ on calm water.....boring!

Was that T2X (Rich) announcing the race?

[Li'l Toy]

Hey, Fun! Thank yo, thank you, thank you.

[Mr. Demeanor]

No music dubbed over the sound of horsepower. I love it!

[Ted Stryker]

Those were the days when we would sit with my Dad and Brother and watch a whole race on a weekend morning... Those super fast cats were fun to watch, but I especially remember the beauty and awe of the Apache Warpath boat crest-to-cresting those waves with such grace... The balance of that boat coupled with the operators was just poetic... In a time of grey doubt, it makes me remember by deeply rooted love for boats...

[Tom Foley]

Friggin awesome !!

[Instigator]

Here's some of the legendary rigs from the era that made "OFFSHORE" the roughest sport in the world!
From the Stroh's Point Grand National in at Cedar Point on Lake Erie in Sandusky Ohio in 1974. Mercury had their racing truck there that yr. I bought a jacket and got to meet Bob Nordskog who was then president of the APBA as well as owner of Powerboat mag. Notice some of the boats and trucks in the background. Makes me feel ancient!

<a href="http://s290.photobucket.com/albums/ll255/Instigatorspixs/?action=view&amp;current=strohsgrandnational1974_0004.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll255/Instigatorspixs/strohsgrandnational1974_0004.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

<a href="http://s290.photobucket.com/albums/ll255/Instigatorspixs/?action=view&amp;current=strohsgrandnational1974_0003.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll255/Instigatorspixs/strohsgrandnational1974_0003.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

<a href="http://s290.photobucket.com/albums/ll255/Instigatorspixs/?action=view&amp;current=strohsgrandnational1974_0002.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll255/Instigatorspixs/strohsgrandnational1974_0002.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

<a href="http://s290.photobucket.com/albums/ll255/Instigatorspixs/?action=view&amp;current=strohsgrandnational1974_0001.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll255/Instigatorspixs/strohsgrandnational1974_0001.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

<a href="http://s290.photobucket.com/albums/ll255/Instigatorspixs/?action=view&amp;current=strohsgrandnational1974-1.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll255/Instigatorspixs/strohsgrandnational1974-1.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

[Tom Foley]

That's cool Gary , great memories there . I worked at the Chevron on the corner of Truman and White st's in Key West in 1974 and got to see all the hardware of the day roll into town for the big race ...I was speechless

[SCT]

Wow Gary, great pixs! For years, we used to watch the Copper Kettle boat(s) run the GLOBRA circuit.
The Checkmate factory had a great showing at the 84-85ish Cedar Point Stroh's race. Our boats came in 1st (Ashland Express) over all and 3 other CMs placed # 1 in class. Those were the good old days of great local races (like Huron).

Cheers-

[mr fun]

I keep toying with the idea of getting a room at the motel we watched from in KW, that was the best vantage point by far considering the proximity to food shade and :cheers:. if finances pick up of coarse :rolleyes: that was back in the day of Dr. Bob Magoon, Preston Henn, Betty Cook, etc. cool :thumbsup:

[Instigator]

When I hear the people argue cat Vs Vee, these are the races I remember and where "OFFSHORE" came from. Just look at those boats, even on the trailers. Anyone think they were designed to chase each other in 6 mile circles in a river some where?? I remember all the **** that broke in those races.
Notice in the last shot of the Copper Kettle, look at what it's powered by.
Argue all you want. Facts is facts.

Also notice where the exhaust comes out on the Bertram. That same race there was a team there w/a one off, aluminum 30' boat w/triple Chrysler stackers. I followed all of em out for testing in my 8' Tiny Titan w/a Kg-7 w/pipes, a velocity stack off a go cart and a nose cone I made from a broom stick and bondo ;) I was 14, give me a break.

[donmac]

great pics. and "broomstick and bondo"lmfao!

[200VEGAS]

was slapshot a bertram?

[200VEGAS]

i was out on a boat back in 77 or so that i thought was blue, and it was a bertram, as i remember. it had over the transom headers and was owned by a mechanic in st clair shores. i always remember it being called SLAP SHOT. Oh and thanks for sharing. i would like to see some of the lake st clair boat races in the early/mid 70,s

[mr fun]

was slapshot a bertram?

in the 30's varity, 35, 38, :rolleyes: I think Bounty Hunter was the new generation of 40'er, they had tripple engines. or maby it was a dream ;)

[Greg G]

Fantastic clip of the big dogs running, but this trip and stuff might hit a little closer to home.........

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0utBfPhtjg&feature=related

[mr fun]

Fantastic clip of the big dogs running, but this trip and stuff might hit a little closer to home.........

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0utBfPhtjg&feature=related

kinda like "things not to do in your outboard" just one of those damn moments. and someone on here had a shot of an Allison racing offshore, I think not. fun out :cool:

[Storz]

So awesome, thanks for sharing!

Probably my favorite old school offshore footage here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZ-sgjuMJcg

[Frank Molé]

Great stuff....thanks guys....:thumbsup:

[Phil's other half...Sue.]

Now that's what you call SCREAM AND FLYING!!! GREAT VID...thank you!

[mr fun]

So awesome, thanks for sharing!

Probably my favorite old school offshore footage here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZ-sgjuMJcg

I'm guessing the Apache was the "Rapid Transit" entrant. hats off to them both! :cheers: the scaryest thing to me is all I could think about is all the lobsters they were passing over in all those dark spots, :D

[fountain1fan]

t2x was giving play be play . got to love rich

[Instigator]

Check this out......, a guy on OSO posted this link to a story in sports Illustrated about the 1974 race I posted the pix's from! Way cool.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1088864/1/index.htm

[mr fun]

Check this out......, a guy on OSO posted this link to a story in sports Illustrated about the 1974 race I posted the pix's from! Way cool.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1088864/1/index.htm


reading????? I have ADD. I don't read well. show me somethiong, I'll remember it. sorry, a little TMI, I know. :o

[Instigator]

Short version is they ran a 187 mile race in 6' + waves. I can tell you first hand that 6' waves in Lake Erie are about as bad as it gets anyhwere. Waves from every direction and all of them very close together.
Just realized the story was written by Brock Yates :eek: Explains a lot as he is a hard core boater himself.

Muddling Along On A Stormy Puddle
Lake Erie can act up when it blows, as the offshore racers learned again in the second Midwestern showdown—and breakdown
Brock Yates

Sandy Satullo cocked his artfully trimmed goatee into the rain blustering out of the southwest and smiled. "Good Lake Erie weather," he said, letting the drops spatter against his driving suit. "This might slow down those fast guys a little. Maybe teach 'em a little respect."

With a matter of hours to the start of the Cedar Point Grand National Offshore Powerboat Race—and with the western end of Lake Erie being scrambled by a fledgling gale—the last thing Satullo's rivals lacked was respect. As they snuggled into the cushioned cockpits of their 1,200-hp Cigarette, Gara, Bertram and Magnum ocean racers, nightmare recollections of last year's inaugural event on Erie swirled around them like the wind and rain. The men on the offshore circuit recall that day with much the same warm good humor that Japanese Imperial Navy veterans reserve for the Battle of Leyte Gulf. The 1973 race, run off Cleveland, had caught Erie in another of her frequent foul moods. After only five boats had staggered home through an eight-foot sawtooth chop, the winner recording the slowest average speed (59 mph) in recent years, the racers toted up an estimated $400,000 damage to their boats. Now, respect was hardly a factor; the feeling was more one of outright fear.

"Being from an inland sort of place like Cleveland, I used to take a lot of ribbing about the Great Lakes when I first started racing," says Satullo, the cheerful campaigner of a dazzling burnished brown Gara called Copper Kettle after his popular suburban restaurant. "When we finally got our first race scheduled here, the guys really hooted. They just couldn't imagine how running ocean racers around on a dinky little lake could be very much of a challenge. I think it was Sammy James who called it a 'Midwestern mud puddle.' Funny, nobody seems to be calling it that this year."

"I guess I was lucky," says James, laughing. "I busted a stern drive right at the start and missed all the terrible stuff. We just never imagined fresh water could whip up like that."

Lake Erie, fourth largest of the Great Lakes, is not the everyday body of fresh water. More than 200 miles long and nearly 60 miles wide, its average depth is a piddling 62 feet. This shallowness makes it extremely sensitive to winds, which can boil up steep-sided waves in a matter of minutes. "The seas are almost impossible to read," says 23-year-old Art (Snapper) Norris, a member of the hockey family and an executive in the Detroit Red Wing organization. "Last year they seemed to come at you from all directions at once. You can see a pattern with long ocean swells, but that's impossible in these lake waves. We tore one of our stern drives clean out of the transom."

But the prospect of jackhammer seas wasn't the only unconventional aspect of this year's Cedar Point race. Where most offshore events are run by patrician yacht clubs, this one was sponsored by an amusement park. Not just any amusement park; Cedar Point, located on a wooded hook of land near Sandusky, Ohio, has the largest and perhaps wildest collection of rides in the world and attracted 2.6 million people and grossed nearly $30 million during its 110-day 1973 season. It was in the massive marina run by the park—in the shadow of its 15-story ferris wheel and the classic Blue Streak roller coaster—that the racers braced themselves for another buffeting by the old mud pond.

Erie's squalls delayed the race an hour, then mercifully subsided enough to permit a start. While smaller craft filled the field to more than 50, only 10 racers were full-bore offshore boats that can touch nearly 90 mph in optimum conditions. Among these, four seemed to have a clear chance for victory. Satullo's knowledge of the lake was certainly a plus, while Snapper Norris was on a hot streak, his 36-foot Cigarette Slap Shot having taken five of the past seven races. A win at Cedar Point would clinch the American championship for him.

Billy Martin, a friendly, cherubic chap from Clark, N.J., had compiled an excellent finishing record with his 40-foot Bounty Hunter over the past several races and seemed to be on the verge of an outright victory. Surely the fastest boat belonged to Sammy James, or more correctly, his employer, the much-respected Miami firm of Bertram Yacht. Long a power and a pioneer in offshore racing, Bertram started campaigning in 1973 with a new generation of 38-footers piloted by James.

Bearing a striking resemblance to the Unser brothers of Indianapolis car fame, James generally clomps around the docks in high-heeled cowboy boots, directing an endless drawling volley of jibes and wisecracks at his rivals. Unashamed of his reputation for being rocket-fast but rough on equipment, James usually leads every race he enters, but only sporadically finishes. Twice this season the Bertram has held up under his rugged throttling and won. "She's my seven-day wonder," he said from somewhere deep inside the engine bay of the rakish red-and-white craft. Narrower of beam and thousands of pounds lighter than her competitors, the Bertram's wind-tunnel-developed hull appeared to have a decided edge in speed. Still, some experts doubted that she could resist the pounding of the lake.

"The boat's plenty strong," snorted James. "It's just that we had to build her so fast. Me and Jack [fellow crewman and expert Miami boat mechanic Jack Stuteville] worked around the clock to get her done. You've gotta wonder if we bolted everything together right."
Continue Story

he 187-mile race began with the furious rumble of monster V-8s echoing through the fleet of spectator craft collected off Cedar Point. The field angled east across open water, then cut back toward the collection of lovely islands that dapple Erie's western waters—waters that are surprisingly pollution free, considering the lake's terrible reputation. As the Coast Guard and race officials fretted about a possible mass collision with a 500-boat sailing regatta forming up at nearby Put-In-Bay, Sammy James and Billy Martin broke clear and struggled for the lead.

It was along the western edge of North Bass Island that Erie began to misbehave. The seas swirled into nasty 6-footers, sending the boats porpoising in a series of jaw-rattling leaps. Things began to break. James watched his special Danforth compass vibrate loose. "The thing just sat there jiggling in front of me, and I remembered another guy who got cut in the face with a piece of his compass a few years back. Then all of a sudden it popped free and sort of hovered in front of our eyes. Me and Jack played catch with the thing for a couple of seconds before it just flew over the side. It was sort of funny, until I remembered it cost $280." The loss also left the Bertram crew without any notion of the proper course to the finish, which forced them to fall into Martin's wake and hope that he knew the way.

Satullo and Norris were running easily within striking distance of the leaders when the waves began to rise. "I saw Snapper's boat take this giant jump sideways," said Satullo, "and the next thing I knew, he was flying through the air into the water. Norris is a really big kid—230 pounds—and he made a tremendous splash when he hit." Snapper's abrupt dunking was caused by a steering failure that flung Slap Shot into an 80-mph spin. He scrambled back aboard and returned to Cedar Point at reduced speed. Satullo jounced on for a few more miles before the mounting brackets holding his steering gear broke, and he, too, had to give up the chase.

With the rest of the field slogging far behind, James stalked Martin, confident that he could beat him in a drag race to the finish. "I knew I had more speed than Billy," James said. "That big ol' Cigarette of his was banging and flying around, and we were just coasting along, waiting for the last few miles. I figured we had him beat. Then the distributor rotor on the starboard engine broke." With one of James's special fuel-injected 496-cu. in. MerCruiser V-8s deactivated by a broken piece worth a few pennies, he had no choice but to veer off and head for port.

His horizon now clear of competitors, Martin eased back a bit on the power and coasted Bounty Hunter toward the finish, surviving a brief encounter with a hunk of driftwood to win by nearly 12 minutes over Hal Sahlman of Boca Raton, Fla., piloting an aged, 31-foot Cigarette.

Martin's victory left the U.S. title unresolved, although he would have to win both remaining California races to overtake Norris. Back at the marina, Snapper coolly announced that he is considering missing the events and gambling that Billy can't put together three in a row.

Standing at dockside and bracing himself for the traditional winner's dunking, Martin smiled and turned his head toward Erie, beyond the spinning girders of the towering ferris wheel.

"I guess we caught the lake on a good, day," he said, "but it's still awful tough water—short and kind of lumpy. Our boat's bigger than most of the others. She weighs over six tons. She's like a freight train out there. Last year a 40-footer won on the lake, and we did it again. Maybe Lake Erie is just too rough and tough for the smaller boats. This is water for 40-footers."

For the old mud pond, that's a bare minimum.

[fast fun 2]

When my dad was managing a marina in Ft.Lauderdale, his boss was throttling Super Brut! My favorite boat

[fastdonzi.]

When my dad was managing a marina in Ft.Lauderdale, his boss was throttling Super Brut! My favorite boat

We Stored that Boat in the Shop where I worked in Hallandale Fla (Right across the street from Crane Cams before they moved to Daytona) I used to Siphon Racing gas out of the boat to put in my Chevelle :) Nothing smelled better than Cam2 :)

[perfmarine1]

That first video at the end was the Apachie offshore challenge.I have that whole race on video. That Apachie boat was owned by James Cain the movie star. That race was from mianland to the Bahamas and back in 6 to 10 footers a awsome race. There were some cats in the race too. It was cancled at the Bahamas because of too many cracked and broken ribs.

[fast fun 2]

We Stored that Boat in the Shop where I worked in Hallandale Fla (Right across the street from Crane Cams before they moved to Daytona) I used to Siphon Racing gas out of the boat to put in my Chevelle :) Nothing smelled better than Cam2 :)
Im sure you know my dad, Jason Saris, was Keith Hazel's shop manager