Hot Singles ! - Pictures

[willabee]

[/QUOTE] Hi Willa you mentioned Zonkercraft were copies of Freddy Miles boats how long did they build them for and did they have many varients over the years and were they competitive with the opposition have posted a picture of one of the last full tunnel boats Freddy made in 1972.You spoke about drivers wrecking boats whilst testing just curious to ask how many times you went in nose first and over backwards.[/QUOTE]




The guy that can really answer your Zonker questions is Chick Gagen. He is one of the three "founding fathers" of Zonkercraft along with Gary Peacock & Al Martin and is on S&F as CG125. He took the time to tell the history of the Zonkercraft on it's own thread, but I am unable to locate it.

I never drove a Miles or a Zonker, but from my vantage point, I thought the guys at Zonkercraft took an "OK" boat and made it better. I didn't think the Milesmaster was in the same class as Molinari and later the Scotti. As I recall, the Zonkercraft that Chick & Gary drove at Parker in 1971 with a single pipe C6 pushing it down the Colorado ran pretty damn good. But having said that, it still couldn't run with the single pipe Molinari pitted next to them.

[FUJIMO]

[jackiewilson]

Greetings William-------best that the Miles ever ran was /68 ? In Liegge Belguim, Freddie and Wilf Gregory were leading by a country mile when Wilf got over excited coming in for a pit stop and hit the dock a tad too hard.
Garbrecht bought the boat and trailer there on the spot, was on a ship back to the USA Monday morning.
Jeremy James was killed the morning of the race. Was dense fog on the course and he went clean over the weir --------Shakey Bill followed him, backed off and the motor hung on------Bill dropped on to the concrete and broke both wrists.
Freddie Told me he had done a deal with Kenny Kitson to build the Miles under licence ( that was coming back from Havasu in the company plane 1970.)

Just saying------nothing you probably don't know already!
Saw a white haired old geezer with a Snow White moustache on the cruise-------no kewpie doll for guessing who that reminded me of!

[STEVERINO]

Hi Willa you mentioned Zonkercraft were copies of Freddy Miles boats how long did they build them for and did they have many varients over the years and were they competitive with the opposition have posted a picture of one of the last full tunnel boats Freddy made in 1972.You spoke about drivers wrecking boats whilst testing just curious to ask how many times you went in nose first and over backwards.[/QUOTE]




The guy that can really answer your Zonker questions is Chick Gagen. He is one of the three "founding fathers" of Zonkercraft along with Gary Peacock & Al Martin and is on S&F as CG125. He took the time to tell the history of the Zonkercraft on it's own thread, but I am unable to locate it.

I never drove a Miles or a Zonker, but from my vantage point, I thought the guys at Zonkercraft took an "OK" boat and made it better. I didn't think the Milesmaster was in the same class as Molinari and later the Scotti. As I recall, the Zonkercraft that Chick & Gary drove at Parker in 1971 with a single pipe C6 pushing it down the Colorado ran pretty damn good. But having said that, it still couldn't run with the single pipe Molinari pitted next to them.[/QUOT
i only ever flew 2 boats the 2nd was a Milesmaster it went over backwards and landed the right way up it wasn't the boats fault I just called it a learning curve.I would agree the full tunnel Molinari 1972/1973 was a class act .

[2us70]

I think the "Scorpions" that Doug Pearl ran in SJ started out from a"Milesmaster".

[willabee]

-------best that the Miles ever ran was /68 ?

Freddie Told me he had done a deal with Kenny Kitson to build the Miles under licence ( that was coming back from Havasu in the company plane 1970.)

Saw a white haired old geezer with a Snow White moustache on the cruise-------no kewpie doll for guessing who that reminded me of!

Hey Jackie ..... I suspect the 68 is a typo, were you trying to say 86? I doubt that boat ran 86, but surely it ran better than 68. Didn't the single Molinari's run 85/88 back in 1970?

I remember being told that Kitson had a deal with Miles to build boats. Next thing I knew, the "Florida Mafia" was building wooden Zonkers and Kitson was producing something similar in glass. Then it seems like they quit building Zonkers and Kitson started building wooden versions of the Milesmaster picklefork. It was confusing but I never asked any questions and have no idea of what really took place behind the scenes.

Mixing a little salt with the pepper just enhances the entire presentation .....

Some of Kitson's boats .....

[jackiewilson]

Was referring to the year William -----Don Ross and me were running the yellow 18' Molinari------that little Miles. Ran like a train that day

Many years later I had Freddie design the hull for the first 2litre COSWORTH, Dave Burgess built it that thing could run with the best.

[STEVERINO]

Was referring to the year William -----Don Ross and me were running the yellow 18' Molinari------that little Miles. Ran like a train that day

Many years later I had Freddie design the hull for the first 2litre COSWORTH, Dave Burgess built it that thing could run with the best.

Hey Jackie I first saw yours and Don Ross`s yellow Molinari run in 1969 this was the year of the super BP Mercurys I remember the previous year we ran 125hp Mercurys and you had a Rossinari. You mentioned Liege Freddi ran a little 15ft Shakespeare cat it was the last wooden Shakespeare that Dave Burgess built before he left and went to work for Fred.I saw it being finished off it was painted blue.This was the boat you said Garbrecht bought and shipped back to the USA.Bills 15ft Shakespeare cat would run at 82mph with a 1250sbp Mercury if you remember the same year Bob Spaldings little Shultz with a 1000sbp Mercury would run around 76mph.Freds first boat appeared in 1970 I think it was 1971 before Bob Spalding had black one.

[willabee]

I think the "Scorpions" that Doug Pearl ran in SJ started out from a"Milesmaster".

Don't know, but they have that "cockpit forward" look like the Miles. I think Homer Green also ran a Scorpion.

Here's Pearl - Miles - Pearl

[2us70]

I don't know the whole story but there were a couple of glass Milesmasters in South Florida at the time. At Action Marine we took one and changed the tunnel depth and pulled a mold off it for a guy who wanted to make a tunnel bass boat. I only saw one completed and it ran quite well. I think the Scorpions were also heavily modified from the original design. I had heard that Albert Enzweiler had something to do with it. That would make sense since Albert cut and modified every boat I ever saw him in.

[willabee]

.... Was referring to the year William -----Don Ross and me were running the yellow 18' Molinari------

He meant the year, the man says he meant the year ..... ..... had me fooled!

Is this the yellow Molinari you guys are talking about?

[C.G. 125]

Go back to page 89/90 on this for Zonker history

[2us70]

I loved those Molinaris. Got to test drive a couple of the glass one rigged for SJ. Real good in rough water. Would like to have run one in endurance event. Not fast enough for closed course racing.

He meant the year, the man says he meant the year ..... ..... had me fooled!

Is this the yellow Molinari you guys are talking about?

[Mark75H]

Go back to page 89/90 on this for Zonker history

You have to use post number ... page number varies with personal preference settings that can make the number of posts per page different. For example, I only see 83 total pages.

[Bob V]

Here is Chick Gagen's 5-part Zonkercraft information together in one place.

Zonkercraft

I'll keep this as short as I can. This is what I remember from almost 40 years ago.

The #5 Miles went right to Miami after the Havasu race that Freddy Miles drove. It was to be campaigned by Gary P. in South Florida for Mercury. Zonkercraft Inc. a Florida Corp was started and funded by Chick to build racing tunnel hulls patterned after the #5 boat of Miles. Only Chick, Gary and Al had any interest in Zonker. Al Martin, a Musician by trade, had played in the Glenn Miller band out of New York was the only Builder. Those of you that are older might remember that band. On Doctors advise he quit playing and partying all night and moved to Florida. He and a friend got started building wood boats by assembling Chris Craft kit boat's.A big man with an equal smile and voice, when asked if he could build a racing tunnel hull, he would say "bring money". He was also involved with Inboard racing hydro planes at the time so he did know something about racing construction.

The first boat took forever to build. The date on the first build photo is 4/21/1971. Glad I wrote that down.Early on the decision was made to make it a light weight sprint boat with some changes from the original #5 boat. It turned out good and was named "Sunshine". One because it was yellow, second it came from Florida, The Sunshine State. That boat was dragged all over the U.S., including a stint at the parker nine hour driven by Chick and Gary. After some suprising results, including a World Record in closed course, the orders started trickling in... continued

A few photo's of the build. In one you can see the #5 boat upside down. Al is the guy in all the pictures. The running photo was the first run of the first boat and was taken in the Marine Stadium..

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Rest of build....

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Zonkercraft Part 2

The first boat spent most of it's life on closed course or smooth water one hour marathons which it had been made for. We did run the Parker nine hour one year. I can't remember much about the Parker race other than we had help from Mercury. We had sent a guy to tow the boat out from Florida with a brand new 454 SS El Camino that I had just taken delivery of. He also had my charge card. Gary and I flew. When we arrived the El Camino had all four tires it left with in the back. He never explained what happened. Even in the 70's, racing was expensive.

The next kind of rough race for the boat was the Miami 225. You had to go outside the stadium for a short while and come back in. It could get nasty because of all the pleasure boats going back and forth. I came out leading for about two laps but was soon sidelined with a cockpit full of water. I guess using a boat designed for light Sprint use in every race I could make it to had finally taken it's toll. The tunnel had blown out in a section about 2' x 2' in the rear. I spent the rest of the race on the shoreline with Garbrect watching and chatting about things I don't remember. Some of it must have involved Lake X.

Lake X was the next thing that sticks in my mind because That's was the beginning of the end for the first Zonker. My first post gives a short account of Lake X. I never ran that boat again, it was too broken for me. I still think the crash was due to "Lake X Power" and a happy trim finger.

That boat was sold to a guy as is, shown in the photo's. His name was Jeff Ettinger from Mich. and goes by the name on this form "Zonkercraft". I have talked with him over the years but he never mentioned it's fate. He said he was going to the OFF deal just held.. Continued


Photo's Picture's after Lake X. Two of Parker nine hour, if you look close at the sign you can see "Havasu Springs Motel". The last photo most of you old guys will know, I sure Jackie will.....

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Zonkercraft Part Three

Ater Lake X I was without a boat. We had just delivered a boat to a guy, Bill Rowell, in Miami for the SJ class. We had never put much time in setups for that class, in turn, those boats just ran o.k. In Florida at that time you had to be real quick to compete with the super light glass Kitson copy's that Doug Peral ran in SJ.

I convinced him to let me use the boat for a while and convert it to U class. We had a few sold boats being built so making one for me took a back seat. I took the boat to my shop for a derig and I wanted to take weight out. I had a plan that I wanted to try and up my old closed course record and get the one hour marathon record, all the same year.

The saws, hole saws, sanders came out. I converted to the latest break away steering, I made a lighter version. I changed everything in the boat to get weight out. It took me a month but in the end the results were good. New holes everywhere.

I managed to up the closed course, Ufalla Al., not by much but up. We found out after the race in the tech inspection that one cyl. had a bad piston. Also took the one hour marathon in Key West. All my time paid off. Life was good in Zonker Land.

After my record attemps the #309 boat was shipped to Panama for the President's Cup. Gary P. and I had been invited to run for the President's Team against another faction in Pamana. I think the OMC guy's went one year also. Posey, Sanders, ect. Scary place but great stories.

The race itself that year was more a place for 40' boats, not 16' sprint tunnel's. To this day I don't know how we even made one lap. Up and down these giant waves. The president's helicopter above with Army guy's so you didn't dare stop or pull into the pit's. After a great time as guest of the President, we left with $ and no Boat's. I never heard about the #309 boat again.

Just a little side story. During one of our big dinners one of the ladies with us was offered the first plate of food. She thanked him for being such a gentleman and began eating. After a while he said "you seem to be doing fine", I'll start now. They always had someone taste their food before they ate.

Photo's; #309 boat running as a SJ boat, tech inspection in Key West as a U boat, One of the "M" girls in her Yellow Smock....

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Zonkercraft Part Four

In Zonkercrafts brief four to five year history, there were only 13 boats built. Al Martin still build wooden boats for the Park Service so we were always a squeeze in. I'll list them, not in order of build, but what I remember..

1. 125 (2 boats)2 U class Chick
2. 309 SJ class Bill Rowell
3. 1103 (2 boats) Jock Hornor U class
4. 204 Homer Green SJ class
5. 871 Doc Appleton U class
6. 800 ?
7. 417 Bob Hayes ?
8. 795 Jeff Weiss SJ class
9. 442 Rick Bingham U class
10.ON 22 Cardozo U class
11. 17 ?





Photo's of the first five

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The Rest of the photo's

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Zonkercraft Part Five

The last two Boats we made were called the "Long Boats" The running surface was longer and the tunnels had after planes. The seating was moved back a bit and the cockpits were not as wide. The first one was made for Jock Hornor and the second was sent to Cardozo in Caracas Venezuela. I tested the first one in the Marine Stadium. It ran a bit different and faster than the first. After the third pass I got a little frisky and just past the grand stands where the wind came in gusts, NOSE UP, OVER BACKWARDS. That boat never ran the same after the repair..

Just a side note on the #5 Miles Boat, that boat was totaled in a race in the Marine Stadium. I don't remember the race, but I think it was one of the Miami 225's because Gary nosed it in outside the stadium. Nothing left..He wasn't hurt that bad. Going out side was never fun...

Photo's

Two Boats under construction
Long Boat from the front
Long Boat from the side
Finished Boat ready to deliver
Al Martin and Helper "Chico"

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