Tricks that old racers get up to after retirement

[powerabout]

Jackie - I enlarged the above photo, but I am not sure that you would want me to post it. It looks very painful.

he survived
https://www.mby.com/news/earl-of-nor...-classic-15823

[Bob V]

he survived
https://www.mby.com/news/earl-of-nor...-classic-15823

That being the case, here it is...

[jackiewilson]

Thanks a lot Bob. Mark told me the Gendarmerie had chased him off the riverbank with a clip round the ear twice already during the race——— and being all of thirteen he wasn’t keen to draw attention to himself, but no one was coming to help the injured driver so he told them to get on the phone and call the rescue boat———- it still took them twenty minutes to start the long haul back to the pits !

Another shot of my first Molinari——— long before Renato and Mercury took over Jeremiah Cetti’s
( TORRIGGIA) factory..
Picture was taken outside Scotti’s shop, the other side of the lake. He helped set the boat up before Mark and I brought it back to England.

[Bob V]

Sweet...!

[jackiewilson]

Don Ross and I went fifty fifty on the boat——— I took a plastic “Levi 16” lookalike I had made for £350, (it had to be YELLOW)———put it on a trailer, hooked it up to the Commercial Camper Van and hauled it across Europe complete with all the paperwork required to run a raceboat.
Left the boat with Renato (never got a red cent for it ——- but I know he got a good price for it) stuck the Molinari on a trailer and passed through all the customs posts without incident!
Sold my half of the boat to Don the night before the Thames race——- he won the race comfortably !
First time I raced the boat was at Lowestoft———- Bob Spalding and Tom Percival were big fish up there at that time. I brought home the silverware.

Thats Another piccie of the boat at the Southampton Regatta———— won that one too !

[ron54]

Don Ross and I went fifty fifty on the boat——— I took a plastic “Levi 16” lookalike I had made for £350, (it had to be YELLOW)———put it on a trailer, hooked it up to the Commercial Camper Van and hauled it across Europe complete with all the paperwork required to run a raceboat.
Left the boat with Renato (never got a red cent for it ——- but I know he got a good price for it) stuck the Molinari on a trailer and passed through all the customs posts without incident!
Sold my half of the boat to Don the night before the Thames race——- he won the race comfortably !
First time I raced the boat was at Lowestoft———- Bob Spalding and Tom Percival were big fish up there at that time. I brought home the silverware.

Thats Another piccie of the boat at the Southampton Regatta———— won that one too !

Jackie...Any snaps of Don in that boat??

[jackiewilson]

There are some great piccies of him winning the Thames race in it———- I had just bought Julian Baileys 16” Levi—PHAEDRA——-——- couldn’t get it to run right——- one of my worst results ever !
see if I can find a piccie for you!

[jackiewilson]

Sold the Torriggia to Roy Cooper of the London Club——— took it down to the south of France for the cote d azur series of races. Without doubt, the most beautiful race boat ever made—— Italian art at its best. Way before the Molinari’s.

[Bob V]

[jackiewilson]

That was the actual boat the “RASINI” brothers ran in the ‘64/65/66 ——- damned if I can remember for sure !!!
Paris Six Hours———- never quite understood how Molinari got all the credit for the first modern day tunnels running Paris ? Was Jeremiah Cetti out of the TORRIGGIA factory that did that.
Renato took over the factory and built all the wooden boats there from about 1968 with a little help from MERCURY of course !
Angelo stayed down in Como. ———

[Bob V]

[jackiewilson]

You opened up a real can of worms with that picture Bob?_____ people have been debating for years over it———- here’s my take on it!
That is the original Torriggia factory—— I understand that Jeremiah Cetti built it and constructed all the Torriggia range of boats there—————- built at the bottom of a cliff — right on the bank of Lake Como. Every boat was craned from the lake to the road, which had just about enough room to park a vehicle and trailer. Mercury leased the factory——- hired Renato to build boats exclusively for Mercury——- then had Roy Ridgell installed next door to watch over Renato.
Mext picture is of the bottom floor that had the sliding door onto the lake and the oven that the fresh painted boats would bake off in.
Left to right——- Giorgio Molinari—- Mario——Merton or Welch without the growth on the top lip——- next up might be Carlo Bodega ——- Bobby Hering and Rick La Morte or Wyrabeck.
Its the boat that’s a bone of contention——- I have no ideas myself——- but I’m damn sure Willabee has————-( number twenty is the armchair we ran in the Paris race.) It’s got a Silo on it’ bum.

[jackiewilson]

Sneaky preview of the concept I did for Marks desktop !

[jackiewilson]

Went to dinner last night at THE BERESFORD in Middleton with James Shepard and his family, My son Mark and two of his sisters ( Sam and Kim).
James had been to the CTC drivers meeting——- quite a heated affair from what I gather, Weather front coming in which looks like it might be a bit sloppy ? ——— So, first It was going to be a shortened race, Cowes to Poole !——- then the race was cancelled due to bad weather——— then it was suggested that the weather front wasn’t due until noon, why not start the race early ?
Then somebody reminded them that it was supposed to be a race——- and every boat had a throttle with a slow down mechanism——— usual drivers meeting stuff !
Definate shortage of entrants with five positive maybe’s and six don’t knows ! Far cry from the days of “sorry but we’re fully subscribed!”
Upshot of all this is——;I don’t know for sure if it’s on or off———- Full CTC——- shortened course———- or early start ?
One thing I can tell you for sure, James Shepard and Steve Curtis will not be competing in today’s Cowes-Torquay-Cowes event.

[Bob V]

Cowes Torquay Cowes & Cowes Poole Cowes Offshore Powerboat Races 2018Race Day 26th August

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The Cowes Torquay Cowes Offshore Powerboat Race is set to take place on Sunday, August 27th this year.
The 200-mile classic has long been recognised as one of powerboating’s toughest challenges, and comparisons have been made with motorsport events such as Le Mans and the Indy 500.
Around 20 boats are expected to be in the line-up and if the conditions are calm, the winner could complete the course in under three hours.
It was all rather different when the race was first run 57 years ago this summer, the contest was the brainchild of the newspaper tycoon and second world war fighter pilot Sir Max Aitken (left), who had seen the Miami-Nassau Powerboat Race that began in 1956.
At the time, powerboat racing was a perfect fit with America’s affluent profile. It was spectacular, and offered upwardly mobile enthusiasts an opportunity to compete on level terms with their old-money counterparts.
At the London Boat Show in January 1961, Sir Max proposed that a similar race should be staged in England between Cowes and Torbay.
The concept gripped the public’s imagination, and there was huge interest and television coverage when the contestants set off from the Royal Yacht Squadron at 10 am on August 27th. Among the 27 boats roaring up the Solent was Huntsman No. 8, owned by the holiday-camp entrepreneur Billy Butlin and skippered by the former test pilot Peter Twiss.
Seven hours and 17 minutes later,Thunderbolt, a Christina-hull craft driven by the former saloon-car racer Tommy Sopwith, crossed the line in first place, having traveled at an average 25 mph throughout.
They were a racy crowd, the 1960s powerboating set. In 1962, Sir Max Aitken competed personally, and the following year the amateur steeplechase jockey Bill Shand-Kydd finished second. But the most intriguing of those early contestants was Shand-Kydd’s brother-in-law, Lord Lucan, who attempted to win the race three times.
The seventh Earl, who notoriously vanished in 1974 after apparently killing his children’s nanny, made his début in 1963 at the helm of a 25-footer called White Migrant. Lucan was in the lead and still going well when White Migrant stopped suddenly and sank beneath him just south of the Needles. Lucan and his co-driver Bruce Campbell were both rescued unharmed. His Lordship tried again, but equally unsuccessfully, in 1964 and 1965.
‘The race became the leading race in Europe, if not the world and internationals say you haven’t really achieved anything unless you’ve competed and finished the Cowes-Torquay’, says power boat racing expert Ray Bulman.
‘In 1968 when the UIM (Union Internationale Motonautique) introduced the World Offshore Championships they required races of 150 miles to qualify so it became Cowes-Torquay-Cowes’, added Ray.
‘In the early days it was called the Daily Express Cowes-Torquay-Cowes Race and then became the Embassy Express in 1972, but after the 1978 race both sponsors pulled out when the Daily Express was sold’.
The late Tim Powell took it over in 1979 and ran it single handed until 1999. Current Event Director Martin Levi took over in 2016.
‘The race is now limited to mono hulls. The first catamaran appeared in 1977 but it altered the race overnight, because they were very expensive and, of course, they were built for smoother seas’.
In 2010, the British Powerboat Racing Club held a celebration in Cowes to mark the 50th anniversary of the race, when Italian powerboat racing legend Fabio Buzzi triumphed driving Red FPT at an average speed of 59.58 mph.
The 2015 winner Vector Martini Rosso (left) driven by Peter Dredge, Simon Powell, Mal Crease and David Gandy averaged the fastest course speed ever at 94.55 mph.
RYA 2017 Offshore Bulletin 2