happy & heart broken

[Big_Jim]

Re: happy & heart broken

A "BIG THANK-YOU" for these pictures! Brings back fond memories, at least of the sixties. In San Diego, I was in the car with my dad and heard a noise I can only describe as "heavenly" coming from the water. I kept after dad until we finally found a spot and watched the thunderboats. I remember even getting wiff's of the av-gas. Even at a tender age, it still shot straight into my heart and planted itself, where it will always remain. It would be the samething with Air Racing, only more so.

I love the "retro" demo's at the hydro races. Talking with most people, they all still love the sound and smell of the thunders.

Also, I'm wondering if you could help me with locating a brilliant water painting I saw years ago done by ?? of the thunders all coming around the final turn for the start of a heat race. You could literally stand back from this painting and swear it was a photograph!

Again, keep the stories and pictures coming!


PJ

I think the painting you're referring to is called "Thunder Turn". It was done in the late 1980's and has the Executone, Miller American, Miss Budweiser, and Atlas Van Lines all coming through the turn. I have it framed in my house. Don't know who the artist is, though.

For what it's worth, Mission Bay in San Diego is my favorite race course in the whole world...it's just unfortunate that the San Diego race almost always falls on the same weekend as the Reno races.

[Pylon Valhalan']

Re: happy & heart broken

Thats it! I fell in love with that painting in a gallery in the mid to late 80's. I wanted to buy it but could not because I was a college student at the time.
I'll look it up and try to get my hands on a print.

You're right San Diego is beautiful. Some of the best memories of my life remain there.

Thanks again

"Grand PoohBah #1"

PJ

[Big_Jim]

Re: happy & heart broken

Thats it! I fell in love with that painting in a gallery in the mid to late 80's. I wanted to buy it but could not because I was a college student at the time.
I'll look it up and try to get my hands on a print.

http://thunderboats.ning.com/

I just called my buddy David Williams who runs the Hydroplane & Raceboat Museum in Kent, WA. He says they have a few prints of 'Thunder Turn' for sale. Check out the website and give them a call. They'll hook you up, and it's a great cause.

[AAFO_WSagar]

Re: happy & heart broken

Hey Speedy, when I was a kid, there was a hydroplane race out at Pyramid Lake... having no bux, my family and I watched from a distance (long one!)... Far as I can remember, there was only the one race. Story I remember at the time was that there was some equipment left out there that would have made it easy to have the next year's race.. it got vandalized (stolen for scrap) by the locals...

Would have been around, maybe 1960 or so... maybe as late as mid 60's but I don't think so... Have any info on that race and what happened after??

[Big_Jim]

Re: happy & heart broken

Hey Speedy, when I was a kid, there was a hydroplane race out at Pyramid Lake... having no bux, my family and I watched from a distance (long one!)... Far as I can remember, there was only the one race. Story I remember at the time was that there was some equipment left out there that would have made it easy to have the next year's race.. it got vandalized (stolen for scrap) by the locals...

Would have been around, maybe 1960 or so... maybe as late as mid 60's but I don't think so... Have any info on that race and what happened after??

That would have been the 1960 Gold Cup.

The Gold Cup is the oldest trophy in all of motorsports (1904) and for many, many years the winner of the regatta had the option of 'hosting' the race the following year. Bill Stead in "Maverick" won the 1959 Gold Cup in Seattle. "Maverick" was owned by Bill Waggoner who had a ranch that took up literally about 1/5 of the acrage in the state of Nevada...and since Stead lived on the family ranch outside of Reno it was only natural that the race in 1960 was going to be somewhere in Nevada.

They already had races on Lake Mead in Vegas, and at Lake Tahoe, so they decided they wanted to add a third venue for tourism, etc. They settled on Pyramid Lake outside of Reno. Unfortunately, the site was out in the middle of nowhere with no facilities...so the crowds were small, and the wind was bad, thus making the water really choppy. I think at least two boats had water/wind-related accidents during the first set of heats and the race was put on 'hold'. So after waiting a couple days with no let-up in the elements, they finally declared it a 'no-contest', and it was generally agreed that the venue wasn't very good for racing.

It also marked the end of the 'host' program for the Gold Cup. Since there was no 'defending champion' in 1961, the host went to the highest bidder...which is how it works today.

[AAFO_WSagar]

Re: happy & heart broken

Thought it was about then... I'd have been all of nine .. Out in the middle of nowhere, indeed! That lake saw a lot of me in my teens... not so much before.. As far as crowd, dunno, didn't actually get to the site.. I do remember the traffic though, it was bumper to bumper from waaaay before the lake, that was actually part of why we watched from where we did, my dad got tired of waiting in line! Two lane blacktop, all the way from Sparks to the lake, the bumper to bumper stuff didn't start till out there a ways, but it was the most traffic I ever remember seeing on that road in the entire time I lived there..

Tanks for the info, I never really knew what went down that weekend till now.

[AirDOGGe]

Re: happy & heart broken

While looking around for a particular boat, I stumbled across this forum thread containing the most impressive photo collection of vintage hydros and other racing boats anywhere, 20-something pages worth:

Vintage Speed Boats

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=130864

(You do not need to sign up as a member to view the photos).

.

[xmh53wrench]

Re: happy & heart broken

Airdogge thanks for the link to that! All the countless hrs I have spent there (my Roadster has a build thread there) I have never seen that....

[mayday51]

Re: happy & heart broken

Hey "Uncle Jim",

Tell us the story about......(fill in the blank)...


...Thank-you for sharing and teaching !
even the bump on Detroit, (I did chuckle)

......would you remind us what some of your experience with these monsters is ?

please,
pretty please ?
free beer ?

[Big_Jim]

Re: happy & heart broken

Hey "Uncle Jim",

Tell us the story about......(fill in the blank)...


...Thank-you for sharing and teaching !
even the bump on Detroit, (I did chuckle)

......would you remind us what some of your experience with these monsters is ?

please,
pretty please ?
free beer ?

Oh, come on, Jim....you know I HAD to take a jab at Detroit. The funny thing about the whole Seattle/Detroit rivalry in the 50's and 60'? That was perpetuated by Lee Schoenith and Bill Muncey....and it was soooo Big Time Wrestling it wasn't even funny. In public, they did everything they could do to fan the flames of the rivalry between cities, but in real life, Muncey was from Detroit and close friends with the Schoenith family....so after hours, they'd sit around and laugh about it. But it sure envigorated the sport for decades.

My experience? Well...you know how Forrest Gump was kind of the 'witness' to all the events in history? That's kind of how my career is. I've been a part of, but never the 'reason for'. That make sense? I've helped build (and blown up) several Merlin and Packard engines. I mostly made my trade as a fiberglass/composite guy who built and assembled boats, but I've also been a radio guy, sponsor/PR guy, and for the last few years worked as a race official. Over the last, oh, 25 years or so I've worked on half a dozen different teams, won a a National Championship and Gold Cup working for Budweiser in '89, a Gold Cup and World Championship in '06 with the Beacon Plumbing team, got a couple wins on my home course in front of my family and friends, and set the 'Mile' Straightaway Record on the Free-I boat at 205 mph in '00.

And yet...I've just been on the fringes as far as I'm concerned.

[mayday51]

Re: happy & heart broken

.....so, did they ever let ya ride the beer wagon ?

(think twin seat boat too)

[Big_Jim]

Re: happy & heart broken

.....so, did they ever let ya ride the beer wagon ?

(think twin seat boat too)

Oh no....the Bud boat that I helped build was the T-3, which was the 3rd turbine boat in 1989. Single seat with an enclosed canopy. In fact, one afternoon in the shop (it was my 'after school job' in college) I climbed into the cockpit and John Rheinberger, one of the crew guys, shut the lid on me. I am not a claustrophobic person, but that experience there is what convinced me I didn't want to race Unlimited hydros anymore. Actually, my thought was "what a horrible place to die". I was so big and it was so small!

I've only been out in an Unlimited once, and that was about 10 years ago when I got to take the old Miss Burien out on Lake Washington.

[mayday51]

Re: happy & heart broken

Unka Jim,

Any answers as to why Bernie Little didn't get into air racing ?
He sure seemed to put a team together and had sponsorship (his beer distrbutorship)?


> Miss Burrien...quite feet ! Like in kind to boats from the '50s-'60s.
(back when they didn't just whine)(another debate there too)

.....nothing like running the back strech at Detroit,
then finding the hole off the yacht club....looked like someone forgot to fill in a two car garage worth of water !....(slow lap)
....at full song ya didn't see it, but it sure would let ya know.