Part 21 - Rick Fralick, Picton, Ontario, Canada , born April 1, 1944 (76)

[hydrospeed77]

Thanks to Rick and Andrew Fralick for supplying the information on Rick Fralick and recommendation by Brian Hendrick.


Picton, Ontario - I live on the race course where Miss Canada IV set a world speed record, and Miss Supertest won the last Harmsworth Race.


Karl, here is a presentation, slide show and write up that my son Andrew did for 2015 CBF Hall of Fame. All I can say is the only claim to fame I have is that I stuck with it for a long time. I was only a mediocre racer and found it hard to put two good starts together, but I got lucky sometimes and picked up a few CBF Nationals and High Point Championships along the way. My memory is still pretty good for detail, but probably a few misdated items in that story. I love designing race boats with all the Unique and special detailS that make them winners. My sons are much better drivers than me and have proved what they can do with them time and time again. And now we have my grandkids Cameron and Megan with there first test runs in JH this summer.

Karl, your name is very familiar to me from years ago. I believe you ran some Canadian Races with the old C service motors which I found very entertaining. Correct me if I am wrong. I got all my early motor and boat instruction from Hank Bowmans Encyclopedia of Outboard Motoring, so I am connected to all that old history.

I am very proud of my kids for their special efforts to support all kinds of boat racing and you will always find me in the pits doing what I can to help them along.

Thanks
Rick Fralick

http://www.fralickracing.com/our-founder.html

[hydrospeed77]

This is loaded with good photos and information:

http://www.fralickracing.com/our-founder.html

[hydrospeed77]

This is the same boat as in the earlier photo with the Mk 25. I refinished the plywood deck, replaced the canvas deck and replaced 1/3 of the bottom plywood As the boat had been badly damaged in a racing accident at the CNE before I got it. I started racing CBF in 1972 when this photo was taken. I only raced it for one, maybe 2 years as I built a Hedlund copy to replace it. The Hedlund was faster but was not a good handling boat and I was dumped many times over the 5 years I used it. I bought a Lundy B/C boat about 1975 that I used in rougher water, it was slower but I had more confidence in it and drove it harder, even won the BSH Nationals at Pierrefonts in 1976 in big white caps With it (Chris would call them ‘white horses’.) Winter of 1977 I built 2 new Fralick Boats, one for me and one for Tom Boulter, these boats were fast, Tom won a half dozen high points championships with his. Tom has the CBF kilo record at 68.4 mph. I beat that at 69.3 mph a few years later but only one way, and I won the 1980 nationals with mine. I still have my boat. A year later in winter 1978 I built one for Bill Bolton. Tom Good, a top US runner asked me to build him one but I had had enough building by that time.

Here is a photo of my first real race boat. I am running Chuck Calnan’s Mk 25 with a quickie. The boat is a Sid Craft with canvas deck, I boat it from a guy from Trenton. It had a concave bottom, probably about 3/8” deep, was not a fast boat with the motors I used. I believe it was originally Jeff Hutchins and was featured on the cover of Propeller Magazine about 1961. This is about 1965, I flipped it a second after this photo, prop hit my knee cap, couldn’t walk well for a month. Sorry about that prop Chuck!

I ran my Martin 200 on this boat till the crank broke, then got a 20h and started racing in 1972. I replaced the canvas deck with airplane fabric and dope, had it professionally painted, shiny as a car finish and the first #69

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