The next morning we drove back east into Arizonato the race course near the town of Topock. As we pulled off the hgihway onto a road overlooking the race course we found the pits pretty well filled up. We were elevated and could seethat there were not really any openings with boats stretching for a couple hundred yards like a nationals. Well this was advertised as the Winternationals and it was to be our very first APBA event to compete in.. We didn't know what to do and were stting in that Chrysler upon a hill overlooking the scene and try to come up with a plan.

Baldy watched very carefull as he noticed a farm tractor towing a boat trailer into the water to a mall island located abouttwo hundred feet offshore from the eastern side of the pits. The water not not very deep and appeared to have a good bottom. Once the tractor spotted the boat trailer, it unhooked and came back across to the shore to haul another boat racing trailer across. Baldy then decided on a course of action.

He drove down the hill to the pit area where the tractor was crossing then just took that station wagon and trailer across to the little island and found us a good pit area. Some more came across and there ended up being six to eight teams pitting on the island. We were pitted toward the western side with Sid and Bob Viera on our left and Jay Root on our right. We had never met any of them, but we all got along great and became friends. about four teams to our right was one of three boat racers we had known from NOA races. They were Milly and Kay Harrison. The other was Bob Hering who we ran into later. He was pitted somewhere on the mainland. The only others that I knew who they were but didn't really know them were Ron Hill, Ted May (who came to race at our house in Texas a few months earlier), Doc Collins andRich Fuschlin, . We also knew Ken and Gloria Steelman who came to Texas, and though not racers, but a big part of the boat racing community.