Thread: Wayne Baldwin's Amazing Story: Baldy's Eual Eldred Baldwin

  1. #141
    Team Member Master Oil Racing Team's Avatar
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    I thank you for your comment Bill Van, and I took notice that I had it ahead of plugs, corks and props. I am indeed grateful that I took an early interest in photography because it gives me a great deal of pleasure to look at and talk about the people in those early days. I knew somehow that you would respond to my checklist, but I thought it would be about my simpleton mind writing down no. 1----not to forget the boats and trailer. I got a big laugh out of that myself.

    You got me thinking Bill Van, and the Aloe 99 does have connection to our racing, and being it was one of Baldy's investments and forward way of thinking at the time, I will include it.



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    Team Member Master Oil Racing Team's Avatar
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    Here are the second and third pages of our notebook. This is from information given by Freddie Goehl and Arlen Crouch. While going through all my stuff in the past couple of years I came across the odd stuff here and there that didn't fit in fit into any particular thread except for one newbie one time who was wanting any and all hints on how to get started in racing. He was putting a list together, but at that time, I didn't know where this notebook was. Things like this were part of the inspiration for the thread. Everyone had to start from scratch, although there are many racing families last through several generations. But even the racing dynasties had the patriarch that began it all.

    That was one of the motivations for starting BALDY. Not only was this thread to honor my Dad and tell some of the behind-the-scenes stories involved in our lives, but also maybe bring back memories of many racers to their beginnings. We knew absolutely nothing, but we got lots of help along the way. That's why , when we fell in with the boat racing community, that became our lives. I hope this thread will spark some good memories and bring a big grin to those who recall their early days.

    ADD: The handwriting at the very top and bottom of the second of two pages is Baldy's

    ADD: At that time neither Baldy nor I knew how to time a motor.
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  3. #143
    BoatRacingFacts VIP John Schubert T*A*R*T's Avatar
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    Default Sid-Craft to Sid Son

    Quote Originally Posted by Master Oil Racing Team View Post
    In the meantime, we had the brand new A/B DeSilva runabout and a used canvas deck Sid-Craft boat. I was very disheartened about the Sid-Craft ad in our very first Roostertail that Sid made the announcement of the introduction of a new line of stock and alky hydros under the name of SidSon Boats. I just had a let down feeling that something was not right.

    However, we were testing, learning, and having a great deal of fun. At first it was just Baldy my brother Mark and myself when we went testing. But it was clear at that time, Mark had no interest in racing the boats. He became a pit man. But although he did not want to race competitively, he still loved going fast on the water.

    Here is a cover of a spiral tablet I bought to take notes and the first of a number of entries I wrote down to help us get on the right track to race. I carried this inside the motor box of our trailer for the first year.
    Wayne,

    The reason Sid-Son came about is because Sid & Mickey, partners in Sid-Craft started having serious partnership relationship issues, so they closed the doors. Sid lived behind where the shop was locatec & Mickey to the left side when you were standing out front. Bothe houses were built at the same time as the shop. Also, the shop was approximately across highway 1 from the original shop which was merely a garage. Not quite a year after dissolving Sid-Craft, Bobby Urytzski told his dad that he wanted to build hydros again, so they expanded Sid's garage to a little larger then four bays (but with only one overhead door) and started building Sid-Son hydros. (Get it? Sid's son Bobby) In 1971 Bobby began to build tunnel boats as well and eventually went out as orders weren't coming in enough for him to support his family.

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    Default # 1 on the list

    Wayne:

    Two things I always appreciated about Baldy, in addition to all the rest:

    1. He always enjoyed a good "gotcha" and would remind you about it from time to time.

    2. He always knew when to quit reminding, so it didn't become just "mean", instead of all in good fun.

    I had my fun this month about your lack of "hat" when you were visiting Sam. That doesn't mean I'm done by any means, just taking a little time off till the next opening, as you do.
    #1 really was the most important, so you had your priorities straight, even if you needed reminding. You could probably always borrow the rest of the stuff at the race course.

    Really wish you could make it to Lake Alfred next month. Based on the advance registration list on Hydroracer it looks to be a really good race with great competition. Hopefully the US drivers learned from the last time and have a better showing this year.

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    Thanks for the information John. Here's an ad from the February 66 Roostertail.

    Wish I could make it Bill Van, but too much stuff going on.
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  6. #146
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    All but the last entry is Baldy's handwriting. We were trying to figure at this time how to do the ignition timing. Baldy mostly talked to Freddie, and Baldy was probably on the phone when he wrote these notes down. As you can tell....he didn't have a clue either.

    I went down to talk to Cliff Walzel the local Mercury distributor in Alice. He explained how it was done, but I didn't understand any of the terminology, plus he was showing me on a stock fishing motor where the timing was not fixed, but changed according to the throttle setting. And he used a timing light with some marks on the flywheel. There was no way I could translate all that to the fixed timing when had on the Konigs. We had the dial indicator, but we didn't have the Southwestern Bell Telephone buzzer like Ray Hardy gave us some years later. We had some kind of a homemade device, but I can't picture how it was anymore..
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    Here is an example of Baldy's notes when he's doing some thinking on a project. In this case...it was how much weight was needed in the runabouts. Typical of Baldy...he would flip past pages that would be final to scribble his own notes. Unless he had a clean pad to start with then look out. If he was talking to someome on the telephone while considering ideas he did a lot of doodling. I can figure out what he was contemplating better than anyone since I was around so much of his ideas. This one is not too hard to figure out.
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  8. #148
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    This was our first attempt at keeping track of which propellers worked best. Baldy took to studying props. While he never worked on props, I would say he became one of the best prop men around as far as what worked good on a boat. Baldy was the one who picked out which props we wanted to test at a race course.
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    In the second issue of Roostertail were these race dates. The first alky race we went to where I actually made a start with a real alky rig was Baytown in April and the second race was two weeks later at Beaumont. We later found out that Baytown kicked off the Lone Star circuit racing followed by Beaumont. They also did back to back races in the fall.
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  10. #150
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    I am amazed as I go through these Roostertails to see so many names of people I eventually got to either meet or know and many became friends. Looking back I think how fortunate we were to become members of the tight knit boat racing community. Now I am amazed at how a new boat racing community can be tied right back to our earlier years through Boatracingfacts, and make new friends from racers from the past. Remember this letter Allen?
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