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

  1. #241
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    Although it took awhile to repaint the letters, I learned what brush and bristle to use, plus the cut. With that and my oil painting experience, I started staining our house while it was being built in 1980. I watched the interior painter and decided I could do as good as him. I didn't need to tape off walls or trim. I could cut in paint in a straight line without holding a thin sheet of tin against an edge or taping off. Whenever I have to paint anything by hand now, I always think about all the painting I did in the winters of 1966 and 67 on the raceboats. After that, we always hired a real sign painter. The only other letters I painted on our boats after that was "Spider" in 1968.

    It was very cold that year. In the sixties, you had to keep up with antifreeze mixtures in your vehicles. I had been painting letters on the trailer after school while listening to the "Stones" singing "Let's Spend the Night Together" and the other side "Ruby Tuesday", as well as the Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love" when Baldy came home. It was already dark. It was early, and it was overcast all day, but there was a forecast of a freeze overnight. Baldy was going to prepare supper and told me to take all the cars down to the service station to check the antifreeze levels and get them right.

    I was freezing by then. The temperature levels had dropped rapidly after Baldy got home. I took his Plymouth Station Wagon first. I don't remember how each car went, but I had to take my Mom's old Chysler New Yorker, and my International Scout. Brenda had to take her own Yellow and Black Plymouth.

    The places where you fueled up in those days were just called gas stations. There was no such thing as self serve. When you pull up....the attendandt put the nozzle in the tank, popped the hood to check the oil and radiator, cleaned the bugs off the windshield and dried it with a chamois cloth that had be wrung through a set of rollers. When he was done, he would dip the chamois in the 35 gallon drum to wet it, and lay it across the rollers for the next car.

    So, when I brought back the third car, it was getting late (about 8 O'clock) and very, very cold for South Texas. The service guys were very quick, getting other cars into and out of the bays to check their antifreeze. While sitting in my Scout with the engine running Spanky and Our Gang did one of my favorite songs of that time about Sunday Will Never be the Same. I don't know if that's the title, but I can remember being very cold and shuttling cars before an unexpected and quick moving storm moved in. Every time I hear the song, I think of cold, cars and boat racing.



  2. #242
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    Jack Chance brought down a 6 foot straight edge and a "stink block" on one of his trips to Baldy's. I was having a hard time in the turns with my DeSilva. After I set it for the turn, it would start hopping just before I got halfway through. The cockpit was much wider than my SidCraft and I always had trouble getting firmly wedged in. Baldy took 8mm movies with his Bell and Howell movie camera, and for some reason he seemed to take more movies of our runabout than the hydro. It was always bouncing or hopping in the films. We watched them over and over during the off season. Jack said he could help fix the problem.

    Jack laid that straight edge lengthways and sideways to get a look. Sure enough, the bottom was way off. We turned the DeSilva over, removed the center fin and Jack showed Baldy how to move the block around while he sanded. Baldy was a good sander. He had the height and weight to do it much easier and faster than I could. After the bottom was trued up, we waited for a warm dry day and put two or three coats of a popular polyeurethane of that time. It was the same that I applied to our new trailer box. I can't remember the name, but they were pioneers in the two part clear epoxy finishes. After that we refitted the fin and were ready for testing when it would warm up.

    Jack bagged a young sow javelina on one of those cold December hunts, and Baldy barbequed it on his pit. A javelina is officially named "collared peccary", and is a small wild hog that can be very tasty if you know what to do. The first thing is shoot large boars only for mounting purposes. They are tough and musky. The young pigs of either sex, but especially a young sow is very delicious. You need a very sharp knife with steel that will hold an edge, or else you better have your whetstone with you. First step is to remove the musk gland on the back, above the hindquarters. You have to get between the blade dulling hairs and work the knife under the skin and then start slicing a patch about the size of a scalp. You have to grip the hair above the musk gland and lift while you slice between the gland and the backstrap. Then throw it way. Then you can proceed to gut the javelina, leaving the guts for the coyotes. They will not last through the night. Skinning is easy with a sharp knife.

    If a javelina was a little older sow, or a young male, Baldy would sometimes make a vinegar solution to sop on the meat prior to barbequeing. He would wash off any stray hair and vinegar solution, pat dry, then salt and pepper moderately heavy. He sometimes burnt down mesquite to cook with, but if there was not time he would use real oak charcoal. I guess the kind molded with clay works O.K., but back then all you could get was the real charcoal that came in all irregular pieces and when it was all burnt, there were only gray ashes remaining.

    Baldy grilled the ribs, the front shoulder, the hindquarters and the backstraps. He didn't separate the bones on the shoulders, or hindquarters, but kept them together. He cooked the javelina slow, and off to the side of the fire to bring it up to a dark reddish brown color on the outside, and pinkish white on the inside. It was thoroughly cooked through, but still moist.

    We didn't just hunt with rifles though. Jack liked to hunt quail also, and we had many a fine meal of Bob White quail fried with gravy, mashed potatoes, greens and biscuits. Baldy and Jack usually hunted quail in the morning, then Baldy would fry them up after getting back from an afternoon deer hunt. The smell of quail on your hands after you clean them is very strong. When you hunt with shotguns, a pellet usually penetrates the intestines of several quail. For a little bird that eats seeds, they can have the most awful smelling guts. If you try to clean them and eat them right away, whoever did the cleaning will get a little whiff on every bite. You cannot eat them with a fork and a knife....you have to use your hands, and it takes several hours for the smell to go away after cleaning them.



  3. #243
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    In the fall of 1967 Pam got a metallic blue Plymouth Barracuda from her Dad Jim Yawn who owned the Chrysler/Plymouth/Dodge dealership in Alice. She was now honking from a really fine looking car as she raced up and down the street while I was working on boats. Baldy had ordered a new Chrysler New Yorker with a 440 c.i. engine. I'm not sure why it was ordered and not available on the lot, but sometimes back then that's what a lot of people did, especially when there were much more non standard items you could get on a car. I can't remember if it was just before or just after hunting season, but Baldy and I were going up to Bryan Marine to either take Mark's 110 Mercury powerhead up their to replace pistons and rings or pick it up, along with maybe the time we picked up the FC Konig. At any rate, we had planned to drive up in his new Chrysler sedan. The old Plymouth station wagon had be giving some problems and Baldy had it in and out of Yawn's distributorship. The car didn't arrive when expected and we had to leave too early for them to have time to make it ready.

    We got to Victoria, Texas about 9:00 that morning and on the way up, the Plymouth had been running sluggish. On main street Baldy pulled into a Chrysler dealership and explained to the shop manager that we were on the road and needed to have the car checked out. They were very nice and willing, and would go right ahead and get someone on it. Alice Specialty had a four truck yard in Victoria a few years earlier, and some of the people still remembered it. A salesman from the dealership dropped us off at a Shipley's Donut shop. Baldy didn't drink coffee or eat donuts, but I liked the donuts. After about an hour, the salesman came back to pick us up and said we were ready for the road. I think they must have changed points and plugs and tuned the carb.

    We backtracked about one and a half miles to pick up alternate Highway 77 which would take us up through Halletsville, Schulemberg and on into Bryan, Texas on the Brazos River where Freddie Goehl and Arlen Crouch had their boat business. After getting past the north edge of town where the speed limit went up to 60, Baldy accelerated. He had a pretty heavy foot and the Plymouth burped, then tried to swallow the fuel, then started to surge and stall. Baldy then stomped it to the floor and into passing gear. We were only doing about 45 and trying to get up to speed when all that started to happen.

    The automatic tranny dropped into a lower gear then the motor began to wind up....BUHUUUHHHUHHEEEEEEEEEEEKAAHBOOM! The hood pooched up and smoke, dust and debris blew out each side. I felt the explosion through my feet on the floorboard of the passenger side and the tunnel where the transmission rested underneath. I looked back and saw a two inch diameter piece of metal bouncing along the highway behind us. The force was so great, I thought Baldy exploded the transmission and it was a gear I saw bouncing behind us, yet the station wagon was still running.

    Baldy got it turned around and headed back toward the dealership. The motor was running very badly, like it was only on half of the eight cylinders. As we approached a red light, the motor died. Baldy restarted it while we were rolling and it died again. He then restarted it once more, but this time kept his foot on the accelerator while he braked with his left foot. That was the first time I ever saw anybody do that. He kept the revs up while we were stopped and held the station wagon back with his left foot on the brake. The motor was shaking the car in a pattern and sounded and looked like Baldy had a bad a$$ cam in that motor. I looked at the old white haired granny that pulled up to our right and she had a look of both wonder and at the same time disgust. It took a few more red lights, but we got back to the dealership. Baldy made a call to Jim Yawn and told him to get his a$$ in gear and prep that new car. We needed it NOW!

    The salesman took us back to the Shipley Donut place while they let the car cool down so they could dig deeper into the problem. About another hour passed and we went to a regular restaurant where we had lunch. Then back to the dealership. The shop foreman handed Baldy a sparkplug. The external tip of the electrode was almost completely straightened out. It had one crooked section in the middle. The foreman explained that number (I forgot which) cylinder had no compression. There was an explosion in the crankcase that drove the piston up into contact with the sparkplug and the tip broke through the top of the piston. The electrode was pulled straight when the piston went back down. The original problem must have been a leaky carb flooding the engine, and there was raw gas and fumes in the oil pan and crankcase. Must have been some sticky valves too. Anyway....when Baldy stomped the Plymouth into passing gear, a spark ignited the volitile mixture in the crankcase. It was the oil filler cap I had seen bouncing on the highway. It was before all the closed up motors with anti pollution equipment. The motors of those days could breath, and the oil filler cap was just pushed onto a round spout on the valve cover and held in place with spring steel rather than screwed on. most of the debris that blew out from under the hood was pieces of paper air filter and all of the fiberglass insulation in front of the air cleaner intake spout.

    Alice Specialty general manager drove the hastily prepared New Yorker to the Victoria car dealership while Jim Yawn followed in another car to take Cheyney back to Alice. It was around 2:00 that afternoon before we got back on the road to Bryan. It was another 4 hours from there, so we had a very long day. After concluding our business with Freddie and Arlen, we turned around and came home. We enjoyed the ride back though in that brand new Chrysler New Yorker with a very powerful 440 TNT engine. Little did we know that this car would provide some even more spectacular events before it was finally gotten rid of about four or five years later after Jack Chance had "inherited" it.



  4. #244
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    I don't recall any New Year Celebration in 1966. I do not recall my parents celebrating New Years either. It may just be that since my Mom's health declined starting around 1957 and just got worse as time went along that our parents didn't attend or host any New Years parties. I know that before that, they celebrated Christmas and New Years festivities because I can vividly remember the time Baldy shot off Roman candles in our back yard.

    It was in the subdivision where Baldy and another guy built the house we lived in. We had been there awhile, but there were two or three blocks worth of vacant land undivided between us and Main Street. We didn't have a clothes dryer. I don't know of anyone that did at that time. Baldy had a welder build two T's of 4 1/2 inch oilfield casing and planted them in cement near the back of the yard just ten feet in front of a 6 foot wooden fence he had built. He then had strung two strong parallel wires that spanned about fifty feet for a clothes line for our Mom to hang clothes to dry.

    It was dark when Baldy decided to show us kids some fireworks. The Roman candles in those days were the real thing.....not puff farts of a few weenie sparkles....but the ones that would Poomfph...Poomfph...Poopmfph fireballs one after another for a hundred feet or more depending on your aim. Mamma had three white sheets still hanging on the clothesline when Baldy lit up a Roman candle and proceeded to throw fireballs in the direction of his white targets. I can remember being impressed by the metorite streaks of fire, but what I remember best is when Mamma saw that they reached her sheets about the time Baldy did.......he took off. It was too late. If I remember right, the fiery balls only hit one sheet and Baldy ripped it off the clothesline with the wooden clothes pins flying, threw it on the ground, then he began to stomp on the rumpled sheet until there was no more glow. Mamma was a little bit smoking off the top of her head at that time, and Baldy was not so gregarious as normal, but It wasn't long before both of them told the story and laughed. I grew up hearing it many times as both my Dad and Mom told the story.

    It wasn't until Mark got me hooked up with the Lake gang of girls, and a few brothers that I can remember celebrating New Years Eve. They weren't part of the pit crew yet, but it was beginning to gel.



  5. #245
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    I compiled this list sometime during the 1966 racing season, but I don't remember exactly when. I learned how to tie off a tow rope around the bow handle for quick release pretty well.
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  6. #246
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    As I've said....music was a driver in our lives. At the beginning of 1967 the number one song was "I'm a Believer" by the Monkees. The song about Snoopy and the Red Baron by the Royal Guardsmen was number two. "Winchester Cathedral" was number three. A song that reminds me of Joe Bowdler was number four, and many years later made a comeback with the original artist. The song was "Tell it Like it Is" by Aaron Neville. It was playing on the radio when I picked Joe Bowdler up at dark from a hunting trip Baldy had arranged. This was around eleven months after the song was number four. I guess it must have been put in the "oldies but goldies" rotation by then, only to reemerge as a top hit several decades later when Aaron Neville and his New Orleans brother's band made it back. Number five was Frank Sinatra's "That's Life". That is a tribute to the lasting talent of Frank that he made it on the pop charts of a bunch of teens two decades after he became a star.

    January 13 the Rolling Stones were on the Ed Sullivan Show. He sang the refrain "Let's spend the night together" rather than the wording the Sullivan people said he should sing.

    January 15 in Superbowl I Green Bay beat Kansas City 35-10 in Los Angeles.

    January 18 Albert DeSalvo, the Boston Strangler, got life.

    January 28 "Let's Spend the Night Together" by the Rolling Stones was released. I didn't know this fact until tonight. They used the Ed Sullivan Show to promote it, then Mick Jagger sang the song as written instead of the suggested wording. I remember the controversy, but I always thought that they were on the show because of the popularity of the song, and not for pre release publicity. David Crosby double crossed Ed Sullivan too and he was never invited back.



  7. #247
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    Sometime during that winter, Mark got the Merc hot once again. Since the last time he stuck it, he had not tried to set any "speed records". This time it was with no boats on the water. It was a cold clear day with no wind and the lake was glass. It was days like this that it was fun to be the only boat on the water to cut wakes all over and chase mud hens. They are officially termed "American Coot", but we either called them "mud hens" or the cajun name "puldoo's". I'm sure there are a number of boat racers out there that tried to run one down on the water when they were kids. You can't do it. As soon as you get close, they start running across the water and flapping their wings. If your boat is too slow, they will eventually get airborne and escape. If your boat is fast enough they will suddenly fold up their wings and plunge beneath the surface. It doesn't matter if your boat will go 40 miles per hour or 70, they will always plop down just before you reach them. I've never known anyone to run one down, and there were always last second escapes. I guess we would probably be arrested now for attempting that. We never really wanted to hurt one, but it was like a coyote/roadrunner chase except we didn't crash, get blown up or smashed under a rock. Except this time. Mark's motor began to seize, but he had recognized the feeling and instantly backed off. He looked back and saw water start to spurt from the tattletale again.

    The engine had not seized and Mark came back to pick me up and put the Keller pitot tube in the bracket. He had replaced the club foot with the Speedmaster lower unit for some fast cruising when the problem occurred. I sat in the back seat once again eyeballing the Keller and the tattle tell. There was a constant flow of water until Mark established a straight line and was getting near top speed. Around 68 or so, the water flow dropped off and again around 70, it stopped. I patted Mark on the head and he backed off like we had done last fall. It had dawned on Mark, that everytime he stuck the motor he was going in a straight line. He had not done any straight line high speed running since the last rebuild until that day when he had set a long straight run at a flock of mud hens floating on the water.

    We took the boat out of the water and began to ponder what was causing the problem. We started to add up the facts as we knew them.

    1. The motor started losing water around 68 mph, and at 70 there was no water coming out of the tattle tell,

    2. As far as we could tell by now, the problem always occurred while running in a straight line, and only with the Speedmaster on. With the club foot of course, the boat wouldn't run as fast, but that told us that it was not some kind of restriction within the tube going up to the powerhead, or the powerhead itself. The Speedmaster itself seemed not to have any restrictions that we could locate either.

    3. You could run wide open all day with the Speedmaster while just cruising around on a calm day. It was just when you settle in for a long straight that we started to lose water.

    So we got under the boat and just started looking. We measured the depth of the nose on the lower unit, and while it was about four inches below the bottom, we could not imagine it propriding to the point of the unit surfacing and picking up air. The boat didn't ride that way. We looked at the center sponson however, and the angle the boat would have to ride that could cause that, but then concluded that the boat would be very sticky in the water and not handle lightly like it did. And there was no way that was the problem Then something on that SK turn fin caught my eye and I started thinking of a real possibility.

    I learned quite a bit about aerodynamics in flight school. You cannot see air movement across surfaces except when you put something in a wind tunnel and watch how the smoke moves. The exception is contrails, which is ice particles formed in the vortices created by the wingtips of high speed airplanes when conditions are right. I started thinking of the principles of lift, how the air is parted, sonic booms, etc and then started thinking about how those principles may apply to water......hydrodynamics.

    What caught my eye was the trailing edge of that bronze SK fin. The leading edge was sharp, and curved downward toward the stern. The trailing edge, however, was completely flat. As I looked at it, I could envision a parting of the water just like a displacement hull does, and thought about how the wake comes back together. The faster you go, the further back behind the boat the wake comes together. So I look at the fin, and it is barely three feet in front of the nose of the lower unit where the water pickup is, as opposed to the club foot which runs much deeper and had the pickups on the sides above the nose.

    I could envision an air gap forming behind that fin, and trailer further and further back before it closed up as the boat went faster. If the air gap would extend just a little over three feet behind the trailing edge of the fin, that would put it at the water pickups. It could only happen in a straight line, because any turning at all would alter not only the water flow, but would not be aligned with the lower unit.

    I told Baldy what I thought and he agreed, so we got a grinding wheel and went to work on tapering the trailing edge of that fin in the hopes that the water would converge again ahead of the lower unit. It was painstaking work, because we didn't want to take the fin off. Mark and I took turns lying under the boat and holding the heavy grinder up and trying to apply enough pressure to grind away at the bronze fin.

    We finally got it done, and the next day put the Mustang back in the water. We were very hesitant and eased into it....not wanting to stick the engine again. Mark got it up to the mid 60's then he slowly advanced the throttle the last little bit. 68...69...70! That was the fastest we could go. The stream of water shooting from the tattle tell was solid and strong. We had solved the problem. Mark ran a long straight line wide open toward the dam and the stream remained steady. Finally Mark's confidence about his boat and high speed performance were back.

    Here is a drawing of what proved to be happening. Looking at a cross section from straight above, you can the the air gap I suspected, then the water flow after tapering the trailing edge.
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  8. #248
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    Now Mark was back on the water racing around the lake at top end with complete confidence. It wasn't but a few weeks until disaster struck again. This time it was the crank. All the abuse the motor had been through had taken its toll on the crankshaft. I think it was one of the upper mains that gave out and scored a cylinder too badly to hone out. That was the verdict of Freddie Goehl. But Freddie had an idea, if Baldy wanted to give it a try. The pistons from the 35 Merc were slightly larger, and the wrist pins were the same. There was enough metal to bore the block for the 35 pistons and replace the crank and other necessary parts and we would be back in business. Baldy gave him the go ahead, and said to hurry it up. There was an OPC race in Rockport coming up soon and Baldy wanted Mark to race in it. I don't remember if Mark was really excited about it, or he was just going along, but he had been handling the Mustang very well since the turning situation was sorted out with the fins. He had just competed in one heat of B runabout almost two years ago. It was a four hour marathon and Mark would drive the first two hours, and I would finish the final two.
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  9. #249
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    The OPC race was either late February or early March 1967. It was an outlaw race. No national or state club that I can remember. It was all the local guys from south Texas that had boats that could outrun everyone else on the lake. I am not sure, but I think it was probably spearheaded by the guys that Mark and I had so much been in awe with driving their Merc Powered Kober Kats around the lake.

    We got the powerhead back from Bryan Marine and mounted it back on the tower housing. We took it to Mathis Lake and put the Mustang Super Sea Sled in the water to get some time on the redone powerhead and break it in. I didn't call Mark up to ask him how much time we put on the motor to break it in, but on the Konigs...we didn't take long. What I remember is that we took some time. First bring it up to speed and then cruise for a little while. Hammer it hard, then back off to settle down at a little higher speed. Up and back with the throttle. Never set a speed and stay with it for an extended period. Run wide open for a couple of minutes, then back off. That's the way I can remember getting the bored out motor prepared.

    Unfortunately, when we got to really hammering the throttle...the boat was not the same. It was washed out....like there was no life. Baldy called Freddie. After listening to what Baldy told Freddie that Mark and I had told Baldy, Freddie said that the timing was not right. I don't know exactly why, but Freddie said we had to change the timing of the motor.

    They had done more than just bore out the Merc and swap pistons. Freddie and Arlen did some other alterations. When I tried to time the motor the next morning, all I did was screw things up. I was still learning about outboard mechanics. Timing a Konig was a few simple steps. Trying to figure out a 6 cylinder Merc with a distributor cap, and a moving timing mechanism was way beyond my experience.

    The Mustang was running in the high sixties when we finally made a high speed run, but it seemed like it had a stuffed nose. No big response..no top end. So we took it to the local Merc dealer Cliff Walzel and explained the problem. We told Cliff that we had to have the work done immediately because we had a race to make. Freddie told me what to tell Cliff to time the engine. Cliff argued that that did not make sense. To this day I cannot say whether I accurately repeated what Freddie said to tell Cliff about how to time the motor, or whether I could not explain myself enough for Cliff to understand. All I know is that I didn't know what I was talking about, and when Mark and I went out to test, the motor was less responsive than it was before we took it in.

    Baldy called Freddie and told him the motor was flat. We had to leave in the morning to make the race. He told Freddie that the outboard mechanic did not do what he was told regarding the timing. Freddie told Baldy that since I didn't have the equipment or knowledge to set the timing, all we had to do was tune it at the race course.

    There was a screw on the distributor with a back up nut. All I had to do was loosen the backup nut then adjust the timing for top speed as we were underway. Freddie explained over the telephone exactly how to do it. I was prepared.

    Next morning Baldy, Mark and myself headed eastward toward Rockport...about 1 1/2 hour drive. We had only been on Leopard drive several miles before we had a flat. Only two years later Leopard would be an access road to IH 37. We must have run into some kind of debris at the beginning of construction. We changed the tire and had only gone two or three miles further before the other tire went flat. After using the spare the only choice we had at that time was to take both the small boat trailer tires to some place to fix the best one or buy a replacement.

    It was an overcast day. We were in a hurry, but it didn't happen. We jacked up the boat trailer again, took the other tire off,unhooked the boat trailer and Baldy headed off to who knows where to get one or the other of the tires repaired or buy a new one.

    It was still early in the year. South Texas is not known for being cold, but close to the bay with all the moisture it can be very miserable. Mark and I stood and shivered guarding the boat trailer for nearly two hours before Baldy showed back up with a tire we could use. The tire was not of a size that was easily fitted into a machine. On a Sunday it took time for Baldy to get it done.

    After changing the left hand tire, we took off again without any further problems and finally pulled into the pits at Fulton Beach. All the others were there and out on the water testing. We hurriedly got signed in and backed the trailer down the ramp to unload and begin to set the motor timing while underway.

    Mark and I both donned our White Bell Helmets and orange Gentex life jackets and waded out to the Mustang and climbed aboard. We arrived late. Very late. We did not have much time. Mark fired up the newly rebuilt Merc and headed out on the course. It was salt water.

    The race was around a sliver of an island. The course was a mile and a half or maybe two, with a switchback at the first turn where you would have to turn right again before heading to a long back straight.

    Mark made one round to warm up the engine, then the plan was, according to Freddie.....I was to back off the nut to adjust the distibutor while underway until we got our best speed.. Mark was driving and as such was supposed to hold the throttle down while I adjusted the timing with a screwdriver and simultaneously looking down at the Keller laid near my knees.

    Going down that long straight I saw the speed gaining as I slowly turned the screw. Then we got to the bottom turn. Mark didn't warn me. He didn't slow down first....then look back. He just dropped the throttle for the hairpin turn that is was and I fell over to my right side.

    I looked back at Mark and he understood. We tried to make another round, but just then the cannon fired and they stood the black flag. While I was dialing in the timing, we were getting close to our high mark of 70. When I fell back into the boat, the screw backed off. When I tightened it back down in the pits, we endend up five mph short of our old standard.



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    We didn't know a soul racing OPC then. The half dozen guys that raced around the lake were there, and we knew who they were, but we didn't know them. The organizers of the race ran a very good meet, and we knew nothing about this marathon racing except what we had read in magazines. I don't know who did the scoring, but we didn't have to provide one. It was a four hour marathon, and I think at least one pit stop was mandatory. Mark would drive the first two hours, then I would finish up.

    We were pitted toward the northern end, just about opposite of what would be considered the first turn if it were a clock start. It was a modified LeMans start, and I do not recall drawing for any starting position or qualifying. As I remember, we just all started from whatever pit area we staked out. It was around the upper 40's or low 50's and with the overcast sky hanging very low over the pits, and a stiff 25 to 30 mile per hour breeze coming off the bay, it was very uncomfortable in our windbreakers. The little island infested lagoon was separated from the bay only by an asphalt roadway with a beach and piers behind the pit area. The sand and oyster shell pit area was very good though. Great access to the water with a gently sloping and solid bottom.

    There were a lot of semi vee's with a variety of outboards, but I think the majority were Merc's. The fastest boats were the Kober Kats, Powercats and our Mustang Super Sea Sled. The two fastest were the 110 Merc powered Kober Kats of the two guys from Johnston Automatic Transmission in Corpus Christi.

    I don't remember how Mark made it through that first corner and around to the backstraight, but after a lap or two, he began to settle in. The fastest guy in the Kober Kat seemed to come up to Mark just going into turn one fairly often. He would charge up on the outside then cut Mark off on the tight left hand turn. Then there was a switch back to the right and left again exiting to the long back straight. Mark didn't run the last part of the backstraight wide open because the Mustang rode light enough that it ran a bit sideways. The southeast wind was just a couple of degrees starboard and the boat, when aired our, would point in the direction of the wind. It was like flying an airplane in a crosswind. Some of the others I'm sure had trouble with it as well. At the end of that long back straight was the hairpin turn where Mark caught me off balance while trying to adjust the timing of the Merc. Coming off the hairpin, he would race down the front straight to a bouy where he had to slow down to jink a little to the left toward the island we were racing around, then a right to straighten up and run parallel to the island back to the first turn. The tight left and right/left switch back was the calmest portion of the course, being between two islands.

    I can't remember if we had any pit stops other than the one where we refueled and switched drivers, but that one occurred around the two hour mark. First time on the course in the driver's seat, I felt the boat start to aim right when it got up to speed and lightened up. I eased off at first, having been surprised at the boats reaction. We never ran fast in 30 mile per hour wind at the lake in open water because the waves would reach 3 feet or so, and we would plunge into the trough, or cut off the crest and it was miserable in a boat not designed for that type of water. Here though, the little lagoon was fairly shallow, but more importantly, the little islands killed wave action. There were whitecaps solid down the back straight, but no rolling action could be set up for high crests and deep troughs. Nobody had power trim. You just stick the pin in the hole you got the top performance from, tie down the tower and go for it. If you needed to make a change, you would have to go back to the pits to do that. Consequently, we chose to leave our motor in the pin hole for optimum speed and it lifted off the water more than it ever had because It was like running in a heavy chop. the two outside tunnel like bottom and the center sponson did an excellent job of pounding into the waves so the nearly flat bottom at the stern did not rebound off the water and cause us to lose bite. We would run hard. It took a couple of rounds down that back straight for me to get the hang of it, then I could run wide open. Having learned to fly in a crosswind, I could just let the Mustang air out, and do the slight correction with the steering wheel. I just had to be sure the motor was straight before I had to back off quickly for the hairpin.

    Even though we were about five miles slower than we should have been, we made up a lot of time on that backstraight, being able to run wide open. Our Mustang had a couple of feet over the Kober Kats, and I am sure was much heavier, giving us an advantage on the back straight.

    Somewhere around forty five minutes or an hour into racing I got into position racing against the leader. He was the one that had been cutting Mark off in turn one. That was where he always made his move because that Kober Kat could corner better than the Mustang. Especially in the calm water with the switchback. He was lighter and could accerate through that section and be gone and clear very easily. Whenever he pulled alongside Mark going into the turn, Mark would back off for the corner and the Kober Kat would hang on the throttle long enough, then snap his cat to the left and Mark would get off the throttle. He didn't know that we switched drivers though. Mark and I were almost identical size in those days and wore the same type while Bell Helmets and Orange Gentex life jackets.

    I was on the inside as Mark always was, but I raced the cat to the turn. He was faster, and going downwind with the pit area blocking the wind, the water was in good shape and the Mustang held no advantage. The problem was, I was racing him to the turn and I went in much hotter than Mark had. He got around me, but he was going in much hotter as well and was overshooting the turn. The other little island on the outside had a sliver sticking out that he would not be able to negotiate after swinging so wide unless he got completely off the throttle and get back in the proper lane. Instead, he tried to turn harder to the left and stay in front of me. It was too much. He spun out directly in my path. I chopped the throttle, but the flat nose of the Mustang hit his Merc square on the left hand side of the cowling. Nobody was hurt and we were only going about twenty upon contact. There were a few moments while I was waiting to get clear of him. He finally was able to pull forward enough where I could take off again. He never was able to get back up to speed however. The blow of the Mustang bent the throttle linkage, and he was not able to get back to full throttle. I don't recall whether he finished the race or not, but he could only go about half the speed the rig was capable of. His partner won the race with a nearly identical rig, and we finished second overall. That was my first and last OPC race as a driver. Mark would do one more a month or two later.

    ADD: I just reread this part, and I need to do some clarification, because it may sound like I was selling Mark short. He was the one who got us established in the earliest going, and set a pace that kept us in the front running. We had no clue as to our actual position during the race, but we knew we were up in the top tier. So I called Mark to see what he remembered. He had completely forgotten about that race, but some of it started coming back after he read the above account. He said that it was accurate, and he added a couple of things I had forgotten. He confirmed that there were somewhere around 50 entries. He said that there were boats all around the course during the racing. And he said "Some of the boats didn't run too good, They were flopping from side to side, and bouncing all over the place." I had forgotten about some of the deep vee's running, I now I can remember a little bit about them....especially on the backside. With the way the wind was blowing, they were blown over on the left side, then with correction they would straighten up, then a wave or something would flop them to the right, then back to the left they would go. The guys driving them must have been totally worn out at the end of the race.

    Then Mark remembered some handling trouble with our Mustang in a turn. He said it was trying to dig. So I said "It must have been that right hand turn halfway down the front straight when you straighten out at the island." Mark said, "Yeah! That was it. It tried to dig in at the transom. We later cut the fin off some after that race." That deep spring steel fin was what helped to keep it from spinning out, but it was mounted on the left side. You can see the bracket in one of the pictures. The trailer was made for the center fin, but not the one on the left, so we had to take it off when we loaded the boat on the trailer. It was pretty long, and at the angle it was mounted, the leading edge would touch the trailer. It was wicked looking.

    So, I just wanted to clarify that while Mark had limited experience racing, he knew that boat extremely well and kept us up front and in the hunt the whole time before I took over.



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