Hauenstein Family

[boatmark59]

Reading this brings a bunch of Hauenstein stories to mind, and all bring a big grin . . .

About 1982 I had quit driving my E-Production boat (raquet ball to the eye, surgeon said no raceboat for three years) so I was turning wrenches on champ boats from the SunDance Marine shops in Florida. (Nick Cripps, Ted Jones, Mickey Garrett, John Nichols, Randy Gore)

Two days after I had bought my first brand new truck we raced in Stuart Florida. Jimmy borrowed a Hodges we had available and was there with Ken Stevenson. After a lot of broken parts I went back to Lauderdale in the shop truck for more parts. I come back and my new (two day old!) truck is gone. I look around and see it make a u-turn on the highway and pull into the parking lot with Jimmy at the wheel. He wants directions to a party. I inquire about his truck . . . "dunno where it came from, but its full of gas" . . . It's mine Jim. . . He and Kenny exchange looks, and decide that since its my truck, its ok if I come with them to the party. I don't think I ever bought a beer in Jimmy's presence for the rest of his life.

Jimmy and I in a restaurant in Sacramento 1988(?). The waitress wants to know if we want to order wine with dinner. I was a kid. What do I know about red or white goes with what . . . Jimmy looks at me and says "dear boy, never limit yourself . . . why shouldn't we have both! - - - I think about that statement alot to this day.

1983 after the Ironton Ohio IOGP race Ted Jones and I make our first pilgramage to Oshkosh to explore help from Mercury. Fred welcomes us like long lost family. Says he's got to call Linda, we're gonna have brats and beer and just a grand time . . . here's the address. Two Florida boys get in the truck and immediately look at each other . . . what the hell is a brat!? . . . I don't know, but we're gonna have to eat them and smile, whatever they are!
We at ate good food, drank cold beer, and enjoyed classic Hauenstein hospitality.

Best one liner - Linda Hauenstein - St. Louis early eighties. Supposed to race in the Mississippi but weathered out. Large drinkfest ensues at Seebolds house at 9am. Freddy discovers how much fun beer and a trampoline can be.
Linda: "If that drunken fool ends up paralized from this I'm gonna push him in the river on the way out of town" Expressed with love of course.

Like everyone, I miss my friend Jim. Is it just me, or is the thought of Jimmy as this crazy old man hystericaly funny?

[Master Oil Racing Team]

Those are some great stories. You said "this brings a whole bunch of Hauenstein stories to mind"...but to my way of thinking...four is not a bunch. You do a very good job of telling them...so let's hear some more.

[Ron Hill]

Jimmy Hauenstein was one of a kind. Words like "Never limit yourself" flowed from his mount daily and often. Looking back, I guess I missed many of these "Saying" as that Hauenstein infectious laugh would cause you to forget what was said.

When Jim was going to Law School at UCLA, he and I frequently attended bars around USC and UCLA. We went to SC games when OJ Simpson played. Jim just seemed to know what was going to happen next in the world. He had majored in International Relations and just had a "NOSE" for the real world.

More stories for sure...

I could see Jimmy, James Findley, sitting in YOUR NEW truck, PROBABLY drinking YOUR BEER, saying you want to go to a party with us???

If I get time, I'll tell about the Halloween party at my girl friend's house in Newport Beach, that Jim and I attended together, about 1967. Then, again, maybe I won't.

I'd like to see Linda Hauenstein get on her and tell her story about her Honeymoon at The Lake Havasu Outboard World Championship when she spent Thanksgiving weekend with RON HILL and 7 of his fraternity brothers.....

Jim's been got since May 1997!

[boatmark59]

Actually the follow up to the truck story is really about Ken Stevenson. I have no idea about the party we went to, but eventually we split up again (they kept the truck!) For some reason lost to time I was sharing a room with Kenny, and I was asleep before they came back.

The next morning I awake to a really ugly hangover and the ringing phone. Kenny's wife. I look around and there is a half a bottle of Jack on the counter, and the other bed is little rumpled, but no Kenny. As I am trying to stall for time and un-cross my eyes, from that little spot between the second bed and the wall in every hotel room comes some rather graphic noises, and a hand arrises for the phone. I never would have believed someone in that condition could sound that sober on the phone. The call ended, the phone flew back up from the abyss, and Ken went back to sleep. He wasn't driving that day, but he did recover to go out that night.

Kind of one of those you had to be there stories. I believe that was only a few weeks before we lost Ken.

[DaveFox]

Here are some pics I shot of the Arcadian in San Diego on Saturday after Jim qualified the boat. I was way out on the Fiesta Island side when I shot these. Crappy resolution due to Kodacolor 200 film, lots of grain. The boat looked good and tracked very well. I have more and will post them as I get them reduced to posting size. They are scanned off negatives with an OpticFilm 7600 scanner so they will not get much better. Wish I used Ektachrome instead. They look much better at the full resolution of 3600dpi. Too big to post. That was the first I knew of the boat. I wanted to build it as a 1/8 scale model but it was impossible to fit an 11cc engine in it without laying it sideways.

[DaveFox]

This is the rest of what I have.

[Ron Hill]

Maybe, I should post my thought somewhere else.......But as I drove through Kingsburg, today, March 4, 2011 I thought of the irony of seeing the Arcadian Unlimited of Jimmy Hauenstein being posted on BRF...yesterday.

September 1987, San Diego

The Arcadian Unlimited had 8 2.4 Mercury Outboard Powerheads. Marcel Belleville had build this boat in has garage in Santa Ana, California. I had designed the garage for Marcel when I was going to Orange Coast College, 1962.

When Marcel finished the boat, he called me and asked what I thought would happen if he took one wall out of the building to take the Unlimited out.....I said, "How am I to know?" He said, "You designed it?" I said, "I did?" I had forgotten...

I went to Marcel's and looked the thing over and said, "Hell, I'll bet the building falls down..."


Marcel, got the boat out just fine.

Fidencio Lara, who is building my Sport C cowling had build Al Stoker's MOD VP capsule old and capsules. Marcel had Fidencio build the capsule for this Unlimited.

In my opinion, Marcel was miles ahead of 1987 designs. Today, all Unlimiteds run four points (Small tunnel at the back). Short sponsons and low props shaft angles....

This boat had a few problems at San Diego. Each engine was hooked to the prop shaft with a blower belt and the belief was that when one motor blew the belt would break and that would be that for that motor....What actually happened, is one motor blew and the blower belt didn't break and it kept the blown engine turning til parts and pieces flew all over and around the other seven motors causing them to suck in broken parts and blow themselves up. So, first run 8 BLOWN POWERHEADS.

So, 8 new powerheads were installed, with fine screens over the injection horn and off for a second run. This time, when one motor blew, it cracked the block and drained the water from the other seven powerheads. Second run, 8 more powerheads blown.

Jimmy and crew finally got the boat going fast enough at Lake X to beat Miss Budweiser. So, when Bernie Little got wind of the Arcadians speed, he changed the rules for the turbines. So, Jimmy parked the boat.........at least that is the way I heard the story!

[Master Oil Racing Team]

Your self criticism on film choice is unwarranted Dave. We've all done that, but you are more aware of other choices than most. The main thing is that you took the pictures, and from what I can see, you were very accomplished. No picture of a boat race that can be scanned, posted and with captions or history is a bad picture. I think after looking and the last set of detailed photos and pics of certain key parts of Jimmy's boat, and your knowledge of resolution and film grain you are holding out on us. I'll bet you have a lot more fantanstic pics and stories behind them.

[DaveFox]

So the Arcadian ate up the good portion of the film I brought with me to San Diego. You know, starving student and everything. I had been actively following the Hydro's since the mid 60's when I first heard them from my grandparents house in Prosser, WA in 1966 which is when I believe the first Atomic Cup was. Now Prosser is 30 miles direct from the East end of the course. Ten years later in 1977 I was taking pictures of Bill Muncey in the Blue Blaster at Mission Bay, on the Fiesta Island side. A young man of 20 just exiting the Navy from the ASW base in San Diego to return home to The Dalles, OR. I want to know where those 34 years went so whomever stole them, I want them back!!!

Fast forward to 1980 and I am at the TriCities watching the same usual suspects, Muncey, Chenowith, and the likes tear up the water 15 years after I first heard them. I was working in an aluminum plant which has been torn down and lived 2 hours from the Columbia Cup. Life happens, the economy goes south in 82. Still managed to make 82 and 84 in the TriCities. Little did I know that I had talked to Bill Muncey for the last time when they drove through on the way to Tricities as his life was cut short in Mexico. Turns out he knew some of the same people I know in town and I had several years where I got to talk to him as they rolled through town.

I started A&P school in 1986 after returning from the LA area after the plant closed in 84. Was about 7 classes away from my final class when a ride to Bayfair 87 shows up. My wife at the time was OK with the trip seeing as how she put my dumba$$ through school for almost 2 years. We arrived on Friday after an excursion through LA while the Pope was visiting and wound up taking one of the streets a block or two over from Watts all the way to the 91 Artesia freeway.

Saturday morning was foggy, and damp and a little windy. That chop is about 9 or 10 inches and it was blowing in under the bridge down the course. As I remember it was like that most of the day. I remember hearing that thing from all the way out by the pits. What a sound for me. I have always appreciated small displacement engines that turn high rpm. This was just like the KZ1000 crotch rockets I rode only it sounded like about 50 of them coming at you. There was one characteristic of that hull that was absent from all the other boats. It just floated around the course. The water was not all that great and it was just cruising around. It is one of the 5 "odd" designs of that era. The Texmo, Aronow, Miss Mercruiser, and the Tempus tunnel.

A friend of mine lived in Houston up until 2 years ago when I flew down to help him move back to Portland. What moron gets on a plane in the middle of July headed for Houston for a drive back to Oregon through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and the California desert. That would be me! He thinks the Texmo is still down around there now. I have been trying to find the Aronow with little luck. Have some pictures of the Tempus tunnel from the 80's for I think 2 years. I have not been able to find anything out about the Miss Mercruiser.

I would think that the rule changes may have been accurate. That would have been just before the APBA took over and the URC was not a stranger to the "Good Ole Boyz" club when it came to protecting turf. There is probably truth to what Jim said.

I think the initial years under the APBA were better than they had been in a long time. The last few years under the APBA were getting worse because it was most likely a financial drain on them. Lots of owners squabbles, sponsor problems, a generally bad economy.

The HydroProp years were abysmal. No real direction or planning for the future, 'nuff said.

The Arcadian is still intact from what I understand. Little is known about it other than what the guys that worked on it know. For the Radio Control guys we have only 2 dimensions, Length 30', Width 12'. I am heading to California to hopefully meet up with Fred Hauenstein on the 19th and get a chance to finish measuring the hull and take some more pictures before it is becomes another statistic.

I ran across a photo of Fred Leland's "Miss Crab legs" that had the huge Packard out of a PT boat sitting someplace up around Monroe WA a few weeks back. Weeds growing up through the holes the crew cut to make vents in the hull. I heard from a fairly reliable person they used a chainsaw to do that.

So the pictures were shot with an Old Canon F-1 and a 70-210 Kiron Lens. Great camera and good glass for the times. A manual camera for somebody who had above average eyesight for the time, that has to throw the newspaper on the floor and read it while standing over it now. Getting older really sucks, next year I will officially be able to order off the Senior's menu! I still wonder how I got that far. I still shoot film, Ektachrome E200 Professional is my weapon of choice with an autofocus EOS A2E, or a digital EOS 7D body.

Life has a strange way of putting you in a place in time to capture and record some totally obscure detail. I did not realize at the time the significance of the next few years in the sport. Each year a few more of the piston driven boats disappeared. The UIM championships during that time produced several hulls that could be called "odd" with the Arcadian being one of them. I think both Fred and Jim did something that was unique and had potential. These negatives have been in storage for 24 years, until I got a wild hair a few weeks ago after throwing in the towel on Nitro racing. Going electric!! What a great hull to do that with!!! I have wanted to build this boat since 1987 in San Diego.

I will get off my soap box, and yes I have more pics from races at the TriCities over the years! Will start a thread with some of those if you like. I have a few of San Diego 77 and a little over half the years in between 80 and 90 in TriCities.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

Yeah! Let's have some more pics and stories. That was an interesting read. I know exactly what you mean about reading. I like my digital camera, but I can do more to work with difficult lighting with my old film Nikon's than the digital. I know the digital has some fantastic correction features, but I can't see the controls, and I haven't read the manual, so I just do the basics. Looking forward for more.

ADD: Give my regards to Fred when you see him.