craig craft

[MarkD]

Ron

Most motor work was done on our own. Everyone had good mentors and it all came together in the mid 70's. Craig's best A motor - the Mark 15 we called "Goldie" - was built by Craig in the very early days with help from Lloyd Swanson. Lloyd did all the work for his son Dave Swanson who ran a Karelson A runabout in the 60's with great success. Craig passed on his knowledge to me. I also grew up with a neighborhood friend named Jon Rankin - and his dad made the coolest mini-bike anyone had ever seen. I recall his dad had a very nice machine shop. My brother and I grew up spending summers at our lake cabin and built a Glen-L plan hydro - and then bought an old 2 cockpit Sid Craft boat from Howard Anderson and a KG-4 from Mike Jones. When we wanted hardware for the Glen-L, we bought it from a guy that lived just up the hill - Leonard Keller - and my brother and I ended up working for him for years. We learned a lot from Leonard, and then as we got into racing, we discovered that my neighborhood friend Jon with the cool mini-bike - his dad's name was Bill Rankin. Most of you have heard of him from time to time. One of the best machine and motor guys ever. Hal Tolford also helped us learn about motors in those early days. As everyone does, we gleaned knowledge along the way from many others - Gerry Walin, Jim Hallum, Ron and Dewey Anderson, Ray and Dennis Lee, Bob Martin and many others who were kind enough to care about some kids from the north end of town to help them out and share once in a while.

Jan Christ and Earl Garrison (Earl is Jan's step-dad) mostly ran BSH and BSR -and they did their own work as best as I can recall. Earl was saying last week they had a mechanic who was not a racer help with motor work as well. I do not think that Earl would have ever even thought of doing any illegal stuff - I recall not even one incident or rumor about that in my day - and of course, the KG-4, Mark 15 and Mark 20 A and B Merc had no head gasket.........

I am not sure about Lee Sutter as he mostly ran alky stuff - A and B racing runabout - in my day and Ron Anderson did most of his motor work when I was around.

Props - we had them all - R. Allen Smith props were used when I set the ASH Kilo Record - it was Gerry Walin's prop and the same one he used with the Anzanis. I set a competition record with an R.Allen Smith prop as well, won the nationals with a Czpluski (from the Chicago area). One of my Joe Price props - a Kamic blank I got from Bill Rankin - won the ASH nationals in 1972. After I dumped in the elims with the fastest time of the week - I loaned it to Dave Hoggard and he won the finals going away. Most of my competition props I had were built and/or worked on by Joe Price and I did some work on them as well. Craig's props were also made and worked on by Joe Price and George Lockhart. I think his best one that he won the ASR nationals with was a Lockhart that George made for him from a Record blank in about 1969. In B, he had some made by Price, Hopkins, Smith and others. We tested a lot and used many sizes and shapes.

For boats, here is a short chronology:

In 1969, Craig borrowed a Price Craft runabout from Tom Schiedt and was the fastest ASR at the Nationals at Hinton, WV. He jumped the gun one heat and did not win that year. He came home and started building and designing boats. Craig is and was always very good with wood and design - he has a great feel for it (although unlike what some posted earlier, he had no aircraft design background - we were 17 and 19-20 year old kids then for God's sake). Jim Jatho helped with hydros early on, and they were of this style - kind of like a pointed nose Hedlund



Of course Joe Price was around (and he lived at the shop from maybe 1974 until it burned down) and he always helped with ideas and concepts, but Craig started building the runabouts pretty much on his own by 1972. One of his first, if not his first, runabouts was this one from that year.

Craig's ASR - testing with me:



and this ASR he made for Greg (with my brother holding him):


That same year, Craig made this hydro as a Kilo boat - new cowl design and many new features he thought up - these photos are from Modesto Kilos in 1972 - set the record at 61.291 mph (but disqualified later for BS reasons) but could read 62-63 mph pretty easily on the Keller speedo that Leonard had just calibrated for us. We let Gerry Walin take it for a test ride - it was his prop after all - and he came in saying "Geez-zus you guys - I had a tough time going that fast with my A Anzani not that many years ago". It was a fun but disappointing week. Learned a lot from that week about inspections, racing politics, and that its just not that easy to set records at the same speeds you can read on the speedo. Here is the "Barking Spyder" kilo boat - it later set the M Hydro record as well with Ralph Hildebrand driving:




More in the next thread

Mark

[MarkD]

Then we built this competition ASH for me using many similar design ideas from the Kilo boat and the first ones pictured above in this thread - ran it in ASH and a few BSH races - it was very fast and the coolest boat on the beach (to me anyway) - I sold this one to Steve DeFeo from New Jersey and he won the Nationals in ASH in 1973 at Utah in it - and his freind (Al Desiato ?) got third in ASH with it at Dayton in '74 (Steve won ASH again in '74 with a new hydro Craig built for him). One of Craig's B runabouts and Jan Christ in the background:




Later in 1972, Craig built his "Floater Boat" that set the ASR and BSR Kilo records with relatively huge increases in speed over the former records. Here is the first "Floater" after setting the ASR 1 2/3 mile competition record at Lawrence Lake:




After this, probably 1973 and on, Craig built competition runabouts with more features of the Floater (such as the duck-bill front end). I kept changing hydro design each year incorporating design elements from many sources - and finally ended up with this design in 1977 which I thought was the best of all I had built.



My brother in law Ron Anderson had some great ideas that he used in his A&H boats that he made with Bobby Herring. I used some of his ideas in this one combined with what I learned in prior years, but of course, the concepts and speeds slightly changed with a KG-4 for power instead of a Konig A or B.

More in the next thread.

Mark

[MarkD]

Here is Steve DeFeo in the ASH Craig built for him in 1974 - he won the ASH nationals in it at Dayton (photo from Rusty Rae's very cool book called Speed and Spray which documented that whole 1974 Dayton Stock National Championship race).



I remember going to a BBQ at Mike Jones' house in 1972-73 when Jerry Waldman was in town. Jerry was trying to do with boat racing what has been done with NASCAR - improve images and take the sport to new levels and asked to meet with some of the fast and up and coming racers - guess we fit in with that, although we were not yet in our 20's, had no money, and built everything on a shoe string. I vividly recall him saying we should all be wearing what we would now call Dockers and present ourselves in a neat and conservative manner to project an image that would be good for the sport. I did not know what was wrong with the way I looked - gosh Jerry, I worked hard to patch those pants and they were after all, my good luck pants. And it was the early 70's, not long after Woodstock and all. Check out that hair - geez. Craig and I drove to the Nationals in 1971 in a VW bug with his ASR on top - Seattle to Lake Placid Florida - and let me tell you, I was not able to get out of a mini-mart in Florida fast enough when a crowd of rednecks started hassling me......



Jerry Waldman was a great guy and had he lived, the sport would certainly have looked different today I think.

On the A stock Merc motors, I think it was pretty well established the the 505XXX and 506XXX series blocks were the best. There may have been some, but I do not recall a record being set or a Nationals winning motor that did not have serial numbers in those ranges. We had so many parts combinations that we thought were the best - we constantly stopped at old marinas on every single trip we took and bought old junk KG-4's, KG-7's, Mark 15's, Mark 20's to get parts. That could be a whole other thread.......

Enough of my old days ramblings for now. Probably should have moved this thread to the Outboard history section. Its been a great week of old boat racing stories for me - lunch with the old crowd, and Jimmy Hallum gave me copies of his old boat racing movies from 1959 - 1976 - awesome images of the ASH Barking Spider in the kilos, Craig's ASR kilo run, Gerry Walin's 100mph B Anzani, and sound movies of me running the 125cc hydro. Very cool memories of a great time and many, many wonderful people we made friends with along the way. Many thanks to Ron Hill for this forum - its great to hear from many folks from the good old days.

Mark D

[Sutter's Gold Jr.]

Cool pictures Mark!

This is from Lee below...

This is the Craig-Craft floater boat that Craig set the AU record @61MPH and I set the BU record @ 73MPH. This picture is at Lawrence Lake on the 1 2/3 mile course.

I wish we would have tried the “A” Konig on it to see if the design would have handle the speed. If so, I think 90 MPH with Ron’s nitro engine would have been possible. The boat would lift in the rear as it went faster!!!

[MarkD]

That is a better picture of it - same boat as the 1-R boat pictured above. I have more shots of it somewhere. Craig was not kind to it with paint schemes after 1973, but crappy spray can paint job notwithstanding, it was still a phenom. That original one burned up with the Craig Craft shop building fire. Craig made another very similar boat that he still has. I am pretty sure I would not have wanted to be the one driving it at 90 mph with Ron's A though - Lee would have had to have been the guy for that one..........


Mark

[MarkD]

A few more shots of Craig in the floater - which he tried to run at the 1974 Stock Nationals at Dayton, Ohio. He somehow barrel rolled it - not the best rough water competiton boat perhaps - note the silver tape keeping the thing together (photos from Rusty Rae's book Speed and Spray) .





One of our big problems over the years was trying to fund our racing and make a living at building and selling boats - we often sold the boats right out from under ourselves - which as I recall, is why Craig was stuck trying to run the floater at the Nationals that year. I almost never had a current boat to run the record courses with in the Fall as I sold my boat each year at the Nationals - Craig did the same thing. I graduated from college in 1976 and was working full time after that so I was finally able to keep my boat in 1977 to run it at the Lawrence Lake record course in September that year.

Mark

[BPIII125V]

Thanks Mark for sharing the pic's and stories with us, they are really great. Looks like vented transoms on the boats, when were they outlawed and how much performance gain did you see with them?

thanks again,

Bill Pavlick

[MarkD]

Bill

All of our boats - hydros and runabouts - did indeed have the vented transoms from the very first ones. Craig got that idea in part from Cliff Bedford. I am not sure how one could measure the exact performance difference - I guess you could tape it up and try it, but I think it would be hard to see any significant difference on the speedo. It was one of those things that we thought could only help, not hurt - and that in total, those 100's of little things would add up to a difference. It also really helped to keep the back of the boats clean........

We had a blast anyway trying to come up with new stuff. I have often commented to my old boat racing friends that if we had put all that energy and thought into making something like computers or cell phone technology work in the 70's, none of us would have to work today.

I am not aware of a rule that would disallow a vented transom today - maybe there is such a rule - but I have not kept up with the rules in the past 20 years to know that.

Mark

[Jerry Combs]

Mark,

Thank you for posting and for posting all of the great pictures. Do you still see Jan, George and Earl? They put my dad and I up in their home when I came up for the Stock Nationals (1967?)

Jerry

[MarkD]

Jerry

The Stock Nationals were here in Seattle in 1968 on Green Lake - I was there watching and had my first race later that year. I saw Jan and George last year at a race - but have not seen them too much in recent years - they both looked great.

I had lunch with Earl last week with Craig and Greg - Earl is now 88 and still pretty active. I think he was the oldest active Stock Outborad racer in the country when he finally quit racing in the 80's or 90's.

Mark