Originally Posted by
Willabee
I believe the boat in the picture was built to be a twin engine rig for Renato to run in special events, I think it was about a 20'er. The brain trust at Merc decided to use a different approach for the 71 Paris race. The year before we ran all sprint type setups, boats were propped out for speed. We learned that as rough as the River Seine gets, we couldn't use all of that speed in the race. For 71 the thinking was good bite, acceleration and stability over top speed. Propshafts were set below the boat bottom rather than above! The big boat was also entered as a single, as you can see Renato added a third transom in the center. We couldn't make it competitive with a Twister I on the tail, but got enough more out of it with the C6 doing the pushing that they put Billy Don Pruett in it for the race. It was the slowest of what we took to Paris, about 85 mph, but was in fact running third deep into the race when the engines coil mount broke and ended it's day. The pieces of lumber you see in front of the original two transoms were added to eliminate the "air brake" effect that they created when it was rigged as a single.
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