What is HORBA anyway ????

[Top Banana]

Save the Old Race Boats

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Old race boats are usually retired to storage sheds or stripped of their engines and drives and left as bare hulls and decks in the corner of boat yards. Today's fans are left with little more than grainy black and white photos or video clips from races held 20 plus years ago.

But why save them?
The only thing missing was a both an organization that would recognize their value and venues to bring them to. We now have both.

A new organization has been formed by Charlie McCarthy (Top Banana) racer and boat builder.

HISTORIC OFFSHORE RACE BOAT ASSOCIATION
(HORBA)
Charlie Mccarthy, Mananging Director

I turned to my friends for help with this, and the following people, all of whom have been involved in the sport for many years, have agreed to serve on the HORBA Advisory Board.
Michael Aronow - Eldest son of Don Aronow, boat builder
Allan Brown - (Brownie) racer, boat builder, historian.
John Crouse - author of Searace.
Barry Cohen - racer, boat builder.
Bob Saccenti - racer, boat builder.
Richie Powers - racer, boat builder
Pepe Nunez - racer, boat builder.
Mark McManus - racer, boat builder.
Bill Frenz - racer, poker run promoter.
Steve Berk - (Lucky Strike) racer.
Ed Cozzi - racer, marine surveyor.
Stan Fitts - APBA Offshore Vice President.

What qualifies a boat for Historical status?
Boats (deepV's, cats, tri-hulls, outboards, inboards, sterndrives, surface drives) that have ever raced in the "Offshore Class" of any sanctioning body, at least 15 years ago or longer, qualifies. If the boat has a real race history, it is in.

What venues are we talking about?
The National Powerboat Association, one of the top Poker Run organizations in the country, has extended the HORBA organization an invitation to come and participate. The New York City Poker Run will allow any Historic Boat that is a registered member of HORBA to run in a special new class that has been made just for these boats.

The HORBA boats will be on public display throughout the weekend for viewing. This will be our first official event which will be held this summer on June 17, 2006.

I am sure we will have other invitations from race sites as well as other poker runs, once we get up and running.

UPDATE We have been invited to join the race events put on by OPA, they even volunteered to put on a special race for HORBA boats....details to come later.

UPDATE We have been invited to the Key West World Championship races in November. Display of HORBA old race boats all week, and a special one day in the water event...details to come later.

Membership Inquiries?
We are trying to determine how many Historic Boats are out there. If you are interested in joining HORBA, please click on the link below, membership is FREE.....and you will be put on the mailing list for updates. Also send us all the information on your boat, history, drivers etc.

http://www.historicraceboats.com

[Top Banana]

The above was a post from January of 2006. I attended the New York Boat show that month and visited with some old friends, Barry Cohen who had his restored 1966 World Champion boat Ghost Rider there and Rcoky Aoki.

Barry's boat was located right next to some high performance boats of the modern era. We all took note of the extreme interest so many people had of the older race boat over the newer versions.

We said someone ought to try to save these boats before they are cut up and gone forever.......that was the start and we continue today.

Over the past couple of years, some of the above directors have been more active than others, but we all still share a deep love of the sport and a deep respect for each other and what we have experienced. Our only hope is to keep alive the history of the sport for the next upcoming generation of racers and actually get some real open ocean racing going again.

[MOBILEMERCMAN]

Thanks Charlie,
I had no idea of your time frame. I have rigged a few boats that qualify.

Thank you for sharing with us.

[Top Banana]

In 1966, in secret in England, a new offshore weapon was quietly being readied.

This new boat was owned by Hugh Doyle and designed and driven by Jim Wynne. It was built of cold molded wood by the famous English yard Souter.

The boat was brogutht to the States and outfitted with Daytona Turbo charged engines on straight shafts and a single rudder. It was 28 feet long and had a top speed of almost 90 miles per hour.

It won every race it entered in 1966, in America, England and the Bahamas using the race strategy of intimidation. It would start the race and blast out with it's top speed and then throttle back to actually race at about 60 mph. Whenever it was threatened, it woud give another blast and get way out front again, intimidating those who tried to challenge it.

Hugh Doyle the owner, donated the boat to his college. It was quickly purchased by Barry Cohen who has stored it (40 plus years) and maintained it and recently restored it. We hope to be able to have the boat at one of our events in the future.

Below is shot of the boat running and some closeups of the cockpit...Remember, the driver throttled too....without the benefit of a bolster. This shot shows the boat winnng the Cowes Torquay race in England. It looks like only the driver is on board.....the crewman / mechanic had broken both ankles on a bad reentry. He wedged himself into the corner of the cockpit and hung on. Since he couldn't see, he passed the time by counting how long the boat flew off the waves...he said he got to the the count of 5 a few times while he waited for the reentry. Those were tough dudes back then....that is why we have so much respect for the pioneers of this sport.

Trim tabs were fixed, no adjustments. A single spade rudder was all they had for steering. The little blue gauge is the speedometer that was used to roughly calculate how far they had traveled for navigation purposes.

Yes, you are correct, that is a real functioning cabin for 2. The rules required that each boat be equipped for real overnight stays. These were real boats that had to be capable of taking on the wide open ocean and still function at the end of the day.

[boatme]

Cool stuff about HOBRA

[boatme]

Charlie,

Who built the first performance racing Cat ????

[Top Banana]

Cool stuff about HOBRA


Thanks Marc.....on our HORBA website there is a section called Stories. There are some old stories that can be read there that were published in Extreme Boating Magazine.

We have just contracted with a new web designer who is revamping the whole site, so please bear with us as we try to improve it...remember we are mostly just a bunch of old farts that know how to build and race boats....this world of the Internet is sooooo scary to us....it is like navigating in fog, but not wanting to slow down because you know the other guys won't.

Thanks so much for your patience.

www.historicraceboats.com

[Top Banana]

Charlie,

Who built the first performance racing Cat ????

That is a really good question as some early development was going on in different places at the same time. The guy who could help the most here is T2X, but let me start and he can fill in the corrections later.

First lets start with boat racing in the 50's and 60's. There was a lot of interest in "Endurance" or marathon type racing. On the East coast we had stuff like the Hudson River Marathon. It ran from Albany to NYC. Everything was raced in it from Boston Whalers to Power Cats. (T2X actually raced this with a Power Cat) On the West coast there was the Salton Sea 500 mile race and the Parker Arizona 9 hour race. In Miami, you had the Gold Coast Marathon. It started at Pelican Harbor Yacht Club (79th St) and ran to Palm Beach on the INSIDE of the Intercoastal.....yes, the inside.... in everything from three point hydroplanes to the big Switzer Wings. Also Miami had the 9 hour enduro in the stadium at Orange Bowl time.

So, early tunnel hulls competed in these races with outboards and then they put sterndrives in them and they flew. These boats were made by both Americans and Europeans...Molinari to Glastron had tunnel boats, but the best were built by Ron Jones who also made the first sterndrive K boats.

The first ocean racing cats that I remember was the outboard cat that Walt Walters built for Tommy Sopwith ....like '65 or so (photo below).....and the Cat that Walt Walters built for Hugh Doyle in 1967. The Walters boat is shown on P53 of SEARACE, but it is misidentified as the 33 foot ZIPPE, which it isn't, as it was only 28 feet. Carl Kiekhaefer was co sponsor and provided the sterndrive engines for it. It too, was made out of wood and was built for ocean running, but just never got going as they hoped.

[Top Banana]

Re: Save the Old Race Boats

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To give you an example of why I feel it is important that these old race boats be saved, here is the boat that I own with my son.

It is the 6th 35 footer out of the mold built by Cigarette.

It was built light and strong and was built with #4 as the racing number.

Now for those who know, that was Don Aronow's racing number and there were rumors that he was planning a comeback with this boat. Don always said that the best boat he ever designed was the 35 footer.

(Don had planned a comeback, but he and Doc Magoon ran Doc's 40 footer in a Bimini race before this boat was finished and they spun out twice on the way to Bimini. Don decided that maybe he should stay retired and build boats, so he sold the boat to Hal Sahlman who raced it as Spirit and the next year Hal sold it to Rocky Aoki who raced it as Benihana.)

Don used the number 4 or some variation of it, like 16, throughout his career and he thought it was lucky for him.

After he decided to sell the boat and it had the following career:

It won it's first race, the Bushmills in '75.
It set a race record across the Gulfstream in the next race of 88 mph in the Bacardi race in '75
It won outright the '75 Bahamas 500 at a record speed of 83.4 mph.
It set a race record at the Stroh's race at 81.3 mph.
It won the San Francisco race overall.
It won the '75 Miami to Nassau race and set a race record of 76.7 mph, which still stands today, as that was the last Miami Nassau race run.
It won the Bushmills race again in '76 at a record of 77.5 mph.
It won the Bahamas 500 race again and then was moved to 2nd place after a protest.
It placed 2nd in the Hurricane Classic in St Petersburg in'76
It placed 2nd also in the Marina del Rey race in California.

So, it finished 1st in 5 of its first 6 races, won the Bahamas 500 twice, won Bushmills twice and Miami Nassau once, while setting 5 new race speed records.

I thought, maybe this boat should not end up in a boat yard as a rotting old hull and deck. This is the stuff the reputation of Cigarette was made from.

We are still working on the boat...slowly. The engines have been sent to Innovation Marine in Sarasota and they are detuning them to run on regular gas at about 700HP each. I don't even want to predict when it wil be done as every time I do it seems to jinx the project.

[boatme]

Charlie,

Thanks for the great information

I love the history stuff

I have been talking with Denny Hejja a bit latley and it is fun to chat with him about his racing days with Copland and Norris and that era of racers

We talked a bit about him racing here in Grand haven Michigan back in the day

I love to learn more about all of this stuff

Charlie, I havent had time to start reading the Serace book you sent me yet, but am hoping to dig into it during the holidays

Charlie thanks for keeping the History alive

[Bobcat]

Was the guy with the broken ankles brownie?

[Top Banana]

Was the guy with the broken ankles brownie?

No, but Brownie did get injured in a race back in that era and he wanted to be able to race again at the next event.....so I don't remember exactly who, but someone suggested, that they build some kind of "Support" for him to be able to hold on.....yep, the modern day "Bolster" was born.

[Top Banana]

OKAY.....Save the old race boats...here we go.

We all saw the fantastic restoration job that was done on the Bounty Hunter in Key West.....well, boys and girls, there is a twin to that boat out there somewhere and HORBA has been getting calls for info on the whereabouts of the twin.

Please help us find it and save another old race boat. It has gone under the name of "The Bubble Boat". Someone must know where it is.

[MerCrewser]

HORBA is a great site. Are there any Nova marine racing pics up yet?

[Mange]

Hi Charlie,

I hope this fits in this thread.

I have some contact with a gentleman with name Ian Toll (UK).
Ian is the guy who picked up Balestrieri's race boat what sunk outside
the british coast 1968. Ian had the boat fixed up and raced it again.

[Mange]

Some year went and Ian change the deck to a "sedan".
Yeep, with full pleasure cabin:sifone:
I know he went to sterndrive setup, first with some Merc straight six and later to 351's Ford.

[Wazzup Racing]

How about a restomod class.

Old boat, new technology 1979 Futura Marine Viper. Still going strong

[Top Banana]

Smitty. I hope you have enough fuel capacity in that boat for next year's Miami to Key West race in February 2010.....190 miles non-stop. It is the 2nd oldest offshore race in history, after the Catalina one.

[Wazzup Racing]

Thats a two stopper. But there are gas stations on the way. Bimini is a different story. Why not do something up here Point P to Long Island. Half the boats in OPA are antiques anyway. Most are from LI or NJ. Just a thought. Smitty

[Top Banana]

Thats a two stopper. But there are gas stations on the way. Bimini is a different story. Why not do something up here Point P to Long Island. Half the boats in OPA are antiques anyway. Most are from LI or NJ. Just a thought. Smitty


Take a look at the site and click on the racing button on the home page.

www.historicraceboats.com

We are planning on the Around Long Island Marathon in September of 2010, the weekend after Labor Day. That will be a 2 day event with the start at Liberty Landing Marina and the first stop in Sag Harbor and the end of the race on the second day in Port Washington NY.

We are always open to new venues...Pt Pleasnt to LI is right in the realm of possibility...let's talk.

[NNRT]

Charlie - the Old Hennesy Grand Prix was from Point Pleasant to Long Island - (a light house cant remember the name - a senior moment) - then back to Brooklyn, then south to Point Pleasant - about 110 miles - 60 miles of open ocean - Ya Need a compass for this one - and in the afternoon during the summer, the swells are from the South East - No lake racing here !

Phil

[Top Banana]

Charlie - the Old Hennesy Grand Prix was from Point Pleasant to Long Island - (a light house cant remember the name - a senior moment) - then back to Brooklyn, then south to Point Pleasant - about 110 miles - 60 miles of open ocean - Ya Need a compass for this one - and in the afternoon during the summer, the swells are from the South East - No lake racing here !

Phil

Your right, I do remember now.

Got lost off the Long Island side one time in the fog and ran along the beach until we recognized something familiar and took off with a new heading from there.

That would be a fun time, but I think the old course was more than 110 miles.

[NNRT]

At one time, it would run up and down the beach a few times, then head out to Fire Island - then back to Brooklyn, then down to Point Pleasant - I won the production class prize in 1972 - in a 28 Bertram Baron - had only 100 gallons of fuel - and ran out of gas after crossing the finish line - My sponsor owned a gas station - I radioed him, told him to send out 10 gallons of gas - and I came in under my own power - I was not about to be towed in, after winning ! A First win for me at anything ! The race was just over 100 miles long - 60 miles to Fire Island, down the beach to Brooklyn, then back to Point !

Navigation was the key to that race- I can remember seeing people going East along Long Island, trying to find the check point - and others still went too far east and headed out to Montauk

Those were the days that raw speed meant nothing - a compas was needed !

Phil