And all the boats from far and wide, came to Miami one day in May !!!!!

[Top Banana]

I was looking for some photos on Beep Beep and started going through some of the BBC archives. Thought you guys might have an interest in how things were back in the day at the annual Bacardi race to Bimini every May.



The race was held every year at the Four Ambassadors in Miami. It was a combination of a hotel and condo that was built in four very high towers for the time. The nice thing was the racers were given the front waterside rooms and we could look over the docks where our boats were, from our rooms.

You may see some boats of that era. Top Banana was docked right next to the walkway with the bow facing the left side of your picture. A couple boats out was the brand new 39 Cigarette, Bounty Hunter, in orange and driven by Billy Martin. The red and white Bertram of Howard Quam is in the top of the photo and you can also see the two boats that Betty Cook brought to the race, a cat and a deep vee. She would pick which one to race depending on the water conditions.

Out at the end of the docks that Top Banana is on are Joel Halpern's two Beep Beep's. He had a cat and a dep vee also. Preston Henn's Bertram, the usual winner of this race is right behind Betty's boats. One of my 34 foot Banana's is in front of Betty's boats, you can just see the bow of a black boat. That was Gone Bananas and it ran in the Modified Class.

Rocky Aoki had his own 38 foot Bertram and he also leased a 35 footer to some Japanese clients for the race, those two boats are tied together in back of Preston's. Some local boats and more would arrive from the various Miami - Ft Lauderdale shops as the start time got closer. Bill Elswick with Long Shot and Tom Gentry would show later.

The Production class boats were not usually allowed on the Open class docks, but would get in there anyway. Production classes were...Sports, Modified and Production. They were limited to two small blocks. All of the Open class boats that I raced with were limited to 1,000 cu inches.

We were going over the boat on race morning as we normally did. We had three complete checklists. The first would be done before the boat was launched, the second was done after the test ride the day before the race and the third, I did personally on the morning of the race. It had 7 pages and covered everything from the nuts that held the bow eye on, to the prop nut. Anything that could come loose or break was triple checked.

My race morning crew consisted of my truck driver who stood by in case we needed anything from the tool boxes on the truck. My navigator who would suit up first and then lay out the charts on the open deck area in front of me in the middle and him on my left. My throttleman who was on my right making sure the throttles would open up all the way and had no kinks or binds....and in the engine room, you can see my engine builder. as you will notice by the air cleaner stacks, I was running two big four barrel carbs, 1050 cfm, on each engine compard to everyone else with their fuel injection.

The white Scarab of Joey Ipollito with the number 3 on the sides was the Michelob Light boat. With pre-race prep done, now was the time to suit up for the driver's meeting and get ready to fire them up. A Spectra from California was tied up next to me, they were trying to compete in ocean waters and that size boat was not really up to the task.