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    And all the boats from far and wide, came to Miami one day in May !!!!!
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    Icon/Founding Member Top Banana's Avatar
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    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.

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    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.
    Last edited by Top Banana; 12-10-2013 at 10:55 PM.
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    Okay now we are all suited up and at the driver's meeting. We are all told the last minute changes to the course, what to look out for, and how big they estimate the spectator crowd to be....it was very big and choked off the turn boat at Government Cut.

    The race starts and we are with the leaders going out into the cut....and staying with a bunch of shallow bottom vees like Bertrams, that was saying a lot. At the entrance to the cut where the calm water turns into ocean rollers, we all have to take a right turn and head down to the top of the keys.

    The whole story of the race is written and available on the Banana Boat Co website.

    www.bananaboatco.com

    Click on Media Archives Scroll down to the Extreme Boats Magazine article I wrote in 2006. The story is about this race from Miami to Bimini.

    I won't ruin the ending of the story, but we didn't win, but gave it a good shot in a rough water race.
    Light travels faster than sound....that is why some people appear bright until we hear them speak!!
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    #3
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    After the race we made it back to the docks and gently manhandled the boat into a spot. The engines were very hot and didn't like the close quarter starts and stops so we just basically walked the boat in. Remember we all had crash boxes not transmissions and the only way you could go from forward to reverse was to shut the engine off and bump the starter and shift...then you had to start the engine again and proceed in whatever direction you wanted...slowly...until you had to do the same scenario again to change gears.

    I like the middle shot of the boat just sitting in the water with no fuel left. It had beautiful lines as it just sat there and looked so fast while it was stopped.

    I was greeted by my wife with a nice kiss and one of my customers who had the 34 foot Banana Boat he raced in Modified class...Gone Bananas. They were running TRS drives in that class and ended up breaking one of the drives on a rough re-entry. The guy standing there by the way, was an ex Green Beret in Viet Nam and was on the assination teams they would drop behind enemy lines. They had to come back with the ears off the people they took out, to show they accomplished the mission. He said offshore racing was the closest rush he got to those missions. Tough guy.

    The lady with the glasses was a writer for Spors Illustrated. The sport was covered by some major magazines back then and your name could be very well known in a short time with that kind of exposure. The article she wrote is also on the company website. The couple on the dock were friends of mine that allowed all my family to use their 60 foot Chris Craft Roamer as a platform to watch the race from Government Cut turn boat area. That was considered quite a boat in that time period.
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    Last edited by Top Banana; 12-11-2013 at 01:01 PM.
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    The racers back then would hang around the docks after the race trying to get re-hydrated, some with water and some with other beverages.

    I am sitting here with Betty Cook and her throttleman John Conners and I was trying to make a point that she didn't agree with. I was trying to discourage her from bringing two boats to all the races. Joel Halpern with Beep Beep also brought two boats and I could see the other owners looking with great interest.

    My argument went like this.....If everyone brings two boats and they start building lightweight catamarans for the calm water races, then they would start putting pressure on the APBA. At the minimum the cost for racing had now doubled with two boats and just by that alone the field would start to thin out and pretty much only the very rich could compete. She listened and saw my point, but she was very competitve and wanted to win. Being the only female in the sport she got tons of press coverage and liked being a former world champion in such a tough sport.

    My last comment to her I can still remember to this day. I said....The catamarans will get so exotic and expensive, the owners will not want to run them in any kind of rough water. The APBA will cave in and start making race courses on calmer bodies of water and take us away from real open ocean racing. Betty, I said, if I wanted to race Unlimited Hydroplanes, I would have gone that way. I don't and I also don't want to win a race by beating just two or three other competitors simply because no one else could afford to play at this level.

    As we all know they continued on with the multi boats and the courses were calmed down. The very next year Michel Meynard with Faayva Shoes, brought two boats to the party and became the new World Champ his first year in the sport....beating even Betty and her two boat team.
    Light travels faster than sound....that is why some people appear bright until we hear them speak!!
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    #5
    Founding Member / Super Moderator Ratickle's Avatar
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    Hmmmmm, a prophet amongst us....
    Getting bad advice is unfortunate, taking bad advice is a Serious matter!!
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    #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ratickle View Post
    Hmmmmm, a prophet amongst us....
    Too bad the prophet could never pick the winning numbers on some of the big lotteries over the years since!
    Light travels faster than sound....that is why some people appear bright until we hear them speak!!
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    #7
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    Good stuff...great pictures.
    Parabellum FJ²B
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    #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by Top Banana View Post
    Too bad the prophet could never pick the winning numbers on some of the big lotteries over the years since!
    I'm heading out shortly to win the $400,000,000. I'll share it with you when I cash the check.
    Getting bad advice is unfortunate, taking bad advice is a Serious matter!!
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    #9
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    I was coming down in the elevator for one of the night before parties and this guy says to me.........So, you won the first race of the year in California, right? I said yes, I did. Well, he continues I am the boating editor for the Miami Herald and I need a good story for the race coming up, who are you the most worried about?

    I didn't even hesitate for a,second.....Bill Elswick I said! He responds with...Wait a minute with World Champions and lots of seasoned competitors here, you pick a guy who has never won a race, why?

    I told him that Bill and I competed against each other in the Modified division of the Production classes and he was the toughest guy I ever ran against. We only had little boats, I had a 24 footer and he had a 27 Magnum, but we had to race in the exact same water that the Open Class boats did...less miles, only 100 to 125 compared to their 185 to 225, but the waves were just as big and our speeds were not that much less. We respected each other and neither one ever gave an inch or expected the other one to give anything.

    Bill didn't do well the next day, but I knew at some point he would. The following year, 1980 he just dominated Open Class and was US1 national champion. There was one race out of San Francisco that showed what Bill could do........We started in the Bay and headed out toward the Islands. About 5 miles from,the bridge, the fleet ran into a fog bank sitting right on the water. We were all still packed together pretty tight and heavy with fuel. When we went into the fog bank I was running between Elswick on one side,and Joey Ipolitto on the other side. You could barely see a boat length in front of you and were running in the high 80's at that point.

    My throttleman slowed down a bit and I reached over and pushed the throttles back up and yelled over to,him that everyone else would,back down and we would be ahead when we came out the other side. When we did come out, I looked around and Elswick was on one side and Joey was on the other. We did this 5 times with no change. We were all young and daring at that point in our lives........both of them are gone now may they RIP.
    Light travels faster than sound....that is why some people appear bright until we hear them speak!!
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    #10
    Founding Member / Super Moderator Ratickle's Avatar
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    Cowes Torquay 1980 Winner

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    SATISFACTION BILL ELSWICK
    39 ft SCARAB
    2 X 600 HP MERCRUISERS
    TIME ; 3HRS 5 MINS
    SPEED 79.6 MPH
    RACE DISTANCE 245 NM





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    Last edited by Ratickle; 12-16-2013 at 07:03 PM.
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    #11
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    Didn't Bill also race nascar a couple years? Kind of sponsored himself through Performer Boats?

    In 1980 was he in the Cigarette or the Performer?
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    #12
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    Last edited by Ratickle; 12-21-2013 at 12:10 AM.
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    #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ratickle View Post
    Didn't Bill also race nascar a couple years? Kind of sponsored himself through Performer Boats?

    In 1980 was he in the Cigarette or the Performer?
    Paul, thanks for posting those two photos. The top one Satisfication, was owned by Paul Clauser, who also owned Sunny Isle Marina in N Miami. Bill Elswick rented the boat and shipped it to England for Cowes. He also hired Richie Powers as,throttleman. Richie had raced Cowes many times and knew how to put together a winning effort, which he did here again.

    The next photo was 1980 Bacardi race. This was the first Open Class race Elswick ever won. He used a 39 foot Cigarette to become US1 in 1980.

    He did race in NASCAR back then. There were a few of the offshore drivers that raced Winston Cup or owned a team and hired some of the better known NASCAR drivers to drive for,them.
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    #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ratickle View Post
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    This top photo is from the 1980 Detroit race. That is my boat heading out to the start as Rums of Puerto Rico, followed by Bill Elswick in Longshot. The race was won by Joel Halpern in his catamaran, followed by Betty in her Catamaran, then Elswick, somebody else, sorry can't remember and me.




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    This would be the 1981 Race out of Aventura, or Miami as we all called it. There was a bridge going back to Miami from Miami Beach and to get to the inlet all the boats had to go under it so it was always loaded with photographers.
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    #15
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    The circuit next moved to Detroit in the month of June and then on to the Benihana race in Point Pleasant NJ.

    Betty and I were tied for first place in the Open class standings heading into Detroit based on both of us winning once and coming in third once.

    I owned a bunch of trucking companies back then and there was a nationwide truck strike called, so anyone who was moving trucks on the highways was affected. I was torn between my business and my ego, but Don Aronow called me and told me in no uncertain terms, that business always comes first and for me to not even think about going to Detroit. In the end I stayed home and did my best to help my customers make as many deliveries as possible.

    So, I had time to get ready for the biggest race of the east coast locations. The Benihana was held off NJ and was the direct descendant of the Around Long Island marathon of the 60's and early 70's. The course ran north and south with a leg that went over to Long Island and back....this leg was eliminated in the 80's.

    The water was rough enough for Tom Gentry to snap off the bow of his 38 foot Larry Smith Scarab and put all three crew members into the water. There are some great photos of that broken boat out there somewhere. I blew an engine the day before the race and Phil Lewis recruited me to ride in the helicopter and do the play by play voice over of his films of the race. T2X did this voice over work much better in the later years when he was working for Needle Nose Films.
    Light travels faster than sound....that is why some people appear bright until we hear them speak!!
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    #16
    Thats my brand new 28' Cigarette P-5 parked in front of your boat Charlie in the 1st pic.

    That race was by far the roughest offshore race I've ever been in.
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    #17
    Founding Member / Super Moderator Ratickle's Avatar
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    The blue one with the strakes down the deck?
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    #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ratickle View Post
    The blue one with the strakes down the deck?
    Those aren't strakes, it was a rib that ran down the center of the 288 SS deck on those Cigarettes. In international racing under the UIM, the rules were that you had to have a lifeline down the center of the deck, for any crewman to go forward and have a place to hold on to.

    Aronow thought it would look cool and set his design apart, so he added the rib and then put a lifeline on it with stainless posts to support it. And it did look cool.
    Light travels faster than sound....that is why some people appear bright until we hear them speak!!
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    #19
    Founding Member / Super Moderator Ratickle's Avatar
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    I must be looking at the wrong first pic. Which post number first pic? This very first post first pic?

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    #20
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    One heck of a historical photo!!
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