• 20 Years Ago- Howard Arneson

    by Paul "Ratickle" Rose


    20 years ago, (actually in September 1990 but 20 sounds better) one of the individual's I admired most in this sport, Howard Arneson, took his 32 foot Skater catamaran and ran the 1039 miles form New Orleans to St. Louis. Not only did he accomplish this run faster than anyone had ever done before, he averaged 81.92 mph running the distance in 12 hours and 40 minutes. The previous record he was trying to beat? 20 hours and 16 minutes….



    One of the most impressive elements of this run was that at the time he was 69 years old. I hope when I’m 69, I can average over 80 mph for over 1000 miles in a boat. I’d be lucky to do something like that as a passenger, let alone a driver.
    Aside from breaking the run record, he achieved another amazing first. No one had ever averaged over 70 mph for a distance over 1000 miles in a boat, let alone over 80 mph, a distance twice as long as the Indy 500. And they don’t run Indy on a winding river full of barge traffic, submerged debris and the occasional clueless pleasureboater.



    Arneson was an early pioneer and proponent of turbine power in performance watercraft. For this run he fitted his32-foot Skater catamaran with a single 1325hp G.E. T 58 turbine hooked to one of his own Arneson ASD-8 drives. In the three years he’d owned the boat before the Mississippi run, he put 430 high-speed hours on the engine, going by his estimation more than 30,000 miles. The 300-pound turbine still buzzed along at 19,500 rpm. A 3.83:1 gear reduction brought the revs down to manageable levels, and for slow-speed maneuvering, he used a pair of electric bass boat motors. The engine burned 110 gph, or about one gallon per mile, at a top speed of 118 mph.



    This was his third attempt, and he was determined to own the record. And, because of his feeling that the future belonged to the turbine engine, he was absolutely positive he had to not just beat the old record. He was determined to absolutely destroy it. As the record books show, he did.
    Howard was one of the great ones. Watch here for future articles on some of his later boats, records, and inventions.