Memories of John Crouse

[Top Banana]

I just finished my move from Montana back to Florida for this winter and I noticed a notebook John Crouse had given me just before he passed away. John was affected by Alzheimers in his last days and some of his writing was repetitive, but he always dreamed of doing a second book after SEARACE. He already had a title for it...The Legends. This notebook contains his writings for that book. With the permission of the Serious offshore community, I will share some of these stories over this coming winter.



The Legends, was intended to be the stories of the people themselves. SEARACE was the stories of the actual races, with mentions of the people. John found that there was a great interest in the real people behind the race story. So to honor my friend John Crouse and to keep his memory alive a little longer, here are some of the stories of the people that began modern offshore racing.


Don Aronow who stood 6 foot 3 inches, had a 5 foot 6 inch riding mechanic by the name of Knocky House. Knocky had a knack of keeping his bosses engines running and that played a major role in the many races they won. One time in Italy, they were preparing to put the new 32 foot Cary in the water. The name of the boat was The CIGARETTE. The race was the Viaregio - Bastia - Viareggio and one of the dock workers was trying to shake Knocky down for some extra cash to lower the boat into the water. Knocky smiled and went back to tell Don what was going on. Don walked back to the dock worker and pushed the dock worker off the dock into the water. He then calmly climbed up onto the crane and promptly lowered the boat into the water himself.

Knocky was an Olympic wrestler as well as a Navy diver who worked on some of the damaged ships in Pearl Harbor right after the December 7, 1941 attack. During the Miami to Nassau race, the 27 footer that Aronow and Knocky was racing, the boat exploded and caught fire just three miles from Nassau harbor. Don yelled at Knocky and told him to stop bleeding because there were sharks in the water.