Long Beach California - Boats and Babes!
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Cesare Scotti of Italy won the world's biggest, richest outboard powerboat race from a fine field as an American archrival, Don Pruett, crashed.
Not yet six years old, Lake Havasu city is one of the youngest communities in Arisona and the United States. It is a go-getting sort of place. With a touching glance back to the past, it has purchased London Bridge, whose 1,005 foot span will be reassembled with "dignity and respect" to link the town and its airport ( and its a damn lie, say Lake Havasuvians, that they thought all along they were getting the Tower Bridge and its more picturesque structure). It is also the site of the world's biggest and richest race for outboard powerboats- an activity more in keeping with the town's up-to-the-minute way of life.
This Outboard World Championship, which was run for the sixth time last weekend on Lake Havasu, was in essence a shoot-out among the leading engine (Mercury-OMC) and boat manufacturers. Win Havasu, the feeling goes, and the aura of victory will trickle down to the public that has something a little less special in mind than flat-out racing- like fishing, water-skiing, or just noodling around on the water.
That spirit of competition attracted 114 boats from five counties (USA,Canada, Italy, England, & Austria) for a four- hour endurance run on Saturday and another on Sunday- and for the first time nearly all the leading contenders rode so-called "tunnel" hulls. This is a new wrinkle in boating, a hull with twin sponsons forming a tunnel between them. The hull is partly supported by a cushion of air developing in the tunnel, and as a consequence speeds have risen to all time highs- better than 100 mph for the fastest boats.
Although he was not to taste the fruits of victory, the fastest man at Lake Havasu was a Texas- born Californian named Don Pruett. Pruett is not completely at home with Chamber of Commerce notions like dignity and respect. After winning the Elsinore 500 on Lake Elisinore, California this year he bit the cork out of a bottle of celebratory champagne and tossed it without a pause. He's as fast with his fists as he is with the bubbly. "I saw Don in a real battle in Galveston I think it was," said Racing Promoter Mel Sikes. "When the bar stools started flying, I just leaned back against the wall and watched. It was beautiful the way Don handled himself."
"Wild" was the way Mrs. Pruett saw it on Saturday as she observed Don's technique on the one right-hand turn of Havasu's four-mile, boomerang-shaped course. Vagrant gusts of wind disturbed the boats' air cushions, and the shore was ominously close, but Pruett cupped his head in his left hand as he took the turn with the other hand on the wheel.
For two days brusque winds had lashed the confined waters of Lake Havasu. The redoubtable Italian driver Renato Molinari had flipped his boat during a practice run. Pruett's pal Joe Habay blew- over during Saturday's race and broke his leg. Needless to say, Pruett with three big Mercury stacker engines making healthy sounds on his Ted Jones- designed hull, paid no attention to such trifles and went for the lead. After two hours his "Triple Trouble" made her only pit stop for fuel. At the end of the second hour Pruett still led. But soon he encountered trouble with the lower units of his engine rig and mechanics worked furiously to repair the damage. They did so and Pruett resumed the race. At the end of Day 1 he lay sixth, while up ahead was a three-way tie between Italy's # 33 Cesare Scotti, Texas' # 90 Johnnie Sanders, and Colorado's # 5 Robert George.
Scotti, driving a 21-foot Molinari with a pair of Evinrude X-115's, is an extremely experienced man; he was voted the Outstanding Outboarder of 1968 for winning the Florida Gold Coast Marathon and placing second in the Paris Six Hour Race during a consistently fine year. He and other Europeans are noted for steady, disiplined approach to racing. But at Havasu a rare mental lapse cost him a clear-cut lead. Experiencing engine difficulties just before the finishing flare was fired, he stopped a few yards short of the finish line and turned into the pits instead of completing the lap. Had he done so, he would have been credited with 70 laps rather than 69- the number completed by Sanders and George.
On Sunday, Scotti kept his wits about him at all times and defeated Sanders by a lap to take the $15,000.00 first place at a record average speed (for the 2 days) of 72 1/2 mph. The veteran Bill Sirois of Miami, Florida ended up in third place. Pruett? Poor devil, in his haste to catch the leader he collided with another boat and nearly sank.
If hard work, forethought and careful preparation could always be counted on to breed victory, Harold Eis would have been a cinch to win the third annual World Outboard Championships at Lake Havasu. Defending Champion, Eis, an automobile-parts dealer from Kansas, believes in taking care- particularly of his boat "Salty Cat," a two hulled outboard powered by twin 110-hp Mercury motors.Days before most of his competition had even arrived at Lake Havasu where the championships were to be held, Harold was there spade in hand, digging himself a makeshift dry dock in the hard shale of the lakeshore.
Eis wanted to win this race. He wanted the four foot trophy offered by the McColloch company, manufacturers of chain-saws and outboard motors, to be the first man to win the race three times, and he wanted the $8,100.00 in cash that would go to the top boat. That is big money in outboarding.
Unlike hydroplane racing or offshore powerboating, outboarding is a relatively inexpensive sport and the money it offers is usually small. The $25,000.00 overall purse in the Havasu championship makes it the richest of all outboard races, and its awards can be won by engines and hulls that are far cheaper than those contesting inboard honors.
Although many of the boats at Havasu bore about as much relationship to Junior's little runabout as Ben Hur's racing chariot did to the surrey with the fringe on top, outboard racing still enjoys an identification with the man (or woman) who owns a boat and motor for weekend fun. As a result, the fields in outboard races tend to be larger than those in other boating events. There were more than 120 crews at Havasu, for instance, eager to contest Harold for his cup and all the cash that goes with it.
Most of the 120 arrived only a day or so before the race began, and all, except Harold meekly established their pits where they were told. Eis was different. Eis wins races and he knows the most important factor in a two-day marathon (two hours on Saturday, four on Sunday) is preparation- and preparation for the worst. As he saw it, if he needed to change one of his engines in a hurry he could speed up the process by digging a canal and burying his trailer in the canal's bed to form a sort of do- it- yourself drydock. Then if he should have trouble, he could simply run his boat onto the trailer, pull off the bad engine, replace it with one of the two spares he always carries in his truck and get going in minutes. Eis originally wanted to establish his pits right below race headquarters at the Nautical Inn, within easy reach of a power line for his lights and tools. But the spot he wanted lay outside the bounds of the official pit area, and after some futile give-and -take with an adamant official who said he must pit where everyone else pitted.Eis capitulated and went to work on his private harbour.
All afternoon he and his Nebraskan crewman, Mike Hynek, toiled in the ice cold Colorado River water. They filled sand bags to support the trailer's wheels and built a levee. At dusk on Wednesday evening, they were still at it. Mrs. Eis, who doubles as Harolds pitt boss, tried to get him out of the water. " You're gonna catch pneumonia wading around out there," she cried "I hope not" replied Harold more interested in the race than a little lung trouble. By the time Eis, still miraculously free of pneumonia, had finished his digging, some of the other drivers had begun to arrive from three countries and more than a score of states.
There was Jan Schoonover from Lima, Ohio, another driver with 110 hp Merc's on his boat. Schoonover's boat, which looks like a Batmobile, holds his class world record of 96 mph. Obviously, it could do 100 mph on any of the straights on Havasu's four-mile-long, boomerang-shaped course. Other drivers out to wreck Eis's winning streak was Joe Stevens Sr. from Manteca, California, the winner of 19 out of 20 races; Floyd Murton from Hot Springs, Arkansa, with a record 11 wins in seven race meets; Lou Cooley a radio traffic reporter from Station KXOK, St. Louis, who gives his radio audience a running account of the race while driving his boat and tall John Merritt, a gas- station operator from Westchester, California, who would drive the biggest boat in the race and had arrived at Havasu fresh from a victory in the grueling Salton Sea 500-mile marathon.
The man Eis feared the most of all, however, was Bill Hill Jr. from Cullman, Alabama driving a Power Cat with not two but three Mercs. "From what I've seen so far" said Eis, who spent all day Thursday trying to bait his competitors into pick-up races that would burn up their engines before the marathon began, "Bill's my favourite to win."
McColloch Properties Inc.likes to think of its Lake Havasu City as a kind of lakeside Palm Springs. By Friday night it looked more like Coney Island overrun by a mechanics convention. On the shore a blaring carnival whirled and swooped in a miasma of cotton candy and canned music. Overlaying it were the sounds of portable generators cranking out power for trailer dwellers, and the tortured howl of someone testing their outboard engine!
On Saturday morning the weather continued cool,dry, and clear. As 2pm approached, the pit area was ripe with speculation; who would be in front after the first days two hour run? Eis with his Mercs? One of the big three engined boats like Bill Hill's or the yellow Raysoncraft driven by Don Harper of Norwalk, California? One of the outnumbered Evinrudes sponsored by Doc Jones of Pheonix and driven by such veterans as Ted May of Long Beach, California? No one was more interested in the answer than Harold. The race began with a roar at 2 sharp. Everyone was there, everyone but Harold. "I think he's playing it cool" blarred the P.A. announcer. "He's hanging back to run in clear water." And that is precisely what Eis had in mind. But his pit boss, Mrs. Eis, stopwatch in hand, deep in a set of hip boots, was worried that he might have delayed his start too long. As a ribbon of boats was chasing each other around the four-mile course, Eis began to move up on the leaders. His times dropped from 5 minutes 20 seconds on the eighth lap to 4 minutes 37 seconds on the 16th. But way out front, seemingly beyond reach as the days deadline at 4 o'clock neared, were Ted May running second in # T-2 and Bill Hill running smoothly in first place in that Power Cat that Eis feared so much.
At the end of the first days racing, the Race Committee, for reasons only to themselves, announced that May was leading, then changed its mind after a long meeting and announced that the leader wasn't May at all, but Hill. Hill spent Saturday evening repairing the wear and tear his first day lead had inflicted on his sleek hull and three big Mercs. Deep in their pits, Harold Eis and company meditated on what had to be done on Sunday to beat Hill, May, and the rest. Harold had been robbed of one lap by by a group of myopic scorers and was three laps behind the leader. Two laps he figured he could make up- but three? He didn't know. The final four hours would tell the most when speedy pit stops could make the difference. While the competition slept, Eis and family practiced filling his tanks until they got the time down to just over a minute.
On Sunday morning, luck seemed to be with Harold. He made a picture-perfect start, right next to the pace boat and flying. In the first hour, he had made up almost every lap he had owed the leaders. Then trouble struck. He blew an engine. Travelling at upwards of 75 mph, with only one good engine, he could stay with the boats up front- but couldn't pass them. He had no choice but to come into the pits and change the sick port engine if he wanted to win. No one else in the whole race was prepared for a quick change of an engine the way Eis was. His face whipcord tight, Eis drove his boat onto the trailer in the harbour he had so diligently built. With the bow line secured to the winch, he hopped out of the boats drivers seat and, still wearing his lifejacket but without a helmet, leaped into the truck hitched to the trailer and jerked his sick boat clear of the water. Hardly 10 minutes later a new engine had replaced the old and Eis was back on the water. The only words he had said during the whole operation were "No, the wrench with the yellow handle." "If I had to change an engine like that it'd take me a week" said an awestruck bystander.
But it was all for nothing. After one more lap poor Harold was back in the pits with a broken steering gear. "We're all through" he said. "No we're not" insisted Helen, bravely setting to work on jury rigging the steering. But Harold was right. With the steering gear repaired in helter skelter style, he started out again, only to find more trouble. On Lake Havasu it seemed that all the luck that accompanied his careful preparations in years of racing had suddenly deserted him and when the race ended, he was in 20th place. His only comfort was that Hill and May, both plagued with engine trouble, finished 24th and 60th respectively.
In contrast, Harper's big # 106 made only a single pit stop as it cruised along at an average of 59 mph to win the Third Annual Championship. "It was like going for a ride in a Cadillac on a Sunday afternoon," said relief driver Dutch Blaser.
