In my early years of boat racing, I felt successful if I avoided the dead last feeling. My first boat which was a runabout I had purchased from Than Field I sold and purchased a new one which Than had built. It was a beautiful mahogany shell with clear spruce internals. I had only run a couple of races in it, but it seemed to be a much better handling boat. I had managed to run in the pack with it.
The next race was in Dayton Ohio at Triangle Park. I drove over on Saturday and tested the course. Everything seemed to be OK. A group of us racers decided to camp out that night. We made a campfire, and I was introduced to Rolling Rock beer. Then someone decided we should do a little hill climbing on one of the guy’s motorcycle. Unfortunately, the Rolling Rock kind of increased our courage. Fortunately, there were no injuries, except some very severe hangovers.
First race of the day was A runabout, my class. We got the boat fueled and into the water. When the five-minute gun went off, I fired it up and drove out on the course. Milling around with all the other twelve boats waiting for the one-minute gun, all with open exhaust, my head was pounding. The gun fired, and we all began maneuvering to hit the start finish as close as we could to the end of that minute.
I was behind the group as a whole, and it turned out they were a little bit early. As luck would have it, I shot through the group right at the start finish line and right on the money. All of a sudden, I realized that it was really quite out front. I drove my heart out and finished first to win that heat. Gee, I felt a lot better.
In the second heat, my opponents were a little bit snaky and were a little late to the start. Once again, I hit it almost perfectly and had another quite run to victory. I still have that trophy somewhere. I also learned that beer was not good fuel for an outboard.
Just another one of life’s lessons.
