Unlimited hydroplanes - the other "other" racing

If you haven't seen unlimited hydroplane racing, you're missing a good show, especially at Lake Guntersville in Alabama, site of the year's first race. The race has been held annually since 2018 (excluding 2020) and has produced some of the closest racing I've ever seen. (And I've been going to unlimited races since 1979.)

This year's race is June 29-30, and the admission is quite cheap compared to other major motorsports events. And with other classes of boats racing in between the unlimited heats, you get a full day of racing. More info at:
https://www.facebook.com/GuntersvilleLakeHydrofest/.

(This years other races will be in Madison (IN), Kennewick (WA), Seattle and San Diego. (Detroti dropped out but is planning on returning in 2025.) More info at:
https://www.h1unlimited.com/)

 

Unfortunately, the Reno Air Races were run for the last time in 2023 due to encroaching development near Stead Airport. As of now I know of no replacement that has been found.

 

Good news for air racing fans!

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Unlimited hydroplane season opens next weekend on Lake Guntersville! I'll be there.

 

Not so. Trivago shows 29 lodgings in town, 7 of which get Excellent ratings. And American Eagle has three round trips a day on Canadair RJs to/from DFW. It may not be Reno, but it certainly isn't "None".

 

The racing at Guntersville was great until weather intervened on Sunday afternoon, but at least, unlike last year, they did get the final heat in. The first heat on Saturday was a humdinger; these two boats went side by side for three full laps; the red boat won by about half a boat length.

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The start of heat 3 on Sunday morning made for a great photo, though the boat that would win the heat was already out of frame to the right! These guys will be racing this weekend on the Ohio River in Madison, Indiana.

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What hydroplanes looked like in the '50s and '60s: round noses, wooden construction (what looks like mahogany really is!), Allison or Merlin V-12 sitting in front of the driver, no seat belts. Very dangerous, just like racing on land was during the same era. (In one race in 1966, three top drivers were killed in two separate accidents.)

These are boats restored (or even rebuilt from scratch) by the Hydroplane & Raceboat Museum in Seattle (or their members). This was taken at a now-annual event called Mahogany & Merlot on Lake Chelan in central Washington. https://www.mahoganyandmerlot.com/

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In 1979 my New York-based company sent me on a field assignment in Seattle that lasted 18 months. This is where I discovered, and became fascinated by, hydroplane racing. After that assignment ended, they sent me down to their plant in Stuart, Florida for most of 1981.

I attended the Champion Spark Plug Regatta at Miami Marine Stadium, which was the opener of the 1981 unlimited season. Bernie Little's Miss Budweiser, powered by a Rolls Griffon engine, was the boat to beat, and it won that race as well. His main rival, Bill Muncey in the "Blue Blaster" Atlas Van Lines, failed to finish. The surprise was the boat that finished second, the new Pay 'N Pak turbine boat, in its first race, despite battling the salt water all day. That was the first boat to use the Lycoming T55 engine, which eventually became the standard powerplant used today. Compared to Seattle, the boats passed much closer and the sound reverberated off the concrete roof. Various limited classes of boats filled the time between the unlimited heats. I too hope the Miami Marine Stadium is saved and renovated, even if it never hosts another boat race.

While in Stuart, I also attended a large limited hydroplane affair called the Sailfish Regatta, which featured about all the classes of racing except the unlimiteds. It was fun to watch the wide variety of boats.

 

I conducted pit tours at the only attempt the unlimiteds made to race in Philadelphia in 1986 (which was ultimately ruled "no contest" because of high wind on Sunday, though the boats did go out to run exhibition heats at a reduced speed for the benefit of the large crowd that had showed up on both sides of the Delaware River). On Friday night they held a luau for all the volunteers on a pier on the Philly side of the river, and I got to meet Hanauer, Kropfeld and Steve Reynolds. When I told Steve he was my favorite driver, he invited me to have lunch with him and his wife in his boat pit the next day, which I did. It was only hot dogs and canteloupe, but that didn't matter. Somewhere I have a photo of me and Steve standing next to his boat, but I need to find it.

Steve was driving the Miss 7-Eleven for Steve Woomer, and Jim Lucero had just joined the team as crew chief. During testing on Friday, Steve took the boat out on the course with it covered with wool tufts. Lucero was in a cherry-picker crane overhead watching the boat with binoculars to see the air flow over the hull at speed. It shows what a dedicated designer and crew chief Lucero was. (He had originally designed that boat for the Pay 'N Pak team, where it was their backup hull in 1982. By 1986 it had been fitted with a canopy, as all the boats soon would be.)

Years later, after Hanauer had retired as a driver and was doing color commentary for the TV coverage, I saw him just sitting by himself behind the pits in Madison (where I was also doing pit tours) and we had a nice chat. Lately, Chip enjoys driving his 1982 Atlas Van Lines boat in exhibitions at the Northwest hydroplane races. He also drives Muncey's 1977 "Blue Blaster", which is appropriate because he was Muncey's hand-picked successor for the Atlas team.

 

I remember seeing photos of the Acadian but never saw it in person. Another crazy idea was the four-point boat that Circus Circus attempted to run in 1980. It was based on a successful R/C design that obviously did not translate successfully to a full-size boat. I remember seeing it coming down the front straight in Seattle when it suddenly made a hard turn to the left, fortunately without flipping over, for no apparent reason. Ultimately it led to Circus Circus leaving the sport for awhile before coming back with a conventional boat that won the championship in 1990. That boat's driver was Chip Hanauer, and its crew chief was Dave Villwock, who then decided to take up driving, quite successfully as it has turned out. And he's still doing it at age 70!