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Editors note It has been a busy few months since the last issue. We attended the F1 event at Victoria Docks; the OSY400 Europeans at Oulton Broad and the Henley Classic Boat Festival. All three gave us the chance to catch up with some old friends to meet some new ones, making some good contacts along the way.
Published by Fast On Water Publications 2018 All articles and photographs are copyright All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission.
Contents
Editor Roy Cooper
Contributors Brian Dewey Roy Cooper
Cover photo: Liege F1 1983 Photo credit needed.
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Ron Wolbold
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Embassy Race of Champions – Fairford 1976
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Roger Jenkins - OE World Champion
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Charles Strang
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Ole Evinrude
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The Incredible Mr K
Ron Wolbold – Shopfitter to Raceboat Builder The following is based on an article about Ron Wolbold taken from the Powerboat 83 Yearbook. ‘My real love is monos. I’ll build anything but I enjoy doing them the most.’ Ron Wolbold started building boats in 1959 and he wouldn’t know what to do with himself if he wasn’t messing around with fibreglass. At the age of 62 he almost quit (1982). ‘I’d only been in my premises in Gloucester for twelve months and I had to get out. Having to move again really made me think about whether it was worth going on. Why not take an early retirement and pack it all in?’
started and you don’t want too many accidents after that age – it takes so long to mend.’ Powerboat racing has changed considerably since Ron’s racing days, not necessarily for the better in his opinion. ‘I used to build lots of hydroplanes, mainly R1’s, really popular they were, but the engines are so temperamental and difficult to get hold of they seemed to have almost died out. And inboards. We used to have great fun with those, but you have to marine your own engine, with outboards all you have to do is take it out of the packing case and clamp it on.’ This by no means implies that he tried to hold on to the past – Ron was always attempting new ideas and would try his hand at anything.
But his customers were having none of that and it didn’t take much persuasion for Ron to find his new workshop in Birmingham and continue turning out monos at a rate of about twenty a year. This down-to-earth one-time shopfitter has tried his hand at racing, though he admits ‘racing was a bit different in those days. In the early sixties we used to race with two in a boat. The driver would sit on the right and the passenger had a crew slot where he had to move backwards and forwards to keep the boat balanced. We used to spend most of our time putting the boats back under the crewmen; it was that rough in those flat bottomed boats, they kept flying out!’
‘The shape of a mono has changed a lot. Jim Wynn introduced the deep V in America and Sonny Levi started using it about a year later in Europe. This was in the days before catamarans and all racing boats became deep V’s. They turned beautifully but they lost speed and my new designs (1983) are going flatter and flatter again. All the time you have to strive for the right combination – the flatter the bottom the faster it goes, the deeper the V the better it turns. I wouldn’t mind betting that if you put a modern day engine on one of those old boats and took it to Windermere, it would break records, though my new boats can hover on the wind now and those old ones used to porpoise. Today’s boats are going so fast that you have to build them to suit the driver. They’re that critical. And no mono is perfect. Johnny Pearce is driving my latest one and I don’t think there is anything
But a bad accident in 1966 forced Ron to give up racing. ‘I missed it a lot, but I was forty when I 2
in Europe to catch it, but it still isn’t cornering right. A mono is much more difficult to get right than a catamaran. A cat is reasonably tolerant of a mistake, it’s on ‘four feet’ and you can trim the engine during the race to help control the amount of boat in or out of the water. The rules say that a mono isn’t allowed the facilities for trimming. Mind you, the rules also say that you’re not allowed anything that will give you aerodynamic lift, and what’s the tunnel of a cat doing, if it’s not giving aerodynamic lift? Maybe we’ll see trim buttons on a mono before long.’
Some customers are prepared to pay the extra price for a wooden hull – and put a fibreglass deck on to keep the weight as low as possible. ‘I’m making one for Andy Elliot now. The problem is
to make the lid fit. To make a top class deck that looks good and is the right shape. Wood makes it very heavy so we make a mould of it and make it in ‘glass instead. The great advantage of a wooden hull is that you can make alterations on it, something you can never do to a ‘glass’ boat – you have to make about ten out of one mould to justify the initial cost. What changes has Ron for the next few years? ‘For starters, I’m changing the seat in my boats. People have become very weight conscious and just want fibreglass buckets to sit on, rather than padded chairs. At the moment we bolt them to the floor but that concentrates too much pressure on one area and you can’t get them low enough. So I’m going to hang them from the combings – the sides of the cockpit. That will make them lower and, with the sides of the seats coming forward, maybe even to the dashboard. It will strengthen the sides and prevent drivers being thrown out. And I think I ought to start making more catamarans, though they can only be built in wood. I’ve made quite a few over a spread of years, but to build them really competitively you must build them one after the other. Drivers tend to go where they know they will get the best, so they come to me for a monohull but will go to somebody else for a catamaran. But there is no doubt that cats make better money and I suppose I ought to start looking to make some money as
When Ron returned to building race boats after a break from 1972 to 1976 he started using glassfibre. ‘It takes two days to make a glassfibre boat. And once it comes out of the mould there’s no spraying to do because the colour paste is put in with the first layer of gel. All you have to do is rig it with steering gear and seat and away you go. It keeps the price down.’ But there are disadvantages in using this nownormal method of producing many boats. ‘A perfect race boat should have perfect edges but you can’t do that with fibreglass, it has to be slightly rounded. And there is always the danger that if you pop it out of the mould too soon it will buckle. A true cure takes seven days but I usually take mine out after four or five and it turns out fine. But if the cure hasn’t progressed far enough, the fibreglass will bend in and make the bottom of the boat curve upwards. You may as well chuck it out then. And, although they say it’s very easy to mend a fibreglass boat, it’s not really. At least, not so it looks neat.’
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I’m over sixty and have to think about retiring at some point!’ But watching the master at work, looking nearer fifty than sixty, it seems fair to assume that BluFin monohulls will be available for many years to come.
Needs You
If you care about the history of circuit powerboat racing and want to see it preserved, then join us and let’s make it happen. You can support Fast On Water by becoming a Friend. Friend’s membership is £25.00 per year (26.50 by Paypal or Debit/Credit Card) We are now at the stage where we can begin to approach various organisations and funding bodies with regard to financing the setting up of the raceboat museum.
fastonwater@live.co.uk 4
We really need your support
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Charles Strang Nationals on Lake Alfred, Florida, where Charlie was one of the inspectors. Powerboat Racing Ambassador Charlie started working for Kiekhaefer in an And Engineer Par Excellence unofficial capacity in 1950. He officially April 12, 1921 – March 11, 2018 Charlie Strang sadly passed away on March 11 of this year. Charles Daniel Strang Jnr graduated in 1943 with a degree in mechanical engineering. Enlisting in the United States Army Air Corp, he expected to be sent to fight in World War II but he was assigned to the Wright Aeronautical Corporation in New Jersey as a test engineer on aircraft engines. After about a year the Army sent him to work at the Flight Propulsion Research Laboratory of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (what became NASA), where he stayed until 1947. From there he went to the Mechanical Engineering Department at MIT as a Research Associate.
started in 1951 and his first job was to design an intake manifold for a Chrysler Hemi that Carl planned on racing in a Mexican pan-American event. Charlie’s first outboard project for Mercury was to make a shifting lower unit for the green tank mercs. He also engineered the first internal exhaust deflector to tune the exhaust of the in-line 6 cylinder Mercury outboard.
At the age of 11, Charles attended a New York boat show with his mother, where he instantly fell in love with a Cyclone race boat fitted with an outboard. His mother promised him she would buy him a race boat when he reached 14. Competing in his first race in 1937, as the youngest driver ever entered (at that time) in the Albany to New York marathon; his first race ended when his outboard runabout sank after some 60 miles. Charlie won his first boat race when he was 16.
That same year, Charlie presented Carl with an idea he had started in college, which was a redesign of the old stern drive technology first developed in the 1930s. Carl wasn’t interested so Charlie worked in secret on the project with two other Mercury engineers. One of them, Jim Wynne, who had left Mercury, took the idea to Volvo and asked Charlie to also quit and join him there. Charlie declined but surprisingly allowed Wynne to do what he wanted with the stern drive and Volvo agreed to buy the patent. Wynne struggled
Racing eventually led Charlie into the business side of boating after first meeting Carl Kiekhaefer at the 1949 APBA
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to explain the detailed questions Volvo asked regarding the stern drive so Charlie agreed to have secret meetings with Volvo while working for Kiekhaefer.
Charlie used to tell an interesting story about how Carl Kiekhaefer got in to the
OMC, a long-time rival of Kiekhaefer, launched their stern drive in 1961 and to Carl Kiekhaefer’s delight it had less horse power than his existing Mercury 80hp. Both Volvo and OMC had attached their drive to a standard engine with low horse power. With Charlie Strang in charge of development, Kiekhaefer engineered the Mercruiser Stern Drive Power Package, which could be attached to 110-140hp engines for significantly more power. Charlie said that his mother was the reason that mercury engines started to be painted black. When the Mercury 1000 came out the planned colour scheme was white with silver and black trim. Kiekhaefer thought the engine looked to large and bulky. When Charlie told his mother about this she told him that women, when wanting to look slimmer, would often wear black, so why not paint the engine black. Carl liked the idea, was pleased with the prototype and so all future Mercury outboards were painted black.
Charlie Strang and Carl Kiekhaefer marine engineering business. Carl told him that he ahd got interested in the Thor manufacturing company. Not for their outboards but for a cheese separating machine they produced. So Carl bought Thor to get the cheese separating machine technology. The outboards were secondary at the time. Charlie said Carl had a unique talent for knowing what the public wanted, which helped make him so successful. Carl told Charlie that the Thor motor had two problems: the ignition and the marketing. Carl set out to fix both issues and in the process created one of the great manufacturing companies of our time.
Charlie eventually moved up to be Executive Vice President and Vice President of Engineering at Kiekhaefer Mercury. He left Mercury in 1964. Carl Kiekhaefer was forced to resign in 1969 and the company name was changed to Mercury Marine but it was not until 1973 that the Kiekhaefer name was finally dropped.
With thanks to the Quincy Looper Racing website.
After two years as a consultant, Charlie joined OMC, starting as Director of Marine Engineering and climbing to President and General Manager in 1974; CEO in 1980 and Chairman of the Board in 1982. He finally retired in 1990. 9
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Ole Evinrude Outboard Motor Pioneer Ole Andreassen Aaslundeie was born in Norway in 1877. His father immigrated to the United States in 1881. Ole, his mother and two siblings joined him the following year. The Evinrude surname, which he adopted in the United States, came from the Evenrud farm in Vestre Toten, where his mother was born. The family settled in Wisconsin and at age 16, Ole worked in a machinery store, studying engineering on his own time. He became a machinist while working at various machine tool firms and in 1900 he co-founded the custom engine firm Clemick and Evinrude. By 1907 he had invented the first practical and reliable outboard motor, which was built of steel and brass and had a crank on the flywheel to start the two-cycle engine.
pressures of business began to take its toll on Bess. By 1912 the factory employed 300 workers. Evinrude also allowed two motorcycle mad teens to tinker in his Milwaukee workshop; one of whom was Arthur Davidson, who went on to Harley-Davidson motorcycle fame. Evinrude formed Evinrude Outboard Motors, which he sold the remaining part of to Meyer in 1913, so he could give his full attention to bringing Bess back to health. As part of the deal with Meyer, Evinrude agreed to stay out of the outboard business for five years.
In 1909 he founded the Evinrude Motor Company in Milwaukee. The story goes that Evinrude’s initial interest in outboards started when he was on a picnic by rowboat during which his future wife, Bess expressed a desire for an ice cream. By the time he had rowed back with the ice cream it had melted. This may well have been the way it was but others have pointed out that Evinrude had worked with Harry Miller, later famous for his Indianapolis cars and engines, who in 1898 had built and tested a prototype four-cylinder outboard motor.
By 1919 Bess was well again and Ole had developed a new lightweight opposed twin outboard developing 2.5-3 hp, making extensive use of aluminium. It was offered o Meyer who turned it down, so the Evinrudes set up a new company and Bess came up with the name, Elto (Evinrude Light Twin Outboard). Production started in 1921 and sales soon took off as there was a demand for an outboard that was lighter (47lbs), ran smoother because of the balanced opposed pistons and started easier due to the battery ignition system.
By 1910 the ‘Evinrude detachable Row Boat Motor’, developing 1.5 hp and weighing 62lbs, was in commercial production and one year later they raised funds for expansion by selling half the business to Chris Meyer for $5000. Sales took off in both America and Scandinavia but the increased
Meanwhile the original Evinrude company was not doing so well and in 1925, Meyer sold 12
the company to Walter Zinn, who, within 12 months, lost $150,000. Zinn then sold it on to August Petrie, owner of the Milwaukie Stamping Company, who set about building up the business. The introduction of the 2hp Sportwin; 6hp Fleetwin; 12hp Fastwin and the 16hp Speeditwin restored the fortunes of the company and Petrie chose to sell while the books looked good. The company was bought by Briggs and Stratton - a manufacturer of small industrial engines, with lawn mowers being a major outlet. Briggs intended to set up an outboard company similar to that of General Motors. He collected together a number of existing companies and wanted to acquire both the Lockwood Outboard Motor Company and Elto. He achieved his ambition in March 1929 and Ole Evinrude became president of OMC – the Outboard Motors Corporation. On the 24th October 1929, Wall Street crashed and OMC along with most other companies in America to an instant hit. Sales dropped and workers were laid off. The OMC plant sometimes was in production for less than 20 hours a week. The decline continued through 1931 and 32 and to meet the payroll, cutprice sales were held at the factory during weekends. Ole Evinrude had taken no salary from 1930 onwards and continued to work on new outboard models but in May 1933 Bess died and Ole followed, 14 months later. He was just 57 years old. OMC pulled through, due to the popularity of Ole’s new outboards; the fully shrouded 5.5hp Lightwin Imperial and the 9.2hp Lightfour Imperial. Both available with an optional rewind starter cord system.
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This month (July) saw Berylla getting her bottom wet for the first time for at least thirty years. Steve Kerton (not in leather flying helmet or white overalls) took her out on Wyboston Lake; keen to see what it felt like driving a 1930s raceboat.
______________________ John Hill’s 1990 F1 Burgess is still waiting for its livery as we get to grips with vector drawings and vinyl cutting software. It’s amazing how quickly you can learn when necessity calls. We must thank Mike Richardson, Nigel Hall and Tony Bayliss for their help with this.
It was great to see such an iconic boat finally back on the water and the fully restored 1.5 litre Lea Francis engine’s throaty growl certainly added to the excitement of those watching from the bank.
We had the Fast On water stand at three events. The F1 race at Victoria Docks, the OSY400 European Championships at Oulton Broad and the Henley Traditional Boat Festival, where we caught up with some old friends, made some new ones and developed new contacts.
She looked so much more graceful on the water rather than on the back of a trailer and everyone was pleased with the first test. Berylla was also on the water at the Henley Traditional Boat Festival, running with Bluebird K3.
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