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Published by Fast On Water Publications 2016
Editors note 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. Editor Roy Cooper Contributors Steve Pinson Kevin Desmond Roy Cooper
Cover photo by Rene Schulz Earl Bentz, Bristol 1979. The year Earl took the lap record to an average of 93.40 mph
Yet again, Records week is over and Christmas is fast approaching. Where does the time go? Once the turkey and tinsel is disposed of, we will be planning for another race season. Who knows what next season will offer. We can only hope it brings with it greater opportunities for circuit powerboat racing to finally move forward out of the doldrums it has now been in for way too long. As you will see the LMBRC 60th event was a great success. Any ideas for future get togethers? Then let us know. I’m thinking there must be a lot of shy members out there! Would love to hear from you with contributions for future issues – memories, photos, specialist interests. So if you feel like putting pen to paper, we look forward to hearing from you. We are happy to work on spelling and editing at this end. So stop hiding your light under a bushel and send in your scribbles.
Contents 1
Percival Hodges Racing
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Torque of the Town
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James Beard circuit boats pt 3
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1966 Outboards
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Gar Wood Story part 1
13 Face Facts 1982
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James Beard Circuit Catamaran Designer Extraordinaire Part 3. Text: Steve Pinson. Photos: Graham Stevens.
1974. Alf Bullen in a Cougar ON Class sprint boat powered by an Evinrude V6 2 litre, 122 cu in Hi-line outboard
Clive Hook and Bill Badsey drove this outfit in the 1974 Windermere 3hr Grand prix. Bill had designed the rear cowl with a ram air scoop to get more air into the engine, which he’d used when running his own Cougar boat in South Africa where some of the lakes were at high altitudes 5
James Beard. 1975 Cardiff ON World Championship. 2 litre Evinrude Hi-Line V6
Peter Thorneywork, Bristol 1975. Racing a Cougar marathon boat powered by a Johnson 2 litre V6 Hi-Line
1975 Paris Six Hour, driven by Johnny Sanders and Tom Posey
Final Part on James Beard circuit designs in next issue 6
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The Gar Wood Story – Part 1 By Kevin Desmond This story begins in the mid 19th century, when a family named Wood left New York State to settle in Minnesota. Civil War Captain Walt Wood settled down with his wife, Elizabeth to have a family. Their son, Garfield Arthur was so christened after the President and Vice president, who were inaugurated in the year of his birth, December 4th, 1880. Garfield was one of twelve brothers and sisters.
haste and their boat got up a furious finish to win. ‘I still feel the thrill of winning that race. The engines driving those paddle wheels
The first job for little Gar was to take care of a neighbour’s cows, who he offers to tend for 2 Cents a cow per month. He gets the job and twenty cows to herd. Father Walt is very much an odd job man, working railroad construction and ferryboat piloting. Young Gar was crew on his father’s ferry, Manitoba, on Lake Osakis. Rivalry was intense between Walt Wood and the captain of the other ferryboat, Belle of Osakis, one Wes Mann, whose one ambition is to demonstrate that his boat is faster. Both boats were wood burning steam paddleboats. One day they hooked up for a duel but Walt hadn’t realised he was short of fuel. Wes Mann, pushing his boat for all he was worth, forged into the lead, jeering as he went by. Walt shouted back in defiance and then ordered little Gar to give him a hand in breaking up the boat’s furniture to provide fuel. Father and son dismembered chairs and tables in wild
fascinated me. I resolved right then that someday I was going to build and race boats of my own.’ Before he reached his teens, Gar knew a good deal about boats and engines. He made a number of toy boats with clockwork motors. In fact, one of the hottest rows he ever had with his father followed his taking apart the family clock to make a motor. He retrieved the situation by selling the boat for considerably more than the clock cost!
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By this time the family had moved to Duluth, on the shores of Lake Superior. At only thirteen years’ old, Gar got the job of running the first petrol-engined launch ever seen at the harbour town. ‘My first ‘speed’ craft was a 16ft boat with a 3hp engine. With it I succeeded in getting 8mph running up and down the harbour at Duluth, near my home, merely by squirting raw gasoline into the bell of the motor with an oil can. Soon after I built a boat for Dick Schell. It had a 10hp engine and its 15mph made it the fastest boat in this country, perhaps the speediest in the world. We beat all other boats on Lake Minnetonka. Fred W Dingle was a boat builder in St Paul, who built a boat called Fritz for a Duluth customer. When Gar saw fritz’s superior performance he decided to go to St Paul to speak with the man who could build such a boat. Soon after Gar moved to St Paul, taking with him his newlywed bride, Murlen. At first he started a kind of portable repair shop, going round the town repairing broken automobiles, while at the same time visiting Dingle’s boatyard to talk speedboat designs. In 1911, financed by W P Cleveland, Gar built Leading Lady in his recently opened machine shop. The engine was bulky and the hull crude looking but Leading Lady had the speed. Gar took the boat to the Mississippi Valley Powerboat Association’s Regatta in Duluth and succeeded in going 10 miles at an average speed of 30mph – phenomenal in those days. In the following year,
having modified the hull, Wood and Cleveland went to all the races and won everything. Then one day in 1912, in St Paul, Gar saw a truck driver, name of Tomas, unloading a dump truck of coal with a hand operated lift and cursing as he did so. Surely there must be an easier way to unload coal? ‘Mrs Wood and I had just $200 between us at the time. “I’ve got a new idea,” I told her one day, “a mechanical device for dumping trucks. Shall I put the money in it?” She was a good sport and said to go ahead, that $200 wouldn’t make or break us.’ Wood used half their reserve fund to build the first hoist in a garage, using a small cylinder purchased for 50 cents from a local junk yard, making the gears himself and ‘borrowing’ the truck from Mr Tomas. ‘The owner of the truck and a group of friends had been attending a party, when they got to hear about our experiment, and hurried to the garage. We were all ready for the final job. Most of them were top-hatted and in formal dress but they climbed on to the truck body and we started the hoist. It shot up too fast and rolled a dozen well-dressed gentlemen unceremoniously out onto the floor. They took it good naturedly though and there was immediate demand for the device. We patented it and started the Wood Hoist and Body Company. It grew so quickly that I had soon brought my brothers into the
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business to help out. It was the year that our father died.’ That business was to grow so big that Gar Wood would always be assured of an income to support his ever-growing, insatiable enthusiasm for speedboat racing. Indeed, by 1912, he was already rich enough to buy an engine from Mr Cleveland and install it in his own hull, calling it the Little Leading Lady.
Greyhaven, Gar Wood’s palatial home near Grosse Point At this time Mrs Murlen Wood bought a toy teddy bear for 15 cents, which Gar stole to use as his mascot to carry on board the Little Leading Lady, which went on to win all the events she was eligible for at the Mississippi Valley Regata, held at Keokuk. Murlen bought another teddy bear and Gar stole that one too. Teddy and Bruin became riding mates. For the next two decades, without Teddy and Bruin on board, Gar Wood would not race. All the dollars in the world could not buy them from him. Murlen Wood was soon making tiny, cork lifejackets, bathing caps, ear mufflers and rubbersoled shoes for these much treasured teddy bear mascots. As speeds on the water escalated higher, Gar’s belief and trust in his teddy bear companions became ever stronger – almost obsessive.
In 1914, Gar, the family and the business moved to Detroit. That summer, once again, he won all the Mississippi Valley races at Peoria.
Enter Christopher Columbus Smith, a boat builder from Algonac, 40 miles north of Detroit and founder of the Chris Craft Company. Smith had been creating race boats since 1911, first for John ‘Baldy’ Ryan, Cincinnati and St Louis sportsman and J Stuart Blackton, silent movie mogul; creating 40 – 50 mph boats called Baby Reliance I, II and III. Then for the Miss Detroit Powerboat Association, the 250hp Sterling engined Miss Detroit I, which won all three heats of the 1915 Gold Cup. But during the following winter Miss Detroit I was having problems and it was obvious she had become an outdated white elephant. Unfortunately money was still owed on her so any thought of purchasing a new boat for 2016 was out of the question. For that year Smith built Miss Minneapolis for a group of wealthy Minneapolis sportsmen, who walked home with the Gold Cup. The Miss Detroit Powerboat Association now had an unsalable Miss Detroit I. Would anyone want to buy it? 11
The LMBRC 60th Event. Held on Saturday 22nd October
The event to celebrate 60 years since the founding of the London Motor Boat Racing Club was a great success and our thanks go to Joy and Carlos Maidana for their help and support in making the event so memorable and the generous use of their facilities at the Grouse and Ale, Lane End, Marlow. Thanks also go to Fast On Water’s Patron, Louise Goodman, for coming along and talking to the gathered throng, and reminiscing over her days as a journalist for Powerboat and Waterskiing. Also to Peter Benstead’s daughters, Julie and Penny for their support and very generous donation towards the event. Also, Roy Cooper for getting the whole thing off the ground and Fast On Water’s Managing Director, Dene Stallard, for long-distance delivery and setting up the display of his team’s F2 publicity boat. A big thank you to all. Finally, to all those who made the trip to celebrate what was undoubtedly one of the two circuit racing clubs that truly put our sport on the map. I think we would all agree that we could do with the likes of Cyril and Peter Benstead, and Len and Edie Britnell today. Never has our sport needed such personalities as it does at the moment. LMBRC 60th Limited Edition Commemorative Medal and Limited Edition Souvenir Programme £17.00 together inc postage and packing (Edition limited to 200; 26 page Programme; Medal 70mm dia.)
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The Bristol 25 event DVD will be available end of November Pre order your copy now £10.00 (£11.00 using PayPal) + £1.50 p&p
Restoration has begun on Berylla II. The work is being carried out by one of the best aluminium coachbuilders in the country along with a top engine man. She will be fitted with a completely refurbished Lea Francis engine, similar to the last engine which powered her. The 14 degree angle drive has been carefully dismantled including its 100 needle rollers. Quite an assembly ahead! The hull has had a good inspection and remarkably it has only a very few small areas of corrosion. These areas will be filled with Defcon to avoid the need to weld or replace panels. More in next issue. Our application to gain Charity Commission Registration is with the Commission at present. It can take up to eight weeks so we should hear any time now. Roy Cooper called in on ex ON driver John Nicholson after the LMBRC 60th event. John retired from powerboat racing in 1984. He won the British Championship in 1979, 81, 82 and 83. His company, Nicholson McLaren Engines, were the engine builders for McLaren Cosworth and his engines powered Emerson Fittipaldi (1974) and James Hunt (1976) to the F1 World Championship. John has kindly donated two race overalls, his original lifejacket and trophies to Fast On Water. 13
From the 1982 Bristol Embassy Grand Prix Programme
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Our goal at the Grouse and Ale is to provide our customers with a warm and friendly place to go. Somewhere to eat, somewhere to relax and somewhere to celebrate. With some nice open spaces for socialising and several nooks and crannies for quieter more intimate get togethers we believe that we have achieved this goal – at least it’s what most of our regulars say!
Grouse & Ale High Street, Lane End, Marlow, HP14 3JG Email: info@grouseandale.co.uk Telephone: 01494 882299 18
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