The boats were launched into
Lake
Ponchetrain (sp) and had to go through locks to
get into the river channel.
The very first year my dad had never even
seen the river before the start
of the race. They were late getting the
race started as there was a lot
of commercial boat traffic through the
locks and it was almost dark by
the time all the boats were out into the
river and the race started.
They had been given chart books and some
instructions of how to follow the
navigation lights on the river. This
first year Bobby Brown, who was
my dads half brother and
went on in latter years to found
Avenger Boats, was co-pilot.
The race started and they
headed
up river. Darkness soon closed in.
As my dad related to us later
they
were running fine at full speed
(16 ft wood cat with twin Mark
78 6cyl Merc. engines and about 250
gallons of gas) which was
probably
45-50 mph. All of a sudden the boat
jumped straight up in the air
back
down and up in the air again....
The first thought that went
through
my dads mind was that there were
rapids on the Mississippi
river!!!
Backing out of the throttle and
keeping on course they soon
discovered
the source of the 4 ft swells
was the wake from tugboats
pushing
barges up river.. The swells would
line up all the way across the
river for miles behind a tug pushing a
long line of barges up
river.
The Mississippi is a very treacherous
run of river. The currents
change the location of the sandbars
regularly making any deviation
from the center channel a gamble at best.
Many of the racers would be
running
in full daylight and take what
looked like a clear shortcut
around
a bend in the river hoping to save
a mile or more in distance only
to find themselves several hundred
feet from deep water stranded in
inches of water. Whole trees could be
floating inches below the surface
in mid channel making it a necessity
to carry several spare lower
units
on board to be changed out on some
muddy bank after impacting one
of these obstacles. The pit stops were
located at pre-arranged
locations.
The race organization provided only
a gravity flow gas truck parked
as close as they could get to the water
but only with a short gas fill
hose. This is where your "pit crew"
came into play. My mom, my
brother, and myself were the pit crew.
Which was a wild job in
itself.
We had pulled the boat to the race with
our family 55 Cadillac
sedan.
On the trailer we had about 10 10 gallon
milk cans and some spare parts,
All tied down with rope. We left
New Orleans at the same time as
the racers. The idea was we were to
beat them to the next pit stop
location, fill up the milk cans with the
gas from the truck (it was
pre-mix
at least) and be ready when the racers
arrived. Sure the racers
were only averaging 50 mph at best. But they had
the benefit of going in a
straight
line. We had to negotiate towns, cross
the river back and forth, often
on some very slow ferry boats.
(Remember this is 1956 in
Louisiana,
Mississippi, Tennessee, Missouri)
We often found ourselves flying
down dirt roads at over a 100 mph with the
trailer barely touching the
ground
and milk cans rattling like God knows
what, trying to find our way
through
some cotton field to a
spot on a map that no one knew
the
existence of.
I was 12 years old and my
brother
was 10. Our job was to carry
those 10 gallon milk cans from
the gas truck
to the boat while my Mom, Dad,
and Uncle Bobby would be filling the
tanks by dumping the cans into
a large funnel in the neck of the tanks.
I can remember several of these
stops being at night with the mosquitos
so thick by the river bank they
would carry you off.
Dad was one of the
front runners most of the way. We were at what
was to be the last gas stop
waiting
for them to arrive. They didn't
arrive.... Many of
the racers came and went but still no sign of
my Dad. Finally another
Power Cat
racer came in and said he had seen
them a couple of miles back
underway
but moving slowly. It was after
dark when they pulled in.
They had hit a huge tree that had broken
the lower unit on one motor and
had pulled the transom loose such that
when they stopped, the boat
filled
with water and sank. They had gotten
up on a sandbar and managed to
change the lower unit but the rear of
transom was damaged so bad that
my dad wanted to quit. My mom would
not hear of it. She had
been
through hell on this trip and was not
going to quit now. A farmer
had come down to watch the crazy boat
racers and had driven up on his
tractor. My mom got him to pull his
tractor down and we hooked a rope
up to the boat and drug it up on the
bank with the back of the boat
up on dry land. They went and found some
tin from the side of a barn that
was nearby. With hammer and nails they
patched the rear of the boat and
stuffed blankets in the opening so that
it kept the water out. My
mom and us shoved the boat in and it floated.
My dad and uncle jumped in
started
up the motors and headed off for
St Louis. We made it there
ahead of them to see them finish the race
in 13th place that year... More
on other years to follow....