Introduction to Hydroplane Racing and Early History

And you could tell he didn't want to let go. Dean died the next year in this pit right here. They flipped over and you're stuck here. How do they keep it from filling with water? Or not. Where would the motorsport industry as a whole be if this hadn't happened ? We are at the Seaplane and Race Boat Museum near Seattle, Washington. This is an aspect of motorsport that we do n't really know anything about because I didn't grow up in a region where it was. Can you tell us something interesting? Something interesting. Well, come in . Welcome to the Seaplane and Race Boat Museum. Where did this aspect of motorsport come from? Bull Cup racing began at the beginning of the last century, in 1903. It is actually the oldest continuously organized motorsport trophy in America. From 1913 to 1950, the Gold Cup was held in Detroit, Michigan . So he really became part of their culture. They have been the center of great boat racing for generations. A gentleman here in Seattle named Stan Sears, who was a local car dealer and racer before World War II, wanted to get back into boat racing when things started to normalize after the war. It turned out that he found a lot of pre-war equipment and nothing suitable for setting a new world record for the measured mile. He called a gentleman named Ted Jones, who had been a local Boeing engineer in the race before the war, and told him of his plans to build a boat capable of setting a new world record, and that he wanted to use a recently surplus World War II fighter engine to do so. Ted wanted to build a boat that was essentially an airplane wing with running surfaces underneath, and use a propeller to create three points of suspension so the boat would glide through the water rather than furrow it like the boats they had seen in Detroit did. Well, Stan said, “Sounds pretty good. "Make me one of these." Two years later, they released a boat called Slow Motion 4, Stan's fourth racing boat. And they set off for Lake Washington. And what do you know? At 60 mph, the back of the boat came out of the water. She leveled off, they accelerated and set a new world record – just over 178 mph . And that brought Seattle into the world of big boat racing. So this is the same place where all that Budweiser used to be. Bernie Little would park his bus here and park his truck, and we would park the boat right here, and this is where they would unload and unload Budweiser. Here comes Budweiser. Bob Nash. He can be proud of himself. He finished. He…