On our way home from fishing today we stopped to watch these races for a bit. There was six boats in this race, 5 had Evinrude one had Johnson. I don't know how fast they were going but the went screaming by pretty fast. It was hard to take decent pictures, but here is couple anyway.
Model-E115DPLSUC
Serial-05152266
The roundy-round races are always cool to watch....only bad thing is they tend to blow over real easy....
Ahhh.....yes - flashback to my younger days when I had time to race those boats. That class is the SST-60. The powerhead is the 56 cubic inch, carbeurated, 3 cylinder motor, 15 inch tower housing, and stock lower unit with a factory-installed nose cone. No modifications could be done to the engine or lower unit; a strict set of specifications were established that were used to keep the engines the same. The only problem with this, though, was that a number of us took it too literally, and engine blue-printing was fairly common amongst the top running boats.
It has been 6 years since I last drove, but from what I remember, total weight of boat and driver at the end of the race must be a minimum of 825 pounds. Most of the faster boats were constructed of wood, even though there were some fiberglass boats. Driver is strapped into a kevlar/carbon fiber re-enforces safety capsule by a 5 point racing harness. We had trim swithches on the steering wheel. Running specialized props, a good boat could run 83-85 mph, turning just over 8,000 rpm. For some of you, that may not sound like much speed, but these boats could also turn on executed a 180 degree turn at full speed on a course only 150 feet wide, pulling over 2 g's! Try that in a bass boat! (no slam intended :laugh)
A typical racing schedule was two 15-lap qualifying races on Saturday to establish the starting line-up for Sunday. Sunday would start with a last-chance qualifier. The money-race was typically a 30 lap race. Boats would start from a dead-start on a dock. The race starter would drop a flag to indicate the start, and you would hit the ignition and run wide open to the first turn. This would get REAL EXCITING when there are 12 to 15 boats going for the same spot on the first turn!
We raced in the SE and SST-60 class from 1985 thru 2001. It gave us an opportunity to see a lot of the country, running the APR racing circuit. It was a blast, but I have since traded in the race boats for a 21 fishing boat!
Later....
Thats some cool info, I didn't know much about them. We don't see them too often up here in our neck of the woods. You are right about turning sharp, wow. One guy turnred to quick and hooked a bouy, it stayed hooked to boat the rest of the race. Slowed him down quite a bit though.
Model-E115DPLSUC
Serial-05152266
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