N.O.A. 1953 North South

[racingfan1]

Decemeber 1953 Boat Sport story

[smittythewelder]

Who were the big-name hull builders in those days?

[DeanFHobart]

Who were the big-name hull builders in those days?

Jacoby, Neal, Swift were some for sure. Very cool post, Boat Sport was great. It's available at Boatsport.org.

[Al Lang]

Jacoby, Neal, Swift were some for sure. Very cool post, Boat Sport was great. It's available at Boatsport.org.

Ed Hatch did a great job with Boatsport.org. Contains, issues of Boat Sport, Speed & Spray, Hydroplane Quarterly and a lot more history items. A great site for old racing.

[DeanFHobart]

Jacoby, Neal, Swift were some for sure. Very cool post, Boat Sport was great. It's available at Boatsport.org.

Some others are: Philinger "Filinger" , not sure of spelling and Van Pelt. Sid Craft and Marchetti were not on the scene yet.

And probably Desilva was making runabouts.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

Our first hydro, never made a start, was a Mishey. That was in 1965. Our second race, and the first one for the Mishey hydro was in Nuevo Gurerra, Mexico. At that race we pitted next to Steve Jones from Corpus Christi and we were the furthest south in the pits. Steve had an Ashburn runabout that would sink before it could be started if he didn't have any pit men. Baldy, Mark and I ended up being his pit men. That was where we first met Steve.

To go back to our first race...the one in front of my Dad's lake house...and the first boat race we had ever seen....I took pictures of all the boats testing in light fog. They were going round and round, and the smell of the exotic fuel was wonderful. I took pictures of Larry Baker's Fillinger runabout, a yellow Canalito runabout (built around Houston I think)...and a picture of that Mishey my Dad bought a month or so later.

My friend Alex Wetherbee had gotten back into racing the same year I started would have won the 1949 Albany-New York Marathon if he had not run out of gas 100 yards short of the finish. He was factory driver for Morphew Boats out of Paris, Texas. One of the people involved in Morphew named Winters bought Morphew out and a few years later changed the name of the boats to Winters. They built solid wood boats with stringers and decking.

Our first competitive hydro was a Sidcraft. Then for a short time there was Sidson. I have some old magazines that I could check that might add to the more known crafts from that time. Also Louis Williams successfully competed with a Fillinger runabout up until around 1971 or 72.