Wayne Peeters Family and Son John Peeters

[Ron Hill]

Wayne and I are shirt tail relatives. His wife, Penny, is my cousin.

[Wild Wayne]

Well my boatracing got started in 1968 when I married Penny Heggenberger. She was a Jr. in high school and I was a senior. Her brother John was running JSH & JSR at the time so we went to the races with them. You all remember Lloyd and Donna Heggenberger. Donna is Laura Hills youngest sister. Well growing up going watersking at the River and the Salton Sea from 1956 I had a love for watersports. Before I knew it I was the proud owner of a Sid Craft CSH (cloth deck) with the better part of the sponsons and bow missing. I got it from Russ Sr and Ron Hill. Russ said if I could fix it he would loan me a motor to run. Well before you knew it the boat was ready and Russ Sr loaned me a C Merc motor he called the Christmas Tree. The only thing was the first race to run was the Needles Marathon 1969, I had no idea what this was to be as I was used to seeing the races of 3 laps. We got to Needles a day early to have Russ set me up as he had done for many and I took the boat for a ride. Interesting! Little did I realize the lenght of the race that weekend.
Well we were all finished testing so Penny and I had a invite by Jimmy Dawe to stop by the family pub????!!!!! Well I'll leave it up to you what went on there. What a weekend, I ended up finishing 2nd.

[Ron Hill]

That Sid Craft was CAPNZEE'S....I think.. The Christmas Tree motor ended up being owned by Al Stoker of John's Custom Marine, Stoker Boat, Mr. MOD VP....That C motor sat in the back room of John's Custom marine until last fall when Pat Murphy bought it from Al. It was a standard Mark 30-H, block came from Nebraska, was af our port motor, but came with a seal and flat top pistons. My dad built a brand new C Quickie for it,,,the tower was one color the pan another and the starter another...all of which were REALLY UGLY...why it was called Christmas Tree is beyond me...Should have been called dead cactus...or dead weeds...

Al Stoker raced his first race with that motor in C runabout at Lake Weist...in Brawley, California... on Capnzee's Bill Boyes runabout...almost 40 years ago!

Jimmy Dawe's bar was called The Couple Up, becasue "RAILS" hung out there..."Rails" are people that work on the train...Helen Dawe, Jimmy's mother used to run the bar...and make the best PIZZA I ever ate....Drank more than my share of COORS beer there.......

[Wild Wayne]

I do remember that bull ring in Brawley. It was my second race, 1st clock start. Davidson and all the rest of the CSH guys said that's OK Wayne just follow us????? Well I did, the next thing I remember is getting to the first turn hitting a wall of rooooster tails and hooking in a bunch of wakes. O, by the way I did get LAUNCHED out of the boat. One thing I did learn is never follow anybody to the start!!!

[Ron Hill]

I was just looking at this thread. Lots of Peeters Family history missing. John is getting married this year. His wife is going to race AXS.

John is trying to get OSY 400 going here in the states using UIM rules. John has won th OSY 400 Nationals five times in a row, I think.