Hydro Legend Back In Action

By Constantine Angelos
Reprinted from The Seattle Times, July 25, 1993.

A legend of Seattle hydroplane racing - Slo-Mo-Shun V - will re-enact its historic "flying start" before next Sunday's Seafair hydroplane race. Its trial run stirred the memory of a veteran reporter.

As a spine-chilling moment shared by hundreds of thousands, nothing else could match it:

Not the Huskies winning a Rose Bowl, not the Sonics capturing an NBA title, not the Seahawks drubbing Denver, not a Mariner no-hitter.

That's how I remember the "flying start" - Lou Fageol's patented gangway charge in the Slo-Mo-Shun V when he raced Stan Sayres' hydroplane on Lake Washington.

A couple of years out of college, I was jammed on the beach with more than 300,000 other rabid Seattle fans as the one-minute gun fired at the 1954 Gold Cup Race.

The other hydros milled toward the starting line in traditional strategy.

But we couldn't see Slo-Mo-Shun V! A few had seen it head north toward its home berth at Hunts Point - out of sight beyond the Mercer Island floating bridge.

And then . . .

Above the rumble of the Detroit boats thundered a high-pitched roar heralding a towering rooster tail shredding the water - and, happily, the hopes of the Midwest challengers. The V zipped to an easy lead and victory.

The flying start was outlawed the next year, shortly before the famous airborne qualifying-run looping flip of the V on Lake Washington. Fageol was seriously injured and never raced again. The Ohio manufacturer and sportsman died in 1961.

But at 10:30 a.m. next Sunday, before Seafair's hydroplane race, Ken Muscatel, hydro driver and president of Seattle's Hydroplane and Race Boat Museum, will take a restored Slo-Mo-Shun V out on the lake, go under the two floating bridges, open the throttle and simulate the flying start.

The re-enactment of the start and a couple of laps around the course by the legendary hydroplane will highlight opening ceremonies on race day.

Muscatel took the restored Slo-Mo-Shun V in two test runs in Lake Washington on Thursday.

There, a crowd of camera-toting hydrophiles cheered when the old Rolls Royce Merlin engine coughed to life at the Stan Sayres Pits.

No one was prouder than designer Ted Jones, 83. Jones clapped his hands as a crane lowered the V onto the water.

"She's great - better than she's ever been," he beamed, adding he's now "too old to play with boats, but I still love them."

Also present was 78-year-old Peter Bertellotti of Kent, who wore a set of old Slo-Mo coveralls as a member of the boat's original crew, and 76-year-old former KING Radio and TV sportscaster Bill O'Mara, who now lives in Anacortes.

O'Mara will announce Slo-Mo's race-day appearance, Muscatel said.

Three years ago, the hydro museum restored the Slo-Mo-Shun IV, the V's sister ship, with which Jones and Sayres originally wrested the Gold Cup from Detroit in 1950.

Between them, the IV and V won five consecutive Gold Cups for the late Sayres.

Seattle's Fred Farley, American Power Boat Association unlimited-hydroplane historian since 1973, said if Fageol wasn't the one who originated the flying start, he "certainly was the one who popularized it."

"It was a chilling, spectacular maneuver that Lou was able to work to perfection," Farley said. "Whenever he used that start, mechanical difficulties aside, he usually finished first with it. It worked."

After the famous looping flip, a local group, Roostertails Unlimited, purchased the V, racing it as the Miss Seattle. Ken Murphy and Bob Gilliam acquired the boat in 1965 and ran it as Berryessa Belle, Fascination I and finally as Miss Tri-Cities when it was retired in 1966.

Last year a partnership of Bruce McCaw of McCaw Cellular; Howard Leendertsen, president of the Hilton Oil Co., sponsor of the U-2 Miss T-Plus hydro; and Muscatel, a forensic psychologist when he isn't driving the U-55 (Miss Wicked Ale in Sunday's race), obtained the Slo-Mo V hull from Peter Carey and Joe Meek.

Carey and Meek had acquired the hull in 1979 from Gilliam, intending to preserve it. They were unable to finish the work. The hull was stored in area boat shops, including those of Ed Karelsen and Ron Jones.

Under the direction of Roger Newton, a Renton firefighter and the museum's restoration director, the refurbishing began in earnest last fall.

A hydro buff with a major collection of Slo-Mo remembrances, the 50-year-old Newton said he dreamed from childhood of rejuvenating the Slo-Mos.

About 40 volunteers pitched in to breathe life back into the V. It took nearly 2,000 hours of loving labor.

Jones and boat builder Anchor Jensen dropped in to watch.

"We replaced all the wood on the sponsons and all the aluminum, and had to replace the deck," Newton said. The boat also needed a new spoiler.

Special Philippine ribbon mahogany at $340 a sheet had to be ordered from a Los Angeles firm; they needed nine sheets. Much of the restoration was done by minutely scrutinizing and translating scale from old photographs, a skill Newton honed from 25 years of building model hydroplanes.

Muscatel said he is "very excited about this. It's just the idea of bringing something back to life that was so much a part of my childhood . . . My mother still lives two blocks north of the floating bridge."

Muscatel said he was about 5 or 6, watching television with one eye on the lake, when the Slo-Mo-Shun V executed its famous flip. He also remembers the flying start.

Muscatel nursed the boat at no more than 100 mph on the test runs Thursday. "She's quick," he said.

Muscatel wouldn't speculate on what the restoration cost. The museum's newspaper lists many contributors, including octogenarian Joe Taggart, of Orlando, Fla., a driver of the Slo-Mo-Shun IV.

Taggart rode with Muscatel when they put the restored IV in the water three years ago. The Museum of History and Industry, which owns the IV and lent it to the hydro museum for the restoration, would not allow speeds to exceed 100 mph.

Muscatel will be alone in the V.

After the tour of the race course next Sunday, the Slo-Mo-Shun V will be on display free at the Hydroplane and Race Boat Museum in South Park, 1605 S. 93rd St. The museum is open from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Thursdays and 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturdays.

Besides the last two Slo-Mos, the museum has the Slo-Mo-Shun III - a limited class hydro - and a replica of the Hawaii Kai III. The next project is to restore the Miss Thriftway.

And then maybe a race of vintage boats?

"Why not?" Muscatel said. Newton agreed. "We could go put on a race . . . a good show for the people."