Slo-mo-shun, Stan Sayres and Ted Jones

Stan Sayres, was an automobile salesman in a Pendleton, Oregon, agency, when first stepped into a power- boat in 1926. It was an outboard hydroplane that had just done a flip on Lake McKay, dousing its driver who, after swimming ashore, said, "I'm through with boats."

Stan took him literally, bought the craft, hauled it out of the lake and was started on a career in speed- boating that eventually carried him to the top of the heap. For five years, since that day on June 6, 1950, when Slo-mo-shun IV sped through that electronically operated trap off Sand Point at an average speed of 160-323 miles an hour, she's held the world's speed mark.

It all began to click in mid 1947 when Stan Sayres & Ted Jones got together to design a new hydroplane, to incorporate radical aircraft design principles. After the design was complete, Stan took the drawings to Anchor Jensen to look them over and asked if he would build the new boat.

At the time Jensen Motor Boat was very busy, building and repairing US Coast Guard and Navy vessels. Anchor told Stan that under the pressure of their current contracts, there was no way he could fit another project in at that time. And that he really didn't like the design of the boat especially the form of the sponsons.

Stan Sayres

So Ted Jones agreed that he could build the boat at his home. However, some seven months later it became obvious Ted was not keeping pace with the tight build schedule, whereupon Stan went back to his old friend Anchor Jensen and see what he could work out. So it was that Anchor agreed to finish building the boat at JMC. And JMC did get the job finished in a timely fashion following the specifications set forth in the Jones design. The boat was originally launched in October 1949, without a tail. A tail simply hadn't been developed far enough to be built.

In the early days of Hydroplane Gold Cup racing every competitor in the race had to be sponsored by a yacht club. Stan Sayres was a member of the Seattle Yacht club and they sponsored the Slo-mo-shun IV in the 1950 Gold Cup and Harmsworth trophy races, and continued to sponsor both the IV and V until they finished competing under Stan Sayres ownership

When SYC's Stan Sayres and Slo-mo IV showed up in Detroit in the summer of 1950, nobody paid much attention until he qualified for the Gold Cup Race. The win gave Sayres the right to bring the next race to his yacht club. A meeting at SYC attracted about 100 people, and the club agreed to take on the responsibility. The first chairman was Jerry Bryant, owner of the largest marina in the area and veteran outboard racer. He opened the meeting with: "We don't know the first damn thing about putting on an unlimited hydroplane race, but we are going to do it."

A Perfect Day For Speed

From July 21 to 23, 1950, due to rough water and a broken propeller, Sayres' first attempts at world record runs failed. But in the early morning hours of June 26, lake conditions, with a light chop on the water, were perfect for speed. At 5:30 a.m. boats went out along the measured one-mile course and picked up any debris they could find. At about 6:45 the course was ready and the Slo-mo-shun IV, with Sayres and crewmember Ted Jones, headed out.

On the first attempt, the timer malfunctioned. The Slo-mo-shun IV continued to the south end of the course, and turned north. Sayres opened the throttle, and the hydroplane ate up the mile in 21.98 seconds (163.785 mph). For an official speed run, rules required the boat to make a second try within 15 minutes, going in the opposite direction. The Slo-mo-shun IV refueled in seven or eight minutes. Sayres then pointed the hydroplane south and zipped over the course at 157.2 mph. The combined times were averaged to establish a speed of 160.3235 mph.

On July 7, 1952, in East Channel between Mercer Island and the mainland with Sayres again at the helm, she stepped that world mark up to 178.497 miles an hour. Going back to 1950, Slo-mo-shun IV made her trip to Detroit. First, with Ted Jones, her designer**(see notes) at the wheel, she won the Gold Cup which now rests in the trophy case of the Seattle Yacht Club.

Two weeks later, with Lou Fageol driving in the place of Ted Jones who had broken a hand, she defended successfully the Harmsworth Trophy, the world's championship emblem, and brought that to the Seattle Yacht Club, too. And in the four following years either Slo-mo IV (she won in '52 and '53) or So-mo V (winner in '51 and '54) shared the emblem of the speedboat championship of the United States and the world and they have remained in Seattle.

All that marvelous record started from that overturned outboard Stan Sayres picked up on Lake McKay. During the next few years he did quite a bit of outboard racing himself, top speed 40 miles an hour. Not much as compared to the 178.497 miles an hour he now has driven Slo-mo IV. But the bug had taken and when Seattle became his home, Lake Washington his constant bidder for the thrills of speed-boating, his creative mind went to work.

First came Slo-mo-shun, a second- hand 225-cubic-inch inboard he picked up. He got speeds up to 83 miles an hour out of that one. But the competition during the depression years (he bought Slo-mo-shun in 1937) was limited. She burned and sank off Sheridan Beach one day and a charred piece of a rib from her hull is all Stan Sayres has to remind him.

Second came another used boat, named Slomo II, which turned up 91.8 in her fastest time, but still didn't meet the requirements Stan Sayres wanted.

Slo-mo-shun III, with a souped-up automobile engine and a specially designed hull, came next, is still running, having been sold to an Easterner. With her Sayres got up to 96 miles an hour. The bug had really bitten by that time and the plan to go into a bigger and faster boat began to take form. Ted Jones, the designer*, and Anchor Jensen, the builder*, came into the picture with Sayres in 1948.

Slowly the ideas were worked over, some so radical that when experienced boat builders saw the fashioned Slo-mo-shun IV they were dumbfounded. One even swore it wasn't a boat but an airplane. She was finished and ready for the water in October, 1949, had all her preliminary runs on Lake Washington. Slowly, the word got out that a true speed demon had been developed.

More than one Lake Washington resident and boat enthusiast gazed goggle-eyed as Slo-mo IV, her 30' high rooster tail flying behind her, sped up and down the lake. Changes were made until perfection was reached and then the request for sanction for an attempt on the world mark, then held by the late Sir Malcolm Campbell, the Englishman, of 141.74 miles an hour.

On June 26 with only a handful of people on hand- the fame of the boat wasn't established as yet, nor had Seattleites awakened to the thrill of her or the whine of her marvelous Seattle-built (by Western Gear) gear box -she made her debut. With Mel Crook, associate editor of Yachting, as the referee representing the American Power Boat Association, and the modern, electrically operated timing devices approved by APBA checking her, Slo-mo-shun IV startled the whole boating world.

Speedboat men looked at that 160.323 miles an hour they saw in their morning newspapers and gasped. The Sayres family, with that astounding run, were literally catapulted into a limelight they had never thought of.

To a home-loving, modest woman like Madeline Sayres it was an experience almost terrifying at times, even with her graciousness. And to Stan Sayres, actually shy to an almost self- effacing point, it was a situation that grew and grew, that placed on his shoulders not only the need to face scores of calls for talks on his great boat but correspondence and demands for photographs that kept him and two stenographers busy for weeks.

Ted Jones

Gold Cup entrants know this. But no one knows it better than a Gold Cupper named Tudor Owen Jones, a hand some, husky man of 45 with flecks of gray in his dark hair, who has had more to do with this year's Gold Cup entries than any man alive. As a young mechanic in Seattle's Boeing aircraft plant, Ted Jones conceived the original design from which virtually every one of this year's boats was copied. As chief architect for Stanley Sayres (Sports Illustrated, Aug. 23, 1954), a wealthy Seattle automobile distributor, he designed the Slo-Mo-Shuns IV and V that have won the Cup for the past five years and set two world speed records to boot; and Jones himself drove Slo-Mo IV to her first Gold Cup victory in 1950.

Victories are fine, but Ted Jones wants credit-and headlines. In the world of the Gold Cup however, the headlines go not to the designer but to the owner. In 1951, for example, Jones says Slo-Mo IV was judged the greatest mechanical design of the year and that Owner Sayres took the award, forgetting to credit his designer. Jones was furious. That year and the next, while Slo-Mo V was taking shape from Jones's design in the boatyard of Builder Anchor Jensen in Seattle, a three-cornered feud developed involving credit, authority and, of course, money.

Jones has dedicated his life to speedboat design. He began when he was a boy of 17, building first an outboard racer, then a 14-horse-power water sled that he used to run at 33 Ales per hour through the rolling wake of the passenger boats that plied between Seattle and Tacoma. He also puttered around on land with a motorcycle and a hopped-up Model T, both of which he raced.

At this point, Sayres himself was still happy, and lyric in his praise, not only of Designer Jones, but also of Race Driver Jones. "His technique," says Sayres, "is perfect. His is sound, fearless and careful, all at the same time. His reactions are instantaneous, his coordination perfect." Forthwith, be presented Jones with a brand new Chrysler from the well-stocked Sayres automobile agency. That was the end of the bouquets.

Just before the race Jones and Sayres had entered into a written contract, which granted Jones $500 for his work, and prevented him from designing boats for Gold Cup rivals. Jones says Sayres wanted it for tax reasons. Sayres says Jones wanted it to give himself final say in all matters of design. Neither one seems to have been very happy with it.

Again, lessening of love did not prevent the uneasy trio from planning bigger and better speedboats. No sooner was the Gold Cup brought safely to Seattle than Sayres and Jones started planning how to keep it there. Slo-Mo IV was the fastest boat in the world on a straightaway; and she turned fairly well. But if they could get a boat that would accelerate a little faster, turn a little tighter, and hold speed on a straight, Detroit would be a long time getting its cup back. Jones quit Boeing and applied himself full time to the project. The result: Slo-Mo V.

There was one other result, a second contract, this one verbal but subsequently just as unsettling as the written document that went with Slo-Mo IV. By the terms of the agreement, Jones got a flat fee of $5,000 for his plans, plus $500 per month while working on the V at Jensen's. This arrangement seems to have made Jones feel too much like a hired hand, and not enough the man behind the boat. Nonetheless, the trio managed to hold together? long enough to see Slo-Mo V win the 1951 Gold Cup. Buts a few months later Jones left Sayres to take a $1,000-a month traveling job with Carl Kiekhaefer, president of the company that makes the Mercury outboard motor.

Please note the above story has been complied from several opposing accounts of the Slo-mo-shun boat, its team and development. We have tried to give an unbiased account, so as not to offend any surviving party or their families.