All News Posts Tagged 'Miss Wahoo' (4)

In a ceremony on Friday, October 26, 2012 at the Hydroplane and Raceboat Museum near Seattle, Bill Boeing, Jr. was inducted into the Unlimited Hydroplane Hall of Fame, just short of his 90th birthday.  

Bill Boeing, Jr., the newest inductee into the Unlimited Hydroplane Hall of Fame, participated in racing as an owner between 1956 and 1960.  

Bill Boeing, Jr. Photo by Ed Clark

In the middle-fifties, when seemingly everyone was jumping on the…

Two days of hydro racing end with four hospital cases, three retirements and no real winner.

By Emmett Watson

Reprinted from Sports Illustrated, August 22, 1960

The sport of hydroplaning, in which the sight of burning boats, crippled drivers and squabbling officials has become commonplace, degenerated into a grisly parody of itself at the Seafair Trophy races in Seattle last week. The regatta produced a winner (of sorts) in Miss Thriftway, driven…

In a racing boat Mira Slovak is as brash as he was when he fled the Reds in a stolen plane.

By Emmett Watson

Reprinted from Sports Illustrated, August 8, 1960

In the seven years since he stole a Czechoslovak airliner loaded with furiously reluctant passengers and treetopped his way to freedom, 30-year-old Miroslav Slovak has pursued such a variety of careers and diversions that he has sometimes seemed headed several ways at once. This week…

Bill Boeing's Miss Wahoo appeared in two races in 1956. She took fifth at the Seattle Seafair Trophy Race. Later in the year, she competed in the Sahara Cup in Las Vegas, where she took sixth out of eleven hulls. The Miss Wahoo was a beautiful mahogany-decked craft with deep red trim and white lettering. She had Allison power and was driven by Mira Slovak, who up to then had never even seen a race boat, much less driven one! But Slovak was a talented pilot who had fled the Iron Curtain in a…