Seattle-born Unlimited Hydroplane driver Chip Hanauer remembering fellow driver Bill Muncey moments before the 1981 Word Championship race in Acapulco, when Bill was killed in a 180 mph blow-over in Atlas Van Lines as he led the field toward the finish line. From Nautical Quarterly #34, Summer 1986.
Chip Hanauer has won 11 Gold Cup races, more than any other driver in history. His first three were at the wheel of Atlas Van Lines— from 1982 to 1984.
For more on Chip Hanauer, see his page at the Motorsports Hall of Fame
For more on Bill Muncey, see this article at the Hydroplane and Raceboat Museum
Atlas Van Lines is currently being restored by the Museum, to track the progress see here.
Singer and composer Guy Lombardo earned the nickname of “Wold’s Fastest Bandleader” for his performances on the water in race boats of the early post-war era. Tempo VI was his first Gold Cup boat, and when he purchased the hull it already had two wins in that race to its credit. As My Sin, the Ventnor ‘tail-dragger’ had captured the cup for owner Zalmon Simmons in 1939 and 1941 and changed racing forever as the first three-point hydroplane to do so. It was not the first to take the course, however. Another Ventnor, Juno, had broken records in 1937 but overturned during the Gold Cup race. The hull was the creation Adolph Apel of Ventnor Boat Works in New Jersey, and relied on two sponsons in the front to support much of the boat’s weight, reducing wetted surface area and therefore drag.
For the 1946 race, Lombardo doubled the horsepower of the boat by installing an Allison V-1710, a supercharged V-12 used in the Mustang fighter jets of the recent war. Tempo VI won the Gold Cup, and set a new heat record of 70.890 mph, overturning Gar Wood’s record of 70.412 set by Miss America in 1920. Later that same year, Lombardo and Tempo VI established a new class straightaway record of 113 mph at Miami Beach.
Tempo VI was meticulously restored in the 1970s and is now privately owned. Up until last year she had both of her original sprayrails, but one was in need of replacing. These are chunky, curvy, tapered logs on the outside of the hull which served both to provide lift to the stern and acted as ‘non-trips’, sideways ramps to prevent the hard chines from catching on the water when the stern would swing in a turn. Since the races that Tempo participated in were always run around a course counter-clockwise, the starboard rail had taken a lot of abuse while the port one was still solid. I built a new starboard rail using the port on as a model. The shape was pure Ventnor, and difficult to replicate. A 5’ tapering piece that was essentially triangular in cross-section, but with a constantly changing angle on both the upper and lower faces, as well as a curved mounting surface to conform to the slight curve and tumblehome of the boats’ side. All of this curved, tapered, and swept downward to vanish at the far aft and outside corner of the hull, matching the sloping stern shape so typical of Ventnor. The core was carved out of a single 6” X 6” piece of clear Port Orford cedar. The upper face and the outside face were then laminated over with 1/8” Nicaraguan mahogany, matching the construction of the original pieces at Ventnor in 1936. Why not make the rails out of solid mahogany? My guess is to save weight.
For more on Guy Lombardo and Tempo VI, see these articles by Fred Farley at the Hydroplane and Raceboat Museum:
