Episode 166: Tom D'Eath, Part 2

A river can be an opponent. Detroit’s course demanded patience, precision, and nerve—and Tom takes us inside the cockpit where strategy beat horsepower and a single weekend helped rewrite how champions are crowned. Tom dives into his strategies on outsmarting faster boats and getting his perfect starts. If you love motorsport strategy, boat setup secrets, and the gritty truth behind historic wins, this one’s for you. Listen, subscribe, and leave a review with the moment that surprised you most!

*Photo from the Scott D'Eath collection

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting Up Part Two
• 2:35 Detroit Gold Cup Strategy And Setbacks
• 5:45 1975 Rule Change And Final-Heat Debate
• 8:30 Muncie’s Influence And Doors Closing
• 11:20 Grand Prix Dominance And Canadian Wins
• 15:00 Outsmarting Bigger Engines With Gearing
• 20:20 Evansville ’86 Start Craft And Nitrous Tactics
• 24:50 Engine Reliability And Harvey’s Edge
• 28:10 The First Steel Skid Fin And Setup Secrets
• 31:50 Miss U.S. Gold Cup, Exit, And Aftermath
• 35:30 The Crew Test Drive And The Crash

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 2:15

Explain why we got a break there. And how we got that to the four five styles and squareshop rating things. Let's do part two of my interview with Tom. Let's talk about your professional career with George Simon and Misty West. And it's just so fun to think back on the time you had there with him. And you got him the Gold Cup victory. It was in Detroit. I just want to hear your perspective on that race. It's such a challenging river. You have to not only defeat the other guys, you have to defeat the river in Detroit. And you beat Bill Muncie head up. Can you talk about that race and that challenge that uh that you faced?

SPEAKER_02: 3:07

Yes. Um absolutely. You know, we were not the fastest boat uh that weekend. We were probably the fourth quickest boat. We were having some piston trouble with the turbocharged Allison, and we were sorting it out. Um and I had a pretty good track record at Detroit, 74, 5, and 6. Uh 74, uh uh, that was the spin and win. Uh but I didn't win the final heat because I never left the dock. The throttle cable inadvertently got left onto the turbocharger after the trick trailer firing. And when the five-minute gun went off to leave the dock for the final, I had won the first two heats.

SPEAKER_01: 3:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 3:50

And the the very first heat I was leading down the back stretch and the rooster tail turn, and I hooked the boat, went in the infield, came out last. Okay, Budweiser at they were all in front of me. So I wanted to shake the boat down. This was 74, 1974. So I uh I followed in last place thinking this is a first seat, I gotta get I gotta pick it up a little bit, Tom, if the boat's okay, and it felt like it was okay. I didn't damage it or hurt it, you know. And so uh I for the next lap I was chasing uh third and fourth place. And uh when I when I finally figured I I can get these guys, I'm going down the front straightaway, and I have a couple laps to go, and uh and I'm passing both, you know, those third and fourth place boats, and lo and behold, uh I think it was Pan Pac and Budweiser were right in front of them. I said, Well shit, I could get these guys too. So I ended up passing everybody, and so I spun out, hooked it, went in the infield, came out, didn't get disqualified, came out last, and uh ran a few more laps, passed third and fourth, and and then I passed first and second and ended up winning the heat. And then, of course, the next heat I won also, so I was seated for the final, and then when we you know, Jim Kirth was my engine guy and and chief mechanic and then and crew chief, and when we put the boat in the water, somehow or another in our haste, the throttle Morris throttle cable got uh too close to the turbocharger and it seized up, so I had no foot throttle, so we never left the dock. So basically that 74 year I had two firsts, okay? Now we'll fast forward to 75, 1975. Uh and we're still, you know, we're still having some teething problems with the engine, but I won all three heats in 75, and that was my first victory, the Garwood Trophy race.

SPEAKER_01: 5:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 5:56

And then we went out to Tri-Cities, okay, for the Gold Cup in 1975. And think about this. I had the fastest 60 mile race, it's a historic performance in 1975, and I won the final heat. But PanPac won the race on bonus points. So we really changed the sport. You know, uh the the Pan Pac final heat, all his 60 mile heat averages uh were 107.379. And my all my four heats together, the 60 miles, were 108.924. So almost 109 mile, almost two mile an hour faster than George Henley. And I won the final heat, but I didn't win the race. So the officials went, I mean, think about this. I had the fastest 60 miles of that weekend, and I won the final heat, but not the race. So they changed the rules so that next year in 76, no matter what kind of points you had, winner of the final heat was going to win the race. Okay, so that the Miss US really did change the sport.

SPEAKER_01: 7:18

Interesting.

SPEAKER_02: 7:18

And we changed the sport because of what happened in 75.

SPEAKER_01: 7:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_02: 7:24

And you can even look that up in the rule book. It's a gold 60 mile historic performance. So the 1976 APBA rule book has that in there in the center of this section. Uh under historic performance, got you know, George Simon, Mish U.S. Tom D 108.924 miles an hour average for 60 mile. Was at that time the fastest 60 mile race ever run. Yep.

SPEAKER_00: 7:49

Gosh, that's so that's so wild to think about that you you won that last heat and you didn't get the victory.

SPEAKER_02: 7:56

I've only I've only actively run in seven gold cups, period. Remember uh 77 to 82. Uh I was uh Muncie did a really good job of keeping me out of the sport. He in fact, I'll give you a a story. Um for some reason or other, Muncy either didn't like my father or me, or both.

SPEAKER_01: 8:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_02: 8:18

But he went out, he Muncy raced off the race course as well as on the race course.

SPEAKER_01: 8:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_02: 8:24

And he was very close with George Simon for many years, and I was the newbie. So Lee Shayneth and George Simon and Muncy, you know, they all went out to dinner. This was before the 76 Gold Cup. Okay. And uh George Simon told me this personally. He says, uh Bill wants you out of the sport. He says, You're a troublemaker. And you should you should get rid of this guy now. And George says, Oh, really? You know, thank goodness George didn't do that. And uh George told me the story, and Joe also corroborated it, Joe Simon, his brother. So Muncie didn't like me. In fact, if you look at the 76 Gold Cup CBS Sports Spectacular, whenever you ever seen someone that wins the race never gets an interview. You never see what that person looks like.

SPEAKER_01: 9:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 9:20

CBS Sports Spectacular, Muncie was in charge with Hendrick, Jim Hendrick, you know, and Pat Summerall. And it is obvious there's no interview with me in that whole CBS Sports Spectacular show, no facial shot, nothing of Tom D, the winner of the race.

SPEAKER_00: 9:42

Yeah. Jesus.

SPEAKER_02: 9:44

You'll see me jump in the water at the end, and that's you, but you'll never you'll they never interviewed me after the race. They there was and that was Muncie.

SPEAKER_01: 9:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 9:54

Like I said, he was successful. In 77, I never got a call from anybody. So when George retired, he was successful keeping me out of the sport until he was killed. Wow. Wow. Think about it. 77. I I finished second in high points in 76, won the Gold Cup, and my phone never rang.

SPEAKER_00: 10:15

Yeah, that's just wild. I was always cu I was always curious, like because you had that gap there. I didn't I wasn't sure if you were changing it, because I know you did some car racing, some other things, but I was just kind of that's just wild.

SPEAKER_02: 10:27

Yeah, I was kind of playing with the car racing a little bit, and I ended up doing World Grand Prix Hydroplane. That was that was new taking off, and we had a full field of uh uh World Grand Prix with Canada and the United States, and so I drove and set I won I only raced in World Grand Prix Championship three years. I won it all three years with two different teams, 78, 79, and 80. And we had a nice circuit and we made money. I mean, it was two grand, you know, at that time it was two thousand bucks to win. So I got all expenses paid plus forty percent of the prize money. So it was another way for me to pick up some income, you know, once my career was apparently over with and unlimited, you know. And then uh I didn't drive uh uh the team I drove for when I won everything at 78. Um I didn't drive for them in 79 and 80, I drove for Don Ryan out, you know, from Bellingham, Washington. Total different vote, total different team. And I won the championship for Don two years in a row. Yeah. So I basically ran World Grand Prix drive uh, you know, hydroplane, APBA and CBF, Canadian Boating Federation, and I won the championship um three years in a row with two different teams.

SPEAKER_01: 11:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 11:51

And I won Valley Field, I only raced Valleyfield three times. That's this weekend coming up.

SPEAKER_01: 11:55

Yep, yep.

SPEAKER_02: 11:56

I only raced there three different times, two different teams, and I won everything there was to win. I won the Grand Prix and the Molson uh all three years. Wow. Yeah, and I won the Canadian Gold Cup, uh Prince Edward Canadian Gold Cup, 74, 76, and 80, and I did that with two different teams.

SPEAKER_00: 12:15

Yeah. Yeah, and you're the you're the only person to have won those races as well as uh three APBA Gold Cups. So you're in the record books there by yourself.

SPEAKER_02: 12:25

And not only that, I did in 76. I won the Prince Edward Gold Cup and the APBA Gold Cup same year.

SPEAKER_01: 12:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 12:32

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 12:33

Man.

SPEAKER_02: 12:34

And I won those gold cups with a sm uh a five-liter, 266 fuel injected on methanol 302 cubic inch motor against Grand Prix and seven liters. You know, that's a whole that's a whole nother really cool story.

SPEAKER_01: 12:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 12:50

But we did it by outsmarting them. Not we weren't the fastest, but we outsmarted them big time. We we made them look really bad.

SPEAKER_00: 12:59

Well, how did you outsmart them? What what what did you do to make that happen?

SPEAKER_02: 13:02

When when we uh it was the team was the gone heavy was the boat, Ronnie Brown's boat, and his band. We borrowed a motor from Lunuda from the Roman Candle 302 Chevy that David Irwin put together. And we got to the race course and uh we looked at it said mile and two-thirds of not approved for records. Not approved for records. Okay. And Ronnie and I, we had one propeller, one gearbox, one borrowed engine, etc. We were just the three of us, Ronnie, um, you know, David Irwin and myself. And we all looked at the race course and I said, Ronnie, I said, I don't think that's a mile and two-thirds. I says, and it it looks really short. And I says, uh, what can we do? And he says, Well, we don't have but just what we got. And I says, What's what kind of gears are in the gearbox? And he says, Well, what what was in there when I bought the boat, six percent overdrive. And I says, let's flip them. What? And I says, Yeah, let's six percent. We need acceleration here. We don't need anything else but acceleration. It's a big body of water, it's probably gonna get a little lumpy. I says, let's just flip the gears. Well, we'll float the valves. I said, Well, you tell David to open up the valve lash, do our his magic on the engine, but tell him we're probably gonna float the valves, but do something that'll get us more acceleration. So we pulled the gearbox out during the driver's meeting, we flipped the gears upside down, so we were six percent underdrive, and we only had a 19-12-19 pitch propeller, but I mean it would go blinding fast from nothing to you know 130 at least, you know.

SPEAKER_01: 14:44

Wow.

SPEAKER_02: 14:44

And uh and on every straightaway I floated the valves three times, and we won we won the Prince Edward Gold Cup, beating guess who? His father. His dad protested, he protested his own son. He thought we had a 450 in there instead of a 302, you know. But his dad had a 473 blown Chrysler with Bill Hodge driving it, and and he they had 50% overdrive, and and but they couldn't get that big hog getting going, and and one I could hear him coming, you know, but I was already in the turnhead the other way. So that's how we won the 76 Prince Edward Gold Cup.

SPEAKER_00: 15:26

That's funny. Well, it's always fun to outsmart your opponents with whatever with whatever you can, right?

SPEAKER_02: 15:32

Yep. So uh and again, you know, I don't get a lot of credit for uh, you know, some of that stuff, but I've I I did race in all these different series, and I didn't even race in 11, you know, Chips won what, 11 gold cups? I only raced in seven, and I won four final heats, and I actually won three.

SPEAKER_00: 15:55

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02: 15:56

You can look at my record. I only I only actually competed in seven gold cups, period.

SPEAKER_00: 17:04

Yeah, it's I you know I forget forget that because there were you had a year there, I think in 86 where you you weren't allowed to race in the gold cup um because the team didn't travel to Miami. So yeah, there was some other factors there outside of your own.

SPEAKER_02: 17:19

Yeah, the owners, yeah. The owners kept us out of the sport because we were a threat. There's no doubt we were a threat.

SPEAKER_00: 17:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 17:26

I mean that we we almost won Evansville. One more, one more bottle of nitrous. I would have won Evansville.

SPEAKER_00: 17:32

Yeah, that's that's another story. I want I want to talk about the 86 um yeah Evansville, because yeah, you you showed them that you you had something there with that Merlin and you had all the turbines behind you at 7-Eleven, Miller, Budweiser, you had them beat. Um probably one of the one of the better starts he ever had. Not that you had a bad start, but you smoked them, but simply just simply the fact that you ran out of nitrous.

SPEAKER_02: 17:59

Yeah, um right at the end there, I I did, you know, and when you run out of nitrous, you still when you hit the button, you run out of nitrous, but you're still injecting water alcohol into the motor. And of course, as soon as I hit the button and there was no nitrus, it the motor quit for a little bit. You know, it's ow, and then it I took my thumb off the button and it's clearing itself out. And and of course Cropfield was coming, he was coming every lap. Um I'm gonna back up a little bit because how I got the beautiful start. I had been watching every heat all day long uh on the bank and this uh and every time, you know, because Cropfield and all them guys, they were all fighting each other in the five-minute period. And when they got to the exit of the corner before, you know, 3-4 corner, every time they drifted to the outside and left that lane open every heat. And I kind of said to myself, you know, I'll just hang behind those guys, let them do their, you know, their dog and pony show, and whoever thinks they got the inside, if they do exactly what they did in the previous heats, they're gonna hit the exit pin and drift wide and leave that lane open. That's exactly what happened. They hit that that exit pin, uh, you know, Chip and Bud and and Reynolds and uh and the the whole fleet kind of drift because they were early, so they all kind of went wide. And I was back in their rooster tails, and I'll tell you what, when I got to my timing mark, uh they were way ahead of me and slow. And of course I got on the nitrous and I had a thunder pump and run all the way to the clock and I hit my mark just perfect. And and of course, uh from then on it was defensive driving. Go in wide, come out tight, go in tight, come out wide, be unpredictable. I knew they were gonna come because they were faster. But uh you know, I guess I held them off for four laps. Um quite honestly, uh as soon as I crossed the start-finish line in second place after Bud got me, I didn't hardly go five hundred feet and the re the other two got me too, you know. But the race was over.

SPEAKER_00: 20:20

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02: 20:21

So it was fun to keep them behind me for as long as I did. And and um, you know, uh the other thing I'm proud of that year is we never heard a motor. We never we didn't cost Bob Styles anything but nitrous and aviation fuel and water alcohol. Uh we never even heard of spark plug, nothing.

SPEAKER_00: 20:43

That's that's almost unheard of, right? Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02: 20:46

We ran we ran uh you know four races that year and pretty much any second at every race, you know. So it was it was Jim Harvey was uh you know, nothing against Jerry Zuvich, because that's who I won a couple races with in the earlier squire, which was a dog. But uh, but I mean uh Zuvich's motors were fast, but there was Bardall blood all over the deck and in the bilge every time I came back. When I drove for Harvey there, those few races that I drove those two years, you could you know, you could wipe up the bilge with two paper towels. Wow. And I and those motors that that I got from Jim Harvey were just bullets. Uh every time he sent me out, and every time we ran, he would take that motor out and put a different one in, you know. He had his routine of uh what we did, but uh he was he was really something to to be a driver for. I really enjoyed my time with Zuvich and Harvey, but Harvey was by far the cagest and the smartest. And we brought the steel skin into the sport, you know. Um I don't know if you remember that, but Lasera was banned from boat racing because of some sort of deal that was going on with uh Fran Muncie and Bill Bennett with Circus and stuff like that. So he was like being sued or something, and and I was doing a steel skid pin back in the east with our limited inboard hydroplanes. Willard Wilson and I were were working on and we did that and was really successful with it in the small classes. And I was telling Jim Harvey we need to get a steel skid pin, and he said, Well, I I can't do that. And I said, Well, who who do you think can? And he says, Well, I could I could get a hold of Sarah, maybe he could get it done. And I was telling him how we did it because you don't want to heat treat it, you you know, uh, until uh you you got to do the blanching grinding after the heat treating because it's the tougher way to do it. You can sharpen and all that kind of stuff to steel, but if you heat treat it, then it's gonna warp. You follow me?

SPEAKER_01: 22:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 22:59

So you had to do the blanchard grinding after it was already hard. So basically, I sent out to Harvey uh, you know, a paper drawing of what I thought we needed to do, and he relayed that to Jim Lasero, who actually made the fin, and then uh we brought it in secretly, you know, because Lasero wasn't allowed in the pit area. And so between Harvey Lacero and myself, we mounted that steel skid fin on there, and boy, did that make a difference. I mean, it you know, I was almost the beat Han Hour uh again with uh the first time anybody ever used a steel skid fin.

SPEAKER_00: 23:44

Wow. And that must have been 85, 86, somewhere around there.

SPEAKER_02: 23:48

Yeah, I 86, I believe.

SPEAKER_00: 23:50

Yeah, 86, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 23:51

It was 86.

SPEAKER_00: 23:52

Yeah, and you talk you talked about Harvey with his engines, and um, I'm too young for it, but uh everyone I've talked to back in the day said that like in '86, those motors just had a different sound to them. They were just on another level.

SPEAKER_02: 24:06

Um hundred percent. You're right.

SPEAKER_00: 24:08

Yeah. Yeah, that's just so cool to think back on.

SPEAKER_02: 24:11

Yeah, and we did have Dax uh flowing our water alcohol system, you know. But Jim had all the connections with everybody because of the Atlas, you know, when he was doing the Atlas stuff for Chip, you know. Right. And so, but uh Dexter Smith, Dax, I call him, uh he he, you know, uh did the alcohol uh water system and the flowing of that with the nitrous. Uh when we started out in that season, they gave me two bottles of nitrous, which I guess is was the normal for a Merlin. And uh and then when we ran out, we went to three bottles. And then when we ran out after three, we went to four bottles of nitrous. And I still ran out. So Jim told me I never used so much damn nitrous in my whole life with anybody, you know. And he was screw cheap. And for a lot of guys that were pretty sharp with Merlin engines, you know.

SPEAKER_01: 25:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 25:15

But I figured out a way to, you know, I wasn't abusing the motor, but I again the Ray Gastner, don't let the boat do anything or the motor do anything it doesn't like. So I would tickle the nitrous, and I could I could tell, tickle by just touching the button a little bit at a time, you know. And I'd watch the manifold pressure on the RPM. And uh and I could tell by doing that that I could get the most acceleration, keep the prop hooked up in the water uh by doing that, and hence it wasn't really hard on the motor, and then when you were halfway down the straightaway, you could relax your thumb off of the nitrous button, and then you could tell whether you were it was slowing down or not, you know. Maybe at the halfway point to the 5/8 point of the straightaway, I could take my thumb off of the nitrous button, and then the RPM would still be there and it it wasn't slowing me down. And I didn't have to get back on the nitrous button again until near the exit of the next corner, and then I would just tickle the button a little bit and I could tell that I'm too close to 120 inches, so I can't give it too much, you know. So I guess that's the reason that I probably use more nitrous than anybody else did.

SPEAKER_00: 26:30

Yeah. Well it it was fun. Yeah, that's uh that's impressive though. Like you said, you didn't blow up any motors, didn't hurt any equipment, and no, and you're you're out there just you're concentrating on racing, but you're doing all these other things, so it's quite impressive to to think back on.

SPEAKER_02: 26:47

Yeah, and and uh and the Harvey, you know, uh that was the 82 Atlas, you know. It no wonder chip won with that thing, it was really a sweet boat to drive. Even in the milling period, it didn't have any bad habits. You know, some of the boats that you get into, um, you could tell right away if they they have some bad habits, uh you know, even at the slower speeds, you know, but uh that particular boat didn't really have any bad habits anywhere.

SPEAKER_00: 27:17

Yeah.

unknown: 27:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 27:18

Well, I want to I want to go back to to you Miss US had another question for you with that. And I heard stories that you know once he got his gold cup, he decided he was done with the sport. Is that true? Is that is that why he exited? Okay.

SPEAKER_02: 27:32

Yeah, that's absolutely true. In fact, we partied at George Simon's home on Vendome in in Grove Point until five o'clock that morning, and basically and he told me that uh even when I hired on. Remember, I was the team manager and the driver. After the 73 season, he had gotten rid of everybody, and that's when he he hired me to be the team manager and driver. But anyway, when he when I hired on in 74, uh, because he was kind of against the cab over. He wanted to have the motor in front of the driver, you know. He really everybody in the unlimited sport really was kind of a against the cab over. But anyway, uh he told me then if we ever his goal was to win a gold cup, and if we ever won a gold cup, that'd be the happiest day of both of our lives, and probably the saddest day for mine because he would quit. At five o'clock in the morning, he told us to get everything back to the shop and lock it up, we're done. And Lee Shayneth and Buddy Byers and maybe even Bernie Little uh talked him into not quitting uh because the boat needed to be uh finished the season. Remember, George Simon never lost a driver. Right, right. Never lost a driver. So he was uh very much in tune to that. He didn't want to be uh he lost friends that were driving for other people. Donnie Wilson drove for George Simon and was killed in the Budweiser, you know. Right. But uh he never lost a driver and he was really conscious of he wanted to leave the sport as a gold cup champion because he won everything else at least once, you know, uh all over the country. And but he never won that gold cup until then.

SPEAKER_00: 29:21

So well that's that's a great way to go out with uh the Gold Cup victory.

SPEAKER_02: 29:27

Yeah, and uh like I said, uh between Lee Shayneth and Buddy Byers, who I think was the head of the sport, and Bernie Little maybe. Uh you know, they kind of convinced him that he re So we didn't really have much to go to Madison with the next race, which was the next weekend. The bottom of the Miss US was all paved in at the at the transom. Uh I mean I had to I had to take it over to the machinery mart and flip it upside down and and uh fix the bottom while uh and we only had one motor left that was good, which was the one that we had in the final heat, you know.

SPEAKER_01: 30:06

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 30:07

And I'm gonna give a lot of credit to to uh Jim Kerf. He wasn't on our team at that time, but Jim Kirth was the one that uh between him and I we did a lot of dyno work over at Gales. And uh really the basis for those engines was developed by Jim Kerf. And all uh Ronnie was a great crew chief, don't get me wrong, Ronnie Brown. Oh, yeah, and Dave Irvin was a great mechanic, but we basically uh improved a little bit on what Jim had already done, if you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_01: 30:42

Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 30:42

I was in charge of the propellers, I was in charge of the hull, I was in charge of the gearboxes. That was my part of it when I wasn't driving, you know.

SPEAKER_00: 30:51

So Well, I I didn't realize this until the the magics of internet and Facebook, but um I saw a picture of the U.S. sinking in the Detroit River. River. And apparently there was an after-year celebration where crew members got to drive the boat and someone either rolled it or flipped it. Were you there for that? That last year?

SPEAKER_02: 31:13

Yes, I was. We did that on Harson's Island and uh in front of Jack Love's Cottage. Uh we launched a boat at my dad's marina, and George always uh uh prided himself on never losing a driver, but he also wanted to reward uh the people that were on the team if they were interested to take the boat for a ride. And we purposely, Ronnie and I purposely did not let David Irwin drive the boat until the last. And we even shorted him on fuel. We thought that you know, because the boat carried 75 gallons on each side of methanol plus whatever is in the surge tank. And so we didn't fill it up, we put 50 gallons in, which is like half a load, you know. Because we knew David wasn't gonna listen to us, and we figured we'll run him out of fuel before he does anything stupid. We were wrong. He did something stupid and crashed a boat. He turned it the wrong way. Uh right in front of he wrecked in front of the Coast Guard base on Harson's Island. And uh Yeah, he went actually we told him where he could run right in front of us. And when he got to the end of uh Jack Love's cottage there, uh there's a dog leg that heads out toward Lake St. Clair. We're we're in the in the uh north channel of the St. Clair Flats area, not into Detroit River.

SPEAKER_01: 32:39

Oh, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_02: 32:40

And so he made it like a half a turn, and at the apex, we could tell that he turned to the right a little bit and he went straight out to the lake, and we saw nothing but a rooster tail uh above the bull rushes heading out toward Lake St. Clair. And Ronnie and I looked at each other and went, Oh shit. You know. And so he went out in the lake, and the the chief at the Coast Guard base told us this because we couldn't see anymore. He just disappeared, you know, all we saw was the rooster tail uh heading out toward Lake St. Clair. And then so we kind of waited, waited, and we couldn't hear it anymore. And he actually turned around out in the lake the correct way to the left, and then on the way back, the dog leg is the wrong way. You have to turn to the right to make it back to where we were, okay. And according to what the chief told us is that he tried to make that turn by that little lighthouse and to the right, and of course it it flipped, it barrel rolled. Yep. So he's the one that crashed it. I do have still shots of it uh in my scrapbook, uh, and we've never really released those to anybody, to my knowledge. Uh, but there could have been some other people that took pictures of it, but it was definitely wrecked. And Ronnie and I uh the season was over with, and of course Ronnie Brown and I were kept on employment to uh fix it and get it ready for sale, you know. And we had to inventory all the motor parts, gearbox, propellers, all that kind of stuff for George Simon, and then and then he let us both go. And uh uh the boat eventually was picked up by Bernie Little. And uh he he was gonna put the griffin in, but it wouldn't fit. And so uh the bud uh you know the Ron Jones bud got built and the mission tests never raced again, really. It became a display boat.

SPEAKER_00: 34:42

Yeah, yeah, it never ran again.

SPEAKER_02: 34:44

It's yeah, it went through different colors and um yeah, no it never ran again as uh you know as an unlimited hydroplane that I know of anyway.

SPEAKER_01: 34:54

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 34:55

Will Muncing did something, but I think that was his own little that wasn't the unlimited sanction uh racing. It was Will Munsing did something with the boat, but I don't remember exact I wasn't out there, so I really don't can't comment. I don't know. But I don't think it ever raced again as a real unlimited hydroblane.

SPEAKER_00: 35:14

No, I don't I don't believe it did as well.

SPEAKER_02: 35:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 35:18

Well, yeah, unfortunate end to your time there with that crash, but that was out of your hands. Isn't it crazy to think back in 1976 as a crew member? You win the gold cup. Your time as a as a team is over. George Simon pulls the plug winning that gold cup, but he celebrates by letting all the crew members go out on the Detroit River and get a chance to drive the high defense that they've been working years on. And unfortunately, the last personnel goes and wrecks it, and that's how the team ends their time together. So wow, thankfully, no one was hurt in that story. But unfortunately for us, that's all the time we have for this week, knock ahead. Make sure you come back next week and listen to episode 157 and part two of my interview with Tom Feed. In the meantime, don't forget to check us out on social media, we're on Facebook and Instagram, and we're also online with our website Richardtalk.com. On there, you can find out many fun features of the podcast. And you can also find out for Richard Talk Plus, uh premium subscription phase service. We get early access to all this episode and lots of other fun tweets and prizes along the way. Well, that's all we have for the tweet. So until next time, I hope to see you.