Billionaire death race overawes Seattle’s Seafair
”’ world’s most dangerous sailboat vs the old thunderboats
Capsized yachts and a sailor’s death cast a pall over this week’s finals
A typical 1960s Lake Washington summer day consisted of a “thunderboat “race. These things were often home built out of plywood, glue and left over parts from WWII fighter planes .. the propeller kind! Most of the boats failed …, you can only rebuild WWII aircraft engines so many times and back yard boat shops don’t do to well well the hydrodynamics require balancing a 150 MPH miussil3e on two dimes and prop. Many heats ended up with one boat barely making it around the course or if there were two heats, one of the bats would flip .. sometimes the drive survived!
Todays thunderboats .. Seafair’s speciality .. are a bit tamer but the thunder is still there on Lake Washington. We have not killed a river in years!
Down in San Fran they are trying to up us ne. Billionaires are engaged in a death race, not using the old tech of the thundering, petrol drive hydroplane but the now tech and deathly serious quiet of an America’s Cup taken over by billionaires able to spend large fractions of a billion dollars on a boat race. Read more.