The Roaring Season

Ross had two Ritepines - the Cougar cat shown here followed by a larger Robson cat named Ritepine II. He took me up under the harbour bridge one day in RPII doing 103mph - verified by a cop's radar gun which we had borrowed.

And here's another little-known fact - the first person to get the catamaran concept working properly for high-speed offshore racing powerboats was Colin Chapman.

Ritepine 11 Think this was originally Wraggs Quarterback

Have photos of when the boys got wet in it.

They were fun machines, but as Jim say's, they took a bit to look after.

Running past the blow hole at the Mount many years ago

You are a wizz Nigel. You must have an amazing collection of photos. Do you have any other offshore stuff.

That was a few years ago when you think back.

Cheers Rod. I don't have much [a film or two perhaps]
I'll see if I can find them and load a couple up. I think they're mainly black & white

nigel watts wrote:[ATTACH=CONFIG]15790[/ATTACH]

That is some ride

Excellent photos Nigel. I did three races with Trevor Tucker in 1990 in the ex Ted Taiatini Robson cat called `Colesseum' after his original partner in the boat racked up bills and did a runner. Being on the throttles in these things gave a whole new meaning to the phrase `having a blast!' I think from memory Hills Flooring was Dick Marlow, Sunday News was Glen Urqhart, Calico Jack was the late Ginger Gibbs, and Visor was John Garrity. At Karapiro, not sure of Jagwah, then it`s Peter Knight snr in the original Boss hydroplane, then Keith MacGregor in Special Edition.

Cheers Steve, here's a few more from 1979

http://www.nzonscreen.com/title/weekly-review-no-401-1949, some old boat race footage

Shoreboy57 wrote:That is some ride

John Garrity bought the Aussie boat 'Shark Cat' raced out here by Peter Noonan with help from Wyndham Shirts, funny that name appeared on his cousin Tony Rutherfords Mazda around same time, and brother Rutherford was the Farmers clothing man an then into cars On Wairau.

I've got some more to process - here's one in the meantime

Your a gem Nigel, magic stuff. There are some historic shots of historic boats there. Lots of stories.

Typhoon Carma became EIT Mover became Ritepine Mover. Yes, Ritepine 2 was originally Wraggs Quarterback.

One of the reasons Tebbsy found RP II so expensive is that it had Mercury 3.4EFI engines on it and they had a bad habit of going pop. The smaller 2.4 model was the engine of choice for the Kiwi Class II boats and had proven to be pretty reliable when looked after properly. Tebbsy's 3.4 blew in a race not long after Ross bought the boat and Bob Menzies air freighted a new block down from the US. Rebuilt the engine and was giving it an initial run-in in his shop, at idle, when the second one let go.

Menzies phoned Mercury and asked WTF was going on and merc eventually came clean that they had problems with the 3.4s and that it was not unknown for them to blow at idle. I think the gudgeon pins used to come loose and hang up in the transfer ports (which is not a nice thing to happen on a 2-stroke). No warranty on a race motor....

With "Scrubbers" John Garrity thought he had the machine to clean up. It was an old hull - I remember seeing it in Scott Robson's shed in Christchurch upside down with industrial heaters going full blast to try to dry it out. It was hundreds of kilos lighter after that, but still far too heavy to challenge the super-light Cougar and Robson cats (and Graeme Horne's new weapon, the Eade-designed Kevlar EIT Mover II)..

Garrity wanted some Johnson V8 outboards but the only way he could get them was to buy the Australian bridge-to-bridge championship winning boat at great cost and take the engines off it. The V8s were new engines, and Johnson eventually released a recreational model as well, but they weren't a success either, being too heavy and lacking power.

It was a disaster. The engines were very torquey but didn't make much power and the old Scrubbers had not scrubbed up that well after all. It wallowed around barely getting on the plane and certainly not "flying" which is how the cats performed so well. That photo must have been taken after going over a big wave to get it off the surface. It was a good place to take photos just there (Mt Maunganui) because you could get close to the action and the standing wind-against-tide waves flicked the boats into the air.

I had good times covering the powerboat racing in those days - they were a great bunch of guys.

http://www.nzonscreen.com/title/grand-prix-down-under-1957

http://www.nzonscreen.com/title/new-zealand-grand-prix-1961

http://www.nzonscreen.com/title/survey-rally-like-little-boys-in-a-man-sized-sport-1974

http://www.nzonscreen.com/title/trio-at-the-top-2001

These are some old footage that some might find interesting, Trio at the top I have on disk.