Boat racing silliness -Flipper

[Chick Ludwig]

                                        BOAT RACING YEARS - SILLINESS - FLIPPER

   In thinking about the racing years, I can’t help but to remember some of the silly things that happened. First off, I guess I’d better explain why my nickname became Flipper. One of you thought it might have something to do with my boat porpoising.  No, that wasn’t it, but that reminds me of what a friend said to me once. My girlfriend and I were with another couple at the beach swimming one day when I decided to show off. (Something that I did often.) I would push off the bottom and “dive” out of, and back into, the water, and do it several times in a row. My friend said “Jump like a porpoise, Big Daddy” every time I did it.

 

   Now back to the REAL reason for the name Flipper. I was fortunate enough to be able to compete well in my class of runabout. But as well as I ran, I was even better at “flipping” somewhere around the race course, usually “rolling” it going into the first turn. They used to say that I’d either win the race or flip. Ya get it? “Flip-Flipper”.  I did it so often that I painted “If you can read this, turn me over.” on the bottom of my boat.

 

   Remember my friend and racing partner, Jack “Quicksilver Quilligan” that I told you back in the first installment of this series? We were heading out to test our boats at a lake that I’d never been to before. Somehow we got lost. Jack was laughing about how I would get lost trying to find the best way to get places. I did this fairly often. As I was trying to get back on track, he told my girlfriend, Nancy, who usually was with us for practice sessions, a little story about me making a wrong turn and cutting through a strawberry field. He called it a “strawberry shortcut”. Well, WE thought it was funny and laughed about it the rest of the way to the lake. Yes, we finally got there.

 

   I think I got lost because I got so busy talking and joking that I’d just forget what I was doing. If you think the strawberry shortcut was bad, get this one. One day we were following some other racers to another lake to test. We were about the third car back when we came to an intersection. The first car turned right, the second car turned right, I turned LEFT! I never DID live THAT one down.

 

   Getting back to the subject of flipping, several of us often tested our boats out at Snug Harbor, off of Gandy Boulevard between St. Pete. and Tampa. My parents had a house there on Master’s Bayou, which I was buying from them after they moved to North Carolina. We could launch right there, so it was a convenient place to test. One day, I was practicing turning around a mangrove tree covered island that was across from the house. Somehow, I lost it and flipped, and wound up in the branches of a tree. As I was getting back into the boat, which had landed  right side up, Jack hollered at me, “Hey, ya huntin’ for squirrels?”

 

   Another time, I was trying out a hydroplane that I had just bought. I was running across the shallow mud flats “airing it out”. Guess I’d better explain what that means. A hydro depends on the airflow over and under the hull to “lift” most of the boat out of the water so it is running on the very last few inches of the bottom with the front several inched off of the water. There is a delicate balance of shifting your weight to lift the bow, but not so high that the air pressure would flip the hydro over backwards. Guess what, y’all --- flipper does it again. We blew over backwards, dumping me out. The boat wound up on dry land, and I hit head first in the shallow water. When I stood up, everyone was rolling with laughter. Seems that when I hit, my head stuck in the mud with my feet kicking out of the water.

 

   There are other dangers involved in flipping. Down in good ol’ Florida, we usually raced on shallow lakes up and down the state. You may know that the sunshine state is also known for it’s alligators. We would often see them around the shores of the lake. Before the day’s racing, there would be a driver’s meeting to explain the rules and any explanations about conditions and such. One day, the race committee chairman, who was conducting the meeting, made this statement. “Don’t flip in turn number one. A big gator has been spotted hanging out over there.” Would you believe---Flipper rides again! Yep, I flipped. I think I set a new record for climbing into the rescue boat.

 

   Thankfully, I eventually figured out how to keep the boat right side up. I continued to race for several years, with only an occasional flip. Hey wait, one more. A couple of years later, I went with my new racing partner, Rex “the king” Cole, to the stock runabout nationals in Beloit, Wisconsin. Oh boy, did I think I was a big shot! I was the region 5 champion after winning most of my races back home. But now I was up with the big boys. I got a pretty good start and went into the first turn in about the middle of the pack. Oh, was I excited. But---about the middle of the turn---Flipper does it again. Over we went. The boat went that-a-way, I went the other way, and one lonely tennis shoe went yet another! And so ends my silly saga, and why I became known as Flipper.

[Action Tiger]

Chick,

I am NEVER getting in a power boat with you.

Super funny, actually. When we had bad wrecks on our bikes, and stuff went flying everywhere, we used a term borrowed from skiing, I think. Yard Sale.

As in, oh man Action Tiger caught his front wheel in that rut and now he's having a yard sale.

Or, Chick's out there having a yard sale in Turn Two. Excuse, me. Flipper's have a yard sale, y'all!

Peace,

Robert

[Chick Ludwig]

Robert, glad to see that someone actually reads this stuff! And don't worry, I've not had a "yard sale" since I quit that boat racing silliness. Watching a friend get killed kinda dampened my enthusiasm.