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     Quicksilver Quilligan 


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I’m gonna tell you about another character that I raced boats with. His name was Jack Quillman. I’ll let Jack help me tell you some of this story in his own words. I recently re-connected with my old buddy through Facebook and e-mail. His part will be in italics.

 Back before I got involved in boat racing, I had met a young teenager that had a little boat, about 6 feet long, with an Elgin outboard motor. He called his boat “Leapin’ Liz” because of the way it “hopped” as it ran. (Now we call it “porpoising”.) Maybe you remember the comic strip called “Little Orphan Annie”? And how she would exclaim “Leapin’ Lizzards!” anytime something exciting happened? I guess that little boat was pretty exciting to drive! We had a ball racing each other around Lake Maggiore, and imagining that we really were real boat racers. . It wasn’t long after we met that Jack became my first racing partner.

I’ll let Jack continue the story in his own words.

Right after the family came back from Japan in the mid 50s, Dad bought our house near the lake,  One day we went to the lake  and saw the outboards racing. I’m maybe six or seven --  and then the next year I took my bike to the pits.  And I can remember being at Glenn Oak Elementary, where I went to school, and hearing the roar from the open exhaust stacks (more from the  inboards), testing at the lake. 

I bought the Leapin’ Liz for 13 dollars. I was too young to drive, so my Mom drove me to the sellers house and we stuffed it  into the station wagon.   Dad got me a very used 7-1/2 hp Elgin, and that was the beginning . Getting the Lizz on a plane was one of those never forget moments. Fast on the water  beats  pavement any day.

  There were several Leapin’ Lizzies besides the 13 dollar boat. One was a fiber glass B runabout we ran around at the Snug Harbor house. (My note: Snug Harbor is where my parents had a vacation house on a little bay off of Tampa Bay.) And the final one was a boat you helped me get someplace (Somewhere over in the orange groves in central Florida.) Paid $75. Thanks for the helping me get the boat

This is when a bunch of guys would get together in clubs and organize races at different places around the area, which was most of Florida. They were not sanctioned or insured by any organization. I quickly found out where there were some races, and Jack and I started attending. We took turns driving my boat, the F005. He’d drive at one race, and I’d drive another.  We quickly assumed the nick names  of “Flipper”, that was me, and Jack became “Quicksilver Quilligan”. Eventually we bought a class-A motor that Jack raced, while I drove the B-motor.

The F005 was an old class A/B runabout that I bought from a retired, boat racer. It was seriously obsolete, but it WAS a real racing boat. At first, I had an old Mercury KG-7 fishing motor on it. I’ve told y’all about these motors in another story, so I’ll leave the details off now. When we started racing, we had to have a racing number painted on the sides. Having never raced before, I did know that the numbers in Florida had to begin with “F”. I thought that F-005 sounded pretty cool. I took the boat to a sign painter that was near my house at Snug harbor, and asked him to paint the numbers on. I guess he didn’t hear me, or I didn’t tell him about the “-“ in the number, so good old F005 was born. Ya pronounce it “Foofive”.

Let’s let Jack---I mean, Quicksilver, take up the story again.

I think F005, was the first steering  wheel boat I ever drove.  We went to Sebring pulling the racing trailer with F005 behind the Corvair. You flipped the F005 in the first heat. You dried the ignition out by the second heat  and  then told me to, "go". My very first race a I got a second. We both raced the other boat, the hydro, and between you doing well in the hydro and the B stock---we won our first two trophies in Sebring.  You dropped me off at my house coming back from Sebring and  we showed the two trophies  to my older  sister. The first  anybody in my family knew what we were up to. Sister recommended  we  don't  parade the trophies  around the house. In our racing days, I had to keep everything on the Q/T. My  parents  really didn't know what we were up to. If I recall, we forged my release papersI I remember we were filling out the entry form paper work  for one of our races. (And the rest of them, too)

You had that  poor Corvair to pull a trailer with two boats, and  with an “engine box” built on it to hold the motors and tools, all around central Fla., with that trailer eating wheel bearings. (It was a 1965 two speed automatic transmission Corvair two door with the shift lever on the dash, and with a hitch bolted onto the bumper. I eventually wrecked the transmission pulling all that weight. Our trailer was a converted boat trailer that had spent it’s life in salt water with no attention to the wheel bearings.)

Back then, I  had tried building my own engine from some spare parts---had opened up the ports with a file  and could never get the engine to rev. So I had heard about adding mothballs to the gas.  This idea has been debated, and still is, but still couldn't get the engine to rev. Anyway - the day of the race, you came by and I threw all my spare parts  and  a gallon or so of my  super gas into the  trailer.  And at the lake, without thinking  (imagine that) I  poured  the magic gas right in your tank.  During practice lap, you came out of turn  two  on to that long  backstretch ---and the ol runabout really looked like she was honkin’ . Then she really looked like she was smokin’....and then she  really was---smoking.

I don't remember about this incident---unless it was when I'd used a special Hubble modified block that had extra air ports built into the intake port covers. I filled the holes with wax, never thinking that the wax would melt when the engine got hot and let in too much air. That burned the pistons. Yeah, that musta been it...Mothballs??? 

We did have a reputation. So -maybe it was the "breathers" ?   I feel better already.

Yes we did have a reputation

After our great success at Sebring, we raced next in Sarasota.  And I had my first and only flip---also in F005.

Jack tells about how we got our first really good Class-B runabout.

 One Friday afternoon, we drove all the way from  St. Pete to Norfolk, VA. Straight  up north. Bought a B-runabout from Hal and  we drove straight back. Sunday afternoon of that same weekend, we put the boat in Lake Maggiore.  You had that  poor Corvair that you pulled the trailer with. When the car hit railroad tracks (at speed) the front end/steering  would  start vibrating. 

Hal Stata was a mechanic that I had met at a marina in St. Pete. I learned that he used to race back in his home town of Virginia Beach. He soon moved back home, but we kept in touch. He decided to sell one of his boats to me. It was all arranged for me to drive up to get it, and we stopped by my girlfriend Nancy's house on the way out of town. Hal had called her to say that he had decided not to sell it. I told Nancy that if he called back, to say that we never stopped at her house. We drove on up and he sold it. I can remember the battery, generator, or something giving out on the way. It was a dark, moonless night. We drove without the headlights part way up. We musta gotten it fixed up there in Virginia.(?) I also remember hanging my head out of the window in the cold to try to keep awake. By-the-way, Jack, thanks for going with me. Glad I didn't get you killed---or me either!

I named the boat “Whoopie Ding” and raced it successfully until I built my first Kaycraft raceboat. After buying Whoopie Ding, I raced it in class B-stock runabout, and Jack raced F005 in class A-stock.

Before getting back to Jack’s part of the story, I think I’ll repeat an incident from a previous story, to show how silly we were back then. 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.

Now, back to Jack.

I’ve pulled  away somewhat  from  keeping up with the racing scene. Went to some vintage outboard gathering in Old Town Fla., and have a friend that’s really  into inboard and outboard racing, and have gone to Mt. Dora for some vintage inboard events.

 I still have a C/D stock DeSilva runabout with a 30H Mercury racing motor, once owned by Marshal Grant--- of the Johnny Cash trio. Grant was the bass player. Raced as “Ring of Fire”. I also have a 20H Mercury racing motor. Haven't  put either in the water for  16 years or so.  I kept up with boat racing  as a fan and  in the early 80s,  actually ran an inboard, "My Tallahassee Lassie'', a 15 foot hydro with For 4-banger Ford engine, that I raced back at lake Maggiore.  Had  a better record with your outboards than with my inboard. 

Don't know why I keep the little B-motor, and the “Star Brite” (aka Ring of Fire). Maybe the last vestige  of youth. Not much left of Quicksilver Quilligan except the “silver” part---hair, that is.

So ends the nostalgic excursion back into those early years of racing with another of my old buddies, Jack “Quicksilver Quilligan” Quillman. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it as much as I’ve enjoyed reminiscing with Jack and writing it.

 

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