The Hydroplane and Raceboat Museum in Kent, Washington, has restored several hydroplanes that played a significant role in the history of the sport. Recently, for example, the museum restored Bill Muncey’s “Blue Blaster” Atlas Van Lines. Now, the volunteers at the museum are nearing the end of another important project: the restoration of the Pay ‘n Pak, which was built in 1973 and would win four straight national titles. The boat was also significant for introducing the sport to the horizontal stabilizer, a component that is now standard on all boats. NewsJournal Editor Andy Muntz has written a book about the history of the sport titled “At the Ragged Edge.” Below is an excerpt from Chapter 27 of that book.
Stanley S. Sayres Memorial Park is a peaceful place most of the year. An asphalt peninsula built in 1957 on the western shore of Lake Washington about a mile and a quarter south of the Interstate 90 floating bridge, the park provides a gentle ramp for launching small boats, 14 low wooden piers on the north and east sides, and plenty of parking for cars and trailers. It is a perfect spot for sockeye fishermen and water skiers to begin their fun. It’s also a quiet place where one can sit on the wooden piers, hear the rippling waves lap against the pilings, and watch a family of ducks swim by.
But, during the first week in August, the place becomes the nerve center for unlimited hydroplane racing. The calm is replaced by the sounds of fun and excitement: the clatter of helicopters overhead, the din of thousands of race fans, the throaty rumble of monster hydroplane engines being tested, and the buzz of electric generators. Chain link fencing is placed on the pavement to corral the huge crowds and tall scaffolding towers are erected for the television cameras. Trucks and motor homes are scattered about, vendors hawk Seafair pins and programs, and the place smells of grease and cotton candy.
Sometimes the serenity of Stan Sayres Park also is disrupted at other times of the year, especially during the spring. As each new hydroplane racing campaign draws nearer, it becomes a favorite spot for race teams to see if the boat performed better with the sponson changes they made over the winter, or if the new driver could get comfortable with the boat’s handling. It also is a place where new boats are launched—where beauty queens smash a bottle of champagne across the bow and where owners, designers, and crew members watch anxiously as their new hydroplane rumbles into action for the first time.
The tranquility of Stan Sayres Park was interrupted for just such an occasion on the afternoon of April 9, 1973, when a crowd of hydroplane groupies and reporters gathered near the familiar wooden piers to witness the christening of a hydroplane that promised to introduce the latest in boat technology: a glistening white craft named Pay ‘n Pak.
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| Owner Dave Heerensperger, driver Mickey Remund, and crew chief Jim Lucero. |
The new boat was the latest in a string of hydroplanes campaigned by Dave Heerensperger, a man with an easy grin, a receded hairline, large dark-framed eyeglasses, and a sometimes abrasive demand for perfection.
The story of Heerensperger’s involvement in unlimited hydroplane racing began in early 1963 as an act of civic charity when the community organizers who campaigned Miss Spokane issued a plea for sponsorship money so they could keep their effort going. The owner of a small chain of electrical supply stores in the Spokane area, Heerensperger saw this as an opportunity to advertise his business, gave the group $5,000, and asked that the boat be renamed Miss Eagle Electric.
After spending another $28,000 over the next two years, more than his business was worth at the time, and having little to show for the investment, he decided he couldn’t afford to stay involved. Yet, the racing bug had bit.
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| Dave Heerensperger |
Less than two years later, toward the end of the 1967 season, Heerensperger purchased the old $Bill, a boat that had competed since 1962 with no race victories to its credit—even despite having drivers such as Bill Muncey, Rex Manchester, and Bill Schumacher in its cockpit—and put a hard charging former Air Force fighter jet pilot named Warner Gardner behind the wheel. Suddenly, he had a winner.
Gardner, who over the past few years had used his heavy foot to coax race victories out of marginal boats such as Mariner Too and Miss Lapeer, drove Eagle Electric to victory in the 1968 season opener in Guntersville, Alabama, and added wins at the Atomic Cup and the President’s Cup before heading to the Gold Cup in Detroit. There, during the final heat, Gardner gave chase to Bill Sterett in Miss Budweiser heading into the hairpin turn at the upstream end of the course and, when he cranked the steering wheel to the left, Eagle Electric pitched into its right side, rolled over, and landed upside down in a blast of spray. Gardner was pulled from the water with severe head injuries and died in the hospital the next day.
Gardner’s death hit Heerensperger particularly hard because he had already started talking to Les Staudacher about plans for a radical hull that promised to solve the stability problems that plagued the sport. Before this new boat took to the water, however, Heerensperger had become the president of a new chain of stores that resulted from the merger of his Eagle Electric stores with the Buzzard, Falcon, and Pay ‘n Pak store chains. It meant that his new boat would carry the name Pride of Pay ‘n Pak.
For all the hoopla it attracted, the new hydroplane may have been one of the most disappointing boats of its era. It was essentially a trimaran outrigger, with the cockpit and the engine set in a narrow section of hull and with its sponsons several feet to either side, attached by two beams. “She looked like a South Seas war canoe bobbing on the choppy river,” wrote Pete Waldmeir of the Detroit News. “You keep expecting a dozen guys with spears to come pouring out of the fuselage.”
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| 1969 Pride of Pay 'n Pak |
The team could have used those warriors and especially their paddles. Except for a third place finish in the Tri-Cities, the boat did terribly. Driver Tommy Fults said, “it was like driving your car with the emergency brake on.” Others were less kind, suggesting that the best way to solve the boat’s problems would be to drill holes in it and let it sink. The team pulled the boat from the circuit before the 1969 season ended.
Never one to shy away from the edge, Heerensperger’s next venture was every bit as risky, but much more successful. He contacted Ron Jones and convinced him to design a new Pride of Pay ‘n Pak that would feature the most cutting-edge innovations. The boat not only had the driver sitting in front of the engine, but also was powered by a pair of Chrysler Hemi automotive engines.
The new boat had been troublesome during the 1970 season. Its two engines seemed to go lame regularly and were expensive to maintain, leaving the crew so busy just keeping the engines alive that they didn’t have time to address its serious handling problems. Consequently, when the season ended, Heerensperger decided to dump the Chryslers and go back to the tried and true Rolls Royce Merlin.
Led by their talented crew chief, Jim Lucero, who had joined the organization midway through the 1970 season, the team made the switch during the following winter. In order to keep the hull’s balance intact, they also were forced to abandon the cabover cockpit and move the driver’s seat behind the engine.
The change did wonders. Pride of Pay ‘n Pak won the last three races of the 1971 season with Bill Schumacher at the wheel and, with Schumacher and Billy Sterett, Jr. sharing driving duties in 1972, took runner-up honors in the national standings.
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| 1971 Pride of Pay 'n Pak |
Meanwhile, Bernie Little’s three-time national champion, Karelsen-designed Budweiser had begun to show its age, managing only two second-place finishes that year, so Little made a deal. The day after the season’s final race, he announced that he had purchased the Pride of Pay ‘n Pak from Dave Heerensperger for $30,000.
Heerensperger was willing to part with the boat because he already had plans for a new hydroplane. Months earlier, he had asked Ron Jones to design and build a new Pay ‘n Pak that would be even better than the “Pride.” Jones did just that, producing a boat that would stun the hydro-racing world and become one of the most successful race boats in history.
A few details about the new Pay ‘n Pak began to emerge from Ron Jones’ Costa Mesa, California, shop while the thing was still under construction early in 1973. A press release said that it would be “new and revolutionary” and that it would look deceptively like Heerensperger’s previous boat, but much stronger and with other changes, such as aerodynamic cowlings. The biggest innovation was under the decking, though. Reports said the entire structure had been built with a strong but lightweight material called Hexcel, a sort of aluminum sandwich with thin sheets of the metal on the top and the bottom and a core made of aluminum set on-edge in a honeycomb pattern.
Soon it came time for the boat’s christening, which interrupted the calm at the Stanley S. Sayres Memorial Park on that sunny Monday afternoon in early April 1973. At their first sight of the boat, the crowd that had gathered for the occasion saw that it had a wedge shape, an effect created by the aerodynamic cowling that seemed to enclose the cockpit more than usual. The color scheme also was eye-catching, brilliant white decks with the name “Pay ‘nN Pak” painted in large orange and black letters.
What really caught their eye, though, was something that hadn’t been discussed in the accounts of the boat’s construction: a wing. Standing about five feet above the deck and resting atop two vertical tails was a horizontal stabilizer, a four-foot wide slab of honeycomb plastic and epoxy that was as long as the transom was wide.
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| 1973 Pay 'n Pak |
According to crew chief Jim Lucero, who played a significant role in the design, the wing had two purposes: to give the rear end of the boat some lift and to be a safety device, to help give the hull better directional stability and control. It also grabbed attention. Fans argued over the merits of the wing. Would it cause the boat to become airborne? Would it come off when the boat hit high speed or ran into a large swell? It was just the kind of debate the sponsor side of Heerensperger dreamed about.
During a boat’s first season, especially a boat as innovative as Pay ‘n Pak, there typically is a period of fine-tuning. The crew will try different props, shift the weight around a little, and make small changes to the sponsons in an effort to get its ride just right. So, while the Pay ‘n Pak team and the boat’s driver, Mickey Remund, worked on these things in 1973, their old boat, now painted Budweiser gold, red, and white and with Dean Chenoweth back in the team’s cockpit, played the role of chief nemesis—always there and always a threat.
Remund and Chenoweth were locked in a struggle throughout the 1973 campaign. The Pay ‘n Pak won the first race it entered, the Champion Spark Plug Regatta in Miami, then Chenoweth took his turn at the winner’s circle by winning in both Owensboro, Kentucky, and at Detroit. Remund was never far behind, though. He finished second behind Chenoweth at Detroit then the two switched positions as Remund won and Chenoweth placed second in Madison, Indiana.
Perhaps the best battle of the year took place during a gray and drizzly Seafair World Championship Trophy race on Lake Washington, when Chenoweth and Remund raced side-by-side for three heats. Their duel then continued through the remaining two races of the season and in the end, when all the points were tallied, Pay ‘n Pak came out on top by a mere 275 points, giving Dave Heerensperger his first national championship. Although the points race had been close, the record book was one-sided in favor of the new hydro. During the year, Pay ‘n Pak had shattered 26 of 29 existing speed records.
There is something of a pack mentality among the unlimited race teams. If somebody builds a hydroplane that is superior to the others, there will be an immediate rush of orders for boats of its same ilk. During the winter of 1973-74, Jones received orders for four new hydroplanes to be made of lightweight Hexcel and to feature a horizontal stabilizer just like Pay ‘n Pak. The wing had already become standard equipment.
Postscript
In the years that followed, the Winged Wonder would win another national title in 1974 with George Henley behind the wheel and another the following year with Henley and Jim McCormick sharing the driving duties. Then, Heerensperger pulled off another stunning deal, this time selling his entire team to Bill Muncey. In 1976, the boat won its fourth straight national title, this time with the name Atlas Van Lines painted on its hull.
In 1977, while Muncey raced his new boat, the Blue Blaster, the boat appeared in the two Pacific Northwest races as the Pay ‘n Pak, but was showing its age. The sponsons came apart twice. It was then was sold to the City of Madison, Indiana, the following winter and spent the next 11 seasons as either the Miss Madison or carrying the names of various sponsors, such as Dr. Toyota, Frank Kenney Toyota/Volvo, American Speedy Printing, Miss Ching Group, and Holset/Miss Madison. Sitting in the driver’s seat were people such as Jon Peddie, E. Milner Irvin, Tom Sheehy, Andy Coker, and Jerry Hopp.
The boat’s only race victory during this time was the 1983 season-opener, the Missouri Governor’s Cup in Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri. There, Ron Snyder, the man who may have logged the most time in the boat’s cockpit, drove Rich Plan Foodservice to victory in the final heat, largely because the Budweiser failed to start and the Atlas Van Lines was dead in the water with battery woes. The boat’s last appearance came at the 1988 Miller High Life Thunderboat Classic in Syracuse, NY. with Ron Snyder at the controls.