Drag Boat Racing - InCOLEherent 140

Figured it was time to create a thread to dump all the updates and photos of our drag boat racing escapades.

The boat is a 1981 Cole TR2 featherweight that was built to be the Cole race boat for 1981. My best friend’s father was the driver hired to race the boat. He capped off the ‘81 season winning the NJBA Nationals at Firebird Raceway just south of Phoenix.

After the ‘81 season, Cole sold the boat to another race team. My friend’s dad had the opportunity to drive the boat a few times for the new owners in 1984 and 1985 setting new world records for fastest speed in a naturally aspirated ski boat and was the 1985 NJBA high points champion.


Then came 1986 - me and my buddy are little shits by this point and tragedy after tragedy was hitting the boat racing world. 7 of the sports top drivers died from high-speed crashes causing participation and popularity to dwindle. My friend’s dad was then expecting his third child and his racing career quickly came to an end. The boat would be MIA for the next 32 years while the drag boat racing community implemented numerous changes to improve driver safety.

 

Badass!

 

Always been fascinated by this when I watch it

 

pics of my buddy and his dad at the races in ‘84 and ‘85 - collecting some hardware.



@FrenchToasty - Sam looks just a little bit like his old man, huh?

 

Haha only a little bit!
Did you guys find some albums recently?

 

He got a bunch of albums from his mom when he moved back to AZ last year.

 

So after the drag boat racing ended in the 80’s the family had a 20’ Bayliner in the 90’s and early 2000’s. This is when I fell in love with camping at the lake, boating, water sports, and everything that goes with weekends on the water. If it isn’t something you’ve enjoyed, you don’t know what you’re missing.

I went off to school and Sam joined the Navy and our lake time took a hiatus. Sam got out of the Navy but met his bride at his last station and was living on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound. Unfortunately Sam’s dad was diagnosed with skin cancer WEAR A HAT AND SUNSCREEN and passed away in 2012. Sam made it his mission to find one of his dad’s old flat bottom race boats to bring back to the family.

 

We had a “Babeliner” as our weekend boat as well. It was a total piece of shit with the Ford 2.3 L 4 banger. But it was OUR piece of shit, damnit.

That’s a bummer to hear about Sam’s dad. Cancer sucks.

 

Ha. This one was decent, it had a 5.7 and a ski aka stripper pole with a banging stereo, tinted windshield - we were living large for high schoolers! We later “upgraded” the pole to a tower.

 

Sam spent countless hours searching the web, hitting internet forums, watching YouTube videos, browsing Craigslist in hopes of finding any clues on the whereabouts of any of these boats. He knew some boats had been crashed and wouldn’t be out there but also heard rumors of one of the boats still being around town and another one that had been repainted and was occasionally spotted in Needles / Havasu / Parker. After hitting a ton of dead ends, he gave up and found an old bubble deck Sanger that needed restored and decided that would have to do. He bought the Sanger and slowly started tearing it down for a full restoration.

Life, being the way it is, allowed him to get fully immersed into the Sanger build before he got the lead he had been waiting for - July 2017 InCOLEherent was found and listed for sale in Havasu. It had been renamed the Bwana V and had been under water (apparently sank while docked taking a water over the back) but the majority of the original boat was all still there.

It was time for Sam to take a road trip.


In the guy’s garage in Havasu.

 

Coincidentally, I was at the lake with my family for an early start to the 4th of July week celebration when I got the call. I had bought my wake boat (Axis A22) 9 months earlier needing to fulfill my own lake addiction. We really had no idea what the plan was at that point but everyone was excited to get the boat home.

Getting backed into to the garage under the trophies from racing in the 80’s

Still had the original canvas top that to this day smells like 1981.

A boat and it’s hardware reunited
Of course Sam had to bring it by my casa for our boats to meet and grab the obligatory pic.

 

Such a bad ass boat!!!

 

Sam was in town for a day or two before turning around and starting the 25 hour drive back to Whidbey.


Garage pass at home in WA.

After getting home and going through the boat, he found it was going to need quite a bit of TLC. Motor was not healthy -

spends the fall of 2017 doing the motor to get it on the water and finds a soft spot on the floor… - big questions as to whether the boat would ever be race worthy again. The boat had to be completely stripped and flipped to perform the floor repair.

 

What are all the pedals down there?

 

4 pedals - left to right they go:
Down pedal, up pedal, starter, gas

the up and down pedals control the cavitation plates on the back of the boat that work like trim tabs to hopefully keep you from either sending it to the moon or plowing water. Down pedal pushes the plates below the hull to act like a wheelie bar in the water. Up pedal raises them allowing the boat to get up out of the water.

 

Winter of 2017-2018 spent working on both flatties. Sam was getting sick of winters lasting from October to May but it did allow him a ton of time to get everything sorted out.
Ready for winter work

Getting some race gear together

paint - goodbye Bwana V and back to inCOLEherent

 

This is epic! Keep the story going

 

Badass and great story so far!

 

As a teenager, I used to race marsh runners, which was basically a flat bottom rigged with forward steering and a high HO engine. Wasn’t drag racing but would run the tight corner bayous of the Louisiana/MS southern marshes. Mine was a 14’ with a blown 35. Stopped doing it after going airborne at 80 mph.

 

May 2018 - finally warm enough to get out to float the boat and see if it is leak free after surgery -
Repair took well and everything is holding. Time to build a race boat.

Although he had pieced together a power plant in late 2017, it was not something that would hold up to the abuse these engines go through racing these boats. Mission to build a power plant that would withstand a season of racing was now underway.

While waiting on parts/money for an engine build, Sam was able to make a ton of progress on the Sanger as well.



Early 2019 and the engine is coming together. Did a rebuild on the blower and carbs and upgraded everything else. Dyno’d in March 2019 - in the boat and ready to go racing.


Me and Sam making a garage pass in May 2019 a couple months before his first race - copper pipe rope deflector paying tribute to AZ and his dad the plumber -

 

That is soooo cool and then to get it back is the topping on the whole thing. What a riot and flat out FAST!!!!! Punch it and hang on!!!! Way to go guys!!!

Best of luck to y’all and be Safe out there.

 

A couple weeks after my visit - Sam took the boat out for some test and tune at a local lake.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bxw98owgmH0/

Not all the area residents were impressed and the sheriff may have shown up to discuss noise/sound ordinances - I guess he didn’t care about trying to let this baby breathe.


Anyhow, Sam got the seat time he needed - 3 weeks until the first race. Shit is getting real.

 

First race - June 15-16 at Dexter in Lowell, OR
Sometimes when you’re new, you forget to drop your visor on the start line - he told us he just wanted to feel it in his eyeballs


His timesheet didn’t look like it was his first time… in 2019 he signed up for the Top Eliminator class which is index racing meaning the goal is to run the track in 7.00 seconds. Closest to 7.00 seconds without going under wins. Not too shabby for his licensing pass




Ended up getting knocked out in the semifinals by running too fast. Off to a solid start.

 

Now the copper pipe rope deflector makes sense to me

 

A good friend of mine is pretty heavily involved it outboard racing, I’ve gone to watch a few times. He’s referred to as the drag boat legend, Paul Freeman. BTW he’s a Tundra guy also.

 

Sam experienced similar success the remainder of the 2019 season being the #1 qualifier and finishing runner-up in multiple events.





He was sitting in second place overall for the season standings in the Top Eliminator class heading into the last race of the season - only hiccup is the final race was over 1,300 miles away.

Thankfully Sam has an awesome family and they all piled in their class C motorhome and drove 28 hours straight making another 3,000 mile trip hoping to make a statement with closing out his rookie season. Since the points leader wasn’t making this trip - Sam knew if he could get tech’d and qualified he should make up enough points to win the Top Eliminator class for 2019… that’s exactly what he did.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B3fzorDhFHj/

https://www.instagram.com/p/B3i-mmOB1RY/


Sam, being a stat tracker, figured he drove 2999.7 miles, burned 281 gallons of fuel costing $1,008.76 to spend 98 seconds on the race track. I can tell you, he hasn’t regretted any of it for a second.

 

What Sam didn’t know, is not only did he tally enough points to win the Top Eliminator Championship, he also surpassed the point total of any driver in any class making him the high points champion for the 2019 season. Called the best rookie season in CDBA history. We’ll take it.

 

This is great - thank you for sharing!

 

2019 Hardware