fastonwater

The following biography was sent to fastonwater by Wilf Gregory (21.10.10) with the title:

Warts and All profile of One Unfulfilled Power Boat Jockey.

I completed my National Service in the Royal Navy from 1948 to ’51 and was demobbed with qualifications in the repair and maintenance of marine engines. It was in 1958 that I started driving ‘fast’ boats in a 12 foot clinker built wooden hull with an 18hp Perkins outboard motor on the River Trent at Burton; achieving the ‘breakneck’ speeds of 32 mph. That was it – I’d got the ‘bug’.

In 1961 I bought a new 14ft Yarecraft from their Yarmouth boatyard for the princely sum of £495. A lot of lolly in those days. I attached a second-hand 850 Merc (they were painted white in those days). This boat I named Fancy Pants because the young females were always leaning over the gunwhales when it was on the trailer and partially exposing their frillies. I joined Chasewater Power Boat Club that same year.

Over the 1963/64 seasons I ‘learnt the trade’, competing in as many National and Club races that I could possibly get to.

Above and below: 1960/61. The 14ft Yarecraft, 'Fancy Pants'.

In 1964 I won the Express and Star Regent Oil Trophy and then shared the drive in the first Chasewater 24 Hour Race with Ron Burchell (I think he was an Oulton Broad Club member), using his Levi hull. The lake was floodlit and the marker buoys illuminated. All exciting stuff! Unfortunately, Ron hit a turn buoy in the darkness and we lost two hours repairing the damage, but we still got a finishers award. Later that year I won a National Invitation Race at Carr Mill, home of the Lancashire Power Boat Racing Club.

In 1966, I got Ron Wolbold to build me a 16 foot Blu Fin single seat monohull. I broke the bank to buy a new 100hp Merc and went serious racing. I entered the second Chasewater 24 Hour Race with Ron as co-pilot. The boat performed very well and we won the IU Class. I also won the Cyril Benstead Memorial Trophy that year.

Early1967 saw me working for Fred Miles Marine just before Dave Burgess was tempted to leave Bill Shakespeare’s yard in Tewkesbury to build race boats under the Miles Marine banner. I didn’t get a drive in any of Fred’s boats until later. That same year, I raced my Blu Fin in a number of National races and won the Daily Express Trophy at Iver, beating several ‘celebrities’ including Lady Fiona Arran. I also entered the boat in the Duchess of York Trophy at Chasewater , winning the UI Class but having to be content with 3rd overall.

In 1968 I took the boat, now named Blu Fin Volante, to race in Stockholm Harbour accompanied by Ron Wolbold, Roy Parks (and my Uncle Harold).
We had a very eventful journey hauling the boat and trailer onto the ferry at Harwich to Rotterdam, overland to Lubeck, another ferry to Copenhagen, then a change of ferries to Gothenburg, followed by a hair raising drive through the night (each of us taking a turn at the wheel) across Sweden to Stockholm. I raced against almost every make and type of boat one could imagine, including a handful of 28 foot Cigarette Boats, for 3 solid hours. I eventually came third out of 92 (yes, 92) starters. After the race, the organisers accused me of using an ‘illegal’ engine despite the lead Mercury Marine crankcase seals being still intact. They just could not believe that a puny little outfit like mine could humiliate their mighty inboard/outboard monsters. Ron Masterman, who was one of the Mercury Engine specialists from South Western Marine of Poole, Dorset, threatened to sue the race organisers on behalf of Mercury so they very quickly backed down. The sponsors of the race presented me and the team with a small silver cup, an equally small glass goblet and just £250 for all that effort; and to crown it all, we got nailed by the Swedish ‘Stasi’ on the motorway back to Gothenburg for using the outside lane of a 2-lane highway, because anything towing a trailer in Sweden was confined to the inside lane. That cost us £25 of the winnings before they would allow us onto the ferry for Hull!

Above: 1966 Pole position for the Cyril Benstead Trophy.
Below: 1967 Line-up for the Duchess of York at Chasewater.

Above: Volante, 1967.
Below: 1967; Bill Brown's 'Venus', Brian Hunt's 'Ham-er-on', and just in view Don Ross's boat no. 4 and Denis Burton's boat no. 11.

Later in1969, I drove a Shakespeare monohull for Fred Miles Marine in a race at Oulton Broad just prior to setting off for Amsterdam for the 3 hour race there. (see below front cover of Powerboat and Watersport Magazine, November 1969, I am the driver of boat no.2). I took pole position for the start of this race in Holland, but as I recall, this was a very rough race with many capsizes and incidents and I can’t now remember where we finished.

That same year, Dave Burgess built his first catamaran for Fred Miles. After a very brief run in the pitch darkness on Chasewater to check power trim function etc., Fred and I set off for Liege to take part in their first attempt at staging a 3 hour race on the River Meuse. During practice, despite being warned of a very dangerous barrage across the river at the bottom end of the course and marked by two extremely large red buoys, Bill Shakespeare and Jeremy James approached this hazard at high speed. Jeremy plunged over the steep drop and was killed. Bill managed to avoid the edge by just a few feet and was able to recover and alert the course marshals of the disaster.

The Miles/Burgess boat that I drove in that race was quite quick and I managed to pull out a good lead in the first hour, practically a whole lap ahead of the field. I handed the boat over to the co-driver (someone who was a friend of Fred Miles and whose name I cannot recall), but after a few laps the motor blew and he had to be towed in from way down the course. We were unable to repair the damaged motor so, that was the end of that race for the team.

Towing the boat, Fred Miles and I then drove on from Liege to Berlin and I was excited to pilot this excellent hull in the first Berlin 6 Hour Race on the Wansee. After four hours (all of which I drove incidentally) we were fed contaminated fuel from an ancient petrol bowser that had been resurrected for just this occasion. We subsequently came to a stop on the course and it took forever for a tiny, slow, marshal’s runabout to get me back to the pits. After flushing out the fuel lines we rejoined the race but abandoned any hope of a place. We did manage to complete the last few laps to qualify for a finisher’s award and although the result was disappointing, the experience was good.

Fred and I then drove South West from Berlin, through the Black Forest (staying overnight in Baden Baden) towing the boat to Lake Como in Italy where we again took part in a 3 hour marathon but were unsuccessful. Renato Molinari and Cesar Scotti were also in that race. After Como we drove up through France to take part in the Paris 6 Hours in October but we weren’t allowed to race due to ‘paperwork irregularities’ (entry not received in time). The Paris race was always oversubscribed and the French organisers insisted on restricting the entries to the number allowed by the Seine river authority.

This entire trip, towing the rig from the Midlands through Europe and return, some 1,970 miles, was completed in my well worn Jaguar 3.4 saloon, which never missed a beat throughout the whole journey.

Above: Fred Miles Burgess, Berlin 1969.
Below: Fred Miles Burgess, Paris 1969.
Bottom: Paris, 1971; the measured kilometre. Photo by Dee Vee photos.

1970 was the year I got married – no racing for a while, and no prizes for guessing why!!

Back to racing in 1971, Fred Miles entered one of the next generation of Burgess cats in Paris in October (see photo above, No. 33). This one was smooth and quick and with one of the early T3 Mercury motors, I was timed through the Measured Kilometre on the Seine at 128 mph, which was pretty quick in those days against stiff American and Italian opposition. I seem to recall that we came 4th but I’m not sure.

After Paris I started my own business called Solihull Boats. This was a small retail ski boat and engine workshop on Oulton Boulevard in Solihull so therefore, due to business commitments; I was unable to do much racing of note for a while. During this period I did manage an occasional club blowout with the Blu Fin but because I was unable to spare the time (or the cash) to race, with a heavy heart, I sold the Blu Fin to Peter Balmford.

In 1973 I co-drove with Alf Bullen in one of the early Windermere races with his Cougar cat and V4 Johnson motor. I think we got a finisher’s award in this race. In order to get back into serious racing, I bought a lightly used ‘pickle fork’ Burgess cat from Bill Kendrick and then the much raced Johnson V4 from Alf that we used at Windermere in ’73. I entered and ran this outfit in several National races including Windermere in ’74 or ’75; I can’t remember which as I have no records and only a few photographs of my racing during this period. What I can remember, was that this was my first encounter with the American OMC Wankel Rotary outboard engines. Absolutely awesome!

This old Burgess boat performed extremely well in the 1976 Embassy Grand Prix meeting at Bristol and I was presented with the Champion Spark Plug Special Award in ON Class and the Strand Glass Fibre Award for outstanding performance. I completed this race with a stellated fracture of the left kneecap after I’d tripped in the pits trying to carry three props, a life jacket and my helmet before the race had even started. After the race I had to be manhandled out of the cockpit in an exhausted and pain wracked state. The St. John Ambulance team took me to Bristol Royal Infirmary and my left leg was in plaster for several weeks. Later in ’76 I got Jim Peverelle to build me an ON hull. Between us we got this boat travelling quite quickly and I had a few ding dong battles with John Nicholson’s Hodges at Bristol and Chasewater.

Below: The Milesmaster stand at the 1972 Earls Court Boat Show. Followed by Two photos of the pickle fork Burgess ON, followed by photos of the boat at Chasewater, either 1974 or 75.

Below: 1976 Embassy Grand Prix, Bristol.

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