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The Brief Career of Red Man U-8 |
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By Fred Farley - ABRA Unlimited Historian |
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Two Jim McCormick-owned RED MAN hulls competed in 1973: the U-8 and the U-81. The U-81 was the former COUNTRY BOY and was the boat in which Skipp Walther was killed at Miami in 1974. The RED MAN (U-8) is the hull that was built in three weeks in the summer of 1971 as the second HALLMARK HOMES. The first HALLMARK HOMES had crashed at Madison and was the former Ed Karelsen-designed-and- built MISS BARDAHL of 1967. The replacement HALLMARK HOMES was an exact hull copy of the Karelsen hull but was built by Don Kelson of Seattle. Because of the race against time to be ready for the Seattle race, the workmanship was very shoddy. The boat only ran in thirteen races (in 1971-72-73). By the end of 1973, it was coming apart internally. HALLMARK HOMES the second ran in three races in 1971...and lost a rudder in all three of them with Leif Borgersen driving. It participated in only one event (Seattle) in 1972 and placed third as MISS VAN'S P-X with Borgersen again at the wheel. McCormick leased the boat from owner Tony Mulherin for the 1973 season. Jim drove it to a third-place at Miami. Before the end of the season, he turned the wheel over to Danny Walls while McCormick concentrated on the RED MAN (U-81). At season's end, the U-8 hull was in very bad shape. Mulherin invited McCormick to remove any hardware from the boat that he wanted. Jim then sent the bare hull back to Tony's place of business in Memphis, Tennessee. A few weeks later, the shed containing the U-8 hull burned under suspicious circunstances and the boat was consumed. Halloween vandals were blamed. That's about the size of the abbreviated career of the RED MAN (U-8). |
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