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Sunken Boats Question |
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By Fred Farley - ABRA Unlimited Historian |
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QUESTION: Are there any boats that sank during races and were never recovered? - Glenn Winter ANSWER: Quite a few Limited boats have sunk to the watery depths, never to be recovered. But the Unlimiteds are pretty much all accounted for. Stan Dollar's SKIP-A-LONG (U-25) sank during an exhibition race on Lake Tahoe in 1949 and wasn't recovered until the 1980s. That's because the technology needed to raise it didn't exist in 1949. Ron Kasper crashed THE WANDERER (U-45) to the bottom of Lake Washington while attempting qualification for the 1969 Seattle Seafair Regatta. Kasper tried to retrieve the craft but ran out of money. Somebody finally raised it about fifteen years later. There is a widely circulated rumor (published in 1959 in THIS IS HYDROPLANING) that Horace Dodge, Jr.'s JOHN FRANCIS MY SWEETIE (U-17) rests on the bottom of the Detroit River. But this is not true. I saw the restored U-17 run in an antique boat exhibition at Toronto, Ontario, in 1984. A teammate of the JOHN FRANCIS--the MY SWEETIE (U-3)--did flip and sink during the 1956 Detroit Silver Cup. But the U-3 was recovered about a month later. Then, of course, there is "The Pink Lady" HAWAII KAI III (U-8) that was given a "Viking Funeral" in 1971 (after having been retired from competition since 1963) and now rests on the bottom of Puget Sound, off Orcas Island in the state of Washington. In the news in recent years is the recovery of the remains of BLUEBIRD K-7, a non-propeller-driven jet hydroplane, owned and driven by Donald Campbell. The K-7 disintegrated during an attempt on the world water speed record on Coniston Water in the UK in 1967. Campbell was fatally injured. |
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