HERE’S an old saying in sport —”they don’t come back.” Either it is I not true in speedboat racing, or Victorian John Lewis is the exception that proves the rule.
When John, limp and unconscious, was carried from the water after being thrown from his runabout, Vulture, on Griffith Cup day, 1971, nobody thought that he would ever race again.
When, after recovering from serious injuries, he raced at Melbourne’s Albert Park six months later, everybody thought he was a fool.
They were right; the runabout kited on him again, and once more he was carried ashore unconscious. John Lewis dropped out of competition then, for more than a year. But he hadn’t given the game away. He had sold the cranky runabout, and was building a hydro.
When it was ready to race, midway through the 1972-3 season, he found that he had lost his nerve. So he raced his way back in his new hydroplane also named Vulture, whenever he could get a start — usually finishing well back in the field.
Whenever I asked him what the trouble was, he would answer frankly: “There’s nothing wrong with the boat. It’s me.”
However, by racing, being consistently beaten by bigger and faster boats, but always racing. John Lewis kept trying. Gradually he recovered confidence, and the skill and judgment which, right from his first year in the sport, had marked him as a champion of the future.
This season, he has at last reaped the reward of courage, sportsmanship and consistency.
Because he has always been willing to compete in any and every race open to an unlimited class boat, no matter how daunting the competition, the titles have started falling to him one by one.
Victorian Unlimited Open Champion, Australian 400 Cubic Inch Open Champion. Australian Unlimited Hydroplane Champion, Australian Unlimited Open Champion. And all in a 5-litre hydroplane.
That was because the 5-litre hydroplane was always in where the action was. The bigger, faster boats were absent, or immobilized in the pits.
Because he was in where the action was, on Griffiths Cup day, 1975, John Lewis wrote his name among the immortals of the sport.
In a grueling race, run in very rough water, the bigger, faster boats broke down. Vulture, which does not go much faster than 100 mph, but never goes much slower, kept going, and John Lewis inherited the Griffiths Cup.
It was a race of sensations, although the first heat gave no inkling of the sensations that were to come. The hot favorite, Solo, won it as she liked from the Gippsland runabout, Tiger (Ben Prajbisz) with Vulture nosing the NSW hydroplane. Tortoise, out of third place.
The big aircraft-engined hydroplane clocked 8minutes 45sec for the journey — a time that was not to be equaled — without getting out of a canter. The Cup looked a foregone conclusion.
Soon after the start of the second heat, however, things happen to happen. Ernie Nunn’s Wasp Too, the only boat given a chance of beating Solo, was dicing with Electra, a runabout from Griffith, NSW, driven by Neil McNabb. Electra, originally built by Dave Gill to accommodate a 5-litre motor, had been engined with a 454 Chev; in the rough water, it proved not enough boat for too much motor.
Nosing in suddenly, the bow snapped right off, and flew through the air; McNabb catapulted forward through the hole where the bow had been.
This gave Gordon Turvey what he admitted was the greatest fright he’d ever had in all his years of speedboat racing. He buttoned off so suddenly that he blew the lot. Wasp’s Maserati came to a dead stop, with oil and water all over the place.
McNabb was picked up by the VSBC crash boat, Sandpiper, using an inflatable stretcher. Taken to Bendigo Base Hospital, his injuries proved to be six broken ribs, and
two breaks in the lower left leg. At time of writing, the possibility of internal injuries had not been fully investigated.
Only five boats fronted for the re-run second heat — Jane IV, Ospray, Rebel, Tantrum and Super Rat. Since only five had finished the first heat, all were assured of a place in the final.
The result was a boat race.
Geelong clubmates Neil Northfield and Ray Smith loped along together all the way. Smith using Jane’s superior speed only in the last few meters to nudge ahead and win the heat, for the record. She took a leisurely 9-55 for the journey. The others loafed, even more outrageously.
When the flag dropped for the final, there were only five: Solo, Vulture, Chevvy, Jane and Tantrum. Rebel, which had beaten Vulture fair and square in the 5-litre Scratch race, broke a steering cable in her heat, and Geoff Lewis had to stand on the bank and watch victory go to brother John.
Tiger, a real hot-shot in the conditions (she had clocked 8-55 to Solo’s 845 in the first heat) failed to start when Ben Prajbisz turned the key, somebody had apparently left the ignition on and flattened the battery. Ospray did start when Neil Northfield hit the button, but promptly blew up.
Stan Jones wasn’t worried when Vulture took the lead from him, early in the piece. In fact, he held Solo back, to make the race look good. After a lap or so, he began to feel that the big boat ought to be up in front, where she should be.
He tramped it. The propeller flew off! It was the same sort of thing that had knocked Solo out of the World Championship in the United States last year. But this time she made a proper job of it — only part of one blade left, shaft hopelessly bent, skeg carried away.
Some members of the syndicate believe that the skeg was the basic problem, reasoning that it carried away first, causing the shaft to bend, and then the screw to disintegrate. Whichever way it happened, it stopped Solo like a shot duck.
This left Vulture to go on and win the race. Even so, John Lewis nearly gave it away.
His big danger, on paper, was Jane. But the Geelong runabout’s shaft bearing had loosened; she was a long way back, with Smith nursing her along, unable to ask for more revs. The NSW runabout, Tantrum (John Allen), was tailed off, last.
That left Chevvy (Len Harris), a runabout in the race at Vultures own weight — 302 cubes. The advantage in speed eves with the hydroplane, but the conditions were all in favor of the runabout.
And so ensued a tight, head-and-head struggle, with Lewis, driving with great judgment, chancing his arm just enough to push Vulture to a clear, if narrow lead at what he thought was the finish.
But it wasn’t, it was the end of the fifth lap. As he pulled into the center, Chevvy shot past, and Lewis realized his mistake.
It was Sydney or the bush, now. Thrashing Vulture, Lewis regained the lead going into the final turn, lost it round the buoys, and lined up for the judge two boat lengths to the bad. Asking for everything the motor had, he caught Chevvy half way down the straight to win by three seconds.
Lame Jane was third, finishing more than a minute later. Tantrum was the only other boat to see the race out.