How did I end up with this thing?

A couple of years ago, my wife and I were at our lake house working in our yard and a nice sounding hot rod boat came streaking across the lake. We both heard it but we were on opposite sides of the yard. She walked over to me and asked me if I heard it? I told her that I did and she responded "That sure sounded good didn't it?" She then asked me how long it had been since I had sold my Youngblood jet boat, to which I replied "32 years, sure wish I had a Cole flatbottom". She then asked me "What are you waiting for?.

This made me realize that it had been 32 years since I had built a race engine. The last one I built was for that Youngblood and we were poor as dirt. I had to make do with any parts that I could scrounge up. Even with junk parts that boat was pretty fast. It was only outrun at our local lake one time by a similar Youngblood with twin turbochargers. It shouldn't have even been close but I held my own.

I sold that boat because we had young babies, it was hard to fund it,  and it was getting tough to find a place to run the boat without someone hassling me or accusing me of swamping canoes, boats, or whatever the PC police could dream up. I never really got over selling that boat and always wanted to build another boat.

At this point, I began to search for a race boat. I had always wanted a Cole flatbottom because of a boat that used to rule the lake that our family vacationed at every year. It was black with orange, yellow, and red stripes. My brother had a Sleekcraft jet boat that we used to try to make fast enough to outrun that black Cole but we never did. When I got my Youngblood after I married my wife, we took it to that lake so I could take him on. Before we had a chance to run him, the park ranger forbid us from running on the lake. It was already becoming not PC to have a fast boat in the early 80's.

I should have known that it was definitely not going to be PC to have a fast boat in 2016!!!

Even though I knew better, I found my dream boat on a drag boat website. It was in SanDiego, California. It was a thing of beauty!

It was a beautiful boat but much to my surprise, it had major engine problems. I took it to our lake house right after we got it home to test drive it and after idling around for a few minutes, I realized that an engine rebuild was in order. That was the only time the boat was ever wet. The dream never happened for many reasons.

I will always remember the boat and how intimate I was with it after going through every piece of it to make it mine and make it right. This is a picture of it right after I started it for the first time after the rebuild.





As some of you have figured out by now, I am a Christian and I believe God is leading me every step of the way in this life. When I was young, I did not listen to his guidance very much but as I get older I am getting better at it.

I had a lot of fun building the boat and I think it is one of the nicest flat bottoms around. I could not wait to get it in the water and try it out but several events happened that made me feel that it was not meant to be.

• First, my first trial of the boat at our lake house ended up with the police showing up and telling me that I could not run the boat at the lake that we have owned a home at since 1994. 
• Second, the original engine was a disaster as I said earlier.
• Third, the city that controls the lake wrote the "Dean" law that actually made it illegal for me to run the boat (that really hurt). 
• Fourth, after 15 years of doing motorcycle track days (incident free) and only two weeks from the original scheduled test day, I slammed myself into the asphalt at Texas World Speedway and break five bones and almost lose a finger.
• Fifth, I partially recover from my injuries and schedule the test run again only to break a lifter in the brand new engine, only a couple of days before the run.

At that point I was really thinking that God was trying to prevent me from driving the boat. I was still committed until one of the readers on the boat forum that I use wrote me a message telling me he was interested in buying the boat. At that point, I wrote him and told him that I had too much money in it to sell it. Out of that conversation came an opportunity to trade my boat hull for a 63 split window Corvette Pro Mod chassis/body. I had always planned on building a drag racing car but was putting it off until later in life. After seeing the car, I started really considering it.

After this offer, I prayed and prayed and had many conversations with the family and decided that this was what God wanted me to do. I am sad to see my dream boat go but just have to consider this to be the next chapter in life. I will build the car with the same level of detail that I used on the boat so it will be a really nice car.

I will convert my engine to alcohol and upgrade it significantly and start with the Top Sportsman or Outlaw ProMod(mid 6 second to high 5 second classes).

I am praying that God will guide me through this process and help me to be safe and successful in this dream!

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