The “Speed Boat” Project…

Well, I did it. I bought a boat. Again. 30 Years later. An old boat. A project. Is this a disease? I tend to see “projects” as the finished product with some vision and I can’t shake the feeling that it is possible, however impossible the reality may be.

This is going to be fun, it is a distraction mostly, from other things in my life that have run their course. I’m leaving them kicking and screaming, though I’ll do so nonetheless.

I think that anyone that grew up in the 80’s, has wanted a “go fast boat” at some point in their life. The industry is a funny one, look up “ego alley” and “thunderboat row”; and Fountain (also last name), Cigarette and Donzi; and Don Aronow. That is a great place to start in learning something about the era, the myths, the legends, and the machines that were larger than life then and still today.

One final note, the movie Speed Kills, loosely based on the life of Don Aronow, with John Travolta playing Ben Aronoff tries real hard to tell the story of a guy mired in legend. Unfortunately, speed didn’t kill Aronow, that would have been poetic irony and fodder for all the parents that chant “you’ll shoot your eye out”; instead it was the company he kept and the way he lived his life away from racing. It has been said that former competitors him killed, but recently it was found that his association with criminal enterprises led to his death.