Miss Bardahl Crowds Maverick for Honors [1958]
If Ole Bardahl's Miss Bardahl doesn't end up the season with the High Point Trophy for unlimited hydroplanes, she should get an A for effort. By September she had entered eight races throughout the country and during that one month had won the Buffalo Launch Club regatta at Buffalo, New York, taken a third in the President's Cup regatta behind Miss U.S. I and Breathless. Then on September 22nd she took the The American Speed Boat Championship race on the Potomac to lead Breathless and Such Crust III.
Win or lose, the metallic green U-40 is becoming a familiar site at the regattas. Driven by the colorful jet pilot Mira Slovak, Del Gould, crew chief and Rudy Boppel the engine expert, she is making a circuit of major eastern and western regattas. The craft flies the burgee of the Queen City YC.
Miss Bardahl is crowding Maverick for national High Point standings this year. Maverick was taken out of the circuit by owner William Waggoner prior to the President's Cup because of some hull trouble. The Maverick has lived fast and dangerously, has has a sag here and there and this may be her last season.
Back to Stan Sayres' Slo-Mo-Shun IV, the most famous of western unlimiteds, the boat is being rebuilt for exhibition purposes and will be housed just inside the entrance to the new $150,000 maritime wing being added to the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle.
(Reprinted from Sea and Pacific Motor Boat, Nov. 8, 1958 Page 45-N)