1957 Buffalo Launch Club International Regatta
Yaeger's Go-Devil Captures Regatta Honors at Launch Club
Warren, Pa., Owner Says Race Is His Last; Veteran Ed Endres Does Well in Dawn II
By Bob Feeney
Bill Yaeger Pilots His Craft To Victory In His "First And Last" Race This Year
Buffalo Launch Club, Grand Island, Aug. 17 — The only thing perfect here this afternoon was the water and the weather to start the two-day Buffalo Launch Club Regatta.
Wtih England’s jet-boat speed champion Don Campbell on hand, a comedy of minor errors was setting the stage for tomorrow afternoon's featured gold cup unlimited hydroplane race.
The smallest Saturday crowd in years saw a reduced entry because of a mixup with an Ohio regatta. As one official put it, “boat-wise and people-wise, this is a disappointment.”
Over the mirror-like Niagara, the crowd saw a 29-year-old Warren, Pa., insurance man pull a “retire while undefeated” act like the recent heavyweight boxing champion, Rocky Marciano. He is Bill Yaeger. His flame-red Go-Devil won both class E racing runabout heats at 59.9 and 56.11 mph.
Then Yaeger said: “This is it. My first race this year, and my last. After ten years, I'm quitting. My boat is for sale!”
But while Yaeger was quitting, another old-timer was coming out of retirement in smashing fashion. He is Ed Endres, the veteran Grand Island trucking mogul. Ed, pushing 60 years, finished second in one heat and third in another in his Dawn II.
Edging Endres for second place in the all-around standing was Rock-a-Bye V. This was the boat Endres’ son, the late Al Endres, piloted to a world record in 1952. Rock-a-Bye now is raced by Russ Kirkpatrick of Clarksburg, W. Va.
The tiny 48-hydro-championship went to Toronto's Paul Bradfield. His 9-foot Little Imp won the first heat and placed second in the second behind national champion Southern Air IV, driven by F. C. Moore of Miami. Fla.
The second upset of the day came in the big 280-hydro class. Only four of an entry of ten boats started. Big Bob Schroeder of Wheatfield scored a smashing victory over highly-regarded Tom Carter and his Tomcat of Drexel Hills, Pa. Schroeder drove his brother Bud's big red hydro Suddenly at 67.720 mph.
— August 17, 1957
Launch Club Has Circus Air As Hydro Regatta ‘Shapes Up’
By Bob Feeney
Buffalo Launch Club, Aug. 17 — Like a giant rising from slumber, the Buffalo Launch Club's Annual International Power Boat Regatta began to come alive here early this morning as 130 of the nation’s top speed-boat pilots began readying for a two-day attack on world records in the Niagara River off Grand Island.
The scene was more like a circus than a regatta. There was a big tent gently swaying in a breath of a breeze behind the dazzling white Launch Club. Here, with Harry Simpson, acting more like a lion tamer than a maître d', more than 2500 meals will be served by a corps of 25 waitresses and waiters.
If you shut your eyes, your ears told you it could be a circus, at that. There was the hyena-like bark of the tiny 48 cubic-inch hydroplanes warming up on the town millpond that was the Niagara River this morning. Every so often, like a lion roaring for his breakfast , there was a deep-throated roar of the big, Gold Cup hydros being warmed up on their trailers ashore.
Lions of the waterways like Wildroot Charlie, the Buffalo Launch Chib's own gold-cupper, which will be raced tomorrow by Bob Schroeder of Wheatfield. WBEN-TV will televise this race at 2:30-3:30 PM.
Schroeder was one of the few top-flight drivers on hand this morning, personally checking Wildroot Charlie. Other drivers, many of them wealthy men, were not on hand. Instead, those like the 39-foot [actually, 33 ft 9 in!] Miss Wayne, owned by Frank “Bud” Saile, had crews of five mechanics fussing over them. The big hydros are a temperamental lot. It takes roughly five hours of tinkering to get them to run five minutes at more than 150 miles per hour.
The regatta, which started today and again tomorrow at 1 o’clock, has taken nine months to “shape up.”
— August 17, 1957