1958 Apple Cup
Apple Cup Race Will Open 1958 Hydro Season
By Jack Hewins
This is the unique Apple Cup starting clock to be used in the hydroplane race on Lake Chelan. At far left it begins ticking off the final five minutes.
One cylinder on the tower collapses with each minute. Then, in the final minute, the black area sweeps around clock until, at final second, the clock is all black.
(AP wirephoto.)
Chelan, Wash. — The banshee howls of mighty engines will smash their own echoes against the peopled cliffs here Sunday when America’s 1958 thunderboat season opens with the second annual running of the Apple Cup speedboat race.
Twelve huge hydros, four of them brand new and unraced, will go for the Golden Apple and approximately $3,000 in prize money. The winner of the 60-mile chase gets $1,500, second is worth $1,000 and third place $500.
Each qualifier will pick up $100. To earn it a boat must make three laps of the three-mile oval at 90 miles per hour.
An estimated 80,000 people swarmed here for the Apple Cup inaugural last year. Race officials are preparing to greet 100,000 Sunday. The problems are traffic on the narrow streets and highways and feeding the host in a town of few restaurants.
* * *
Seating is simple. The spectator need only climb partway up the steep hill that flanks the race course, find a comfortable ledge and be seated. His view is a panorama of blue Lake Chelan, flowering apple orchards and the snow-clothed Cascade Mountains.
Last year the scenery couldn’t steal the show from the race, which was won by cowboy Bill Stead of Reno aboard the Maverick. One boat caught fire, another flipped its driver 50 feet through the air and several bowed out with mechanical trouble.
Stead and the Maverick got this year’s event off to a noisy start Tuesday. They churned around the course at 99.174 to qualify and then an explosion blew the front deck off the boat. Gas fumes had gathered under the deck and were ignited by a backfire.
Although he had to dodge flying debris. Stead was unhurt. His pit crew believed it could make repairs in time for Sunday’s race.
Miss Spokane, one of the new boats, was whipped around the course by Dallas Sartz for a qualifying time of 104.348.
Seven of the challengers are berthed in Seattle. Coming out of the Gold Cup capital to pursue the apple are Thriftway and Thriftway Too. Miss Bardahl, Miss Seattle, Miss Burien, Miss Pay N Save and Sudden Sunnee. Others are the Coral Reef of Tacoma and Adios, representing the Tri-City area of Pasco-Richland-Kennewick, Wash. The twelfth boat, Miss U.S. 1. is reported making the long trek from Detroit to make the race.
* * *
The race is in three heats, but due to the crowded field the first two will be run in two sections each. Heat 1-A will go at 12:30 p.m. (PST). After the first our sections of 15 miles each thin the field down to six boats the survivors will race 30 miles in the final heat, set for 5 p.m.
It will be the first race under a new rule which bans the changing of engines between heats.
— May 7, 1958