1989 Seafair Rainier Cup
Making Seafair Soar
A Couple Thousand Volunteers Make The Summertime Celebration Roar For Hundreds Of Thousands More
Oh, yes, there are hot-air balloons, pirates, 13 parades, 68 community festivals and 12,000 Navy personnel coming to Seattle. But when people think about Seafair, they think first about unlimited hydroplanes
And when images of rooster tails and screaming hydroplanes come to mind, Ernie Sabo should be in the picture.
For the past 37 years, Sabo has volunteered his expertise in engineering to ensure that the Lake Washington race course is properly marked. This year, he is one of 2,700 volunteers working behind the scenes to stage the various events.
"It's a huge, huge network of volunteers that are involved," said Naomi Anderson, Seafair spokeswoman. "It's really amazing the whole thing comes together."
To put Sabo's involvement into perspective, he started volunteering three years before the birth of Chip Hanauer, the winningest driver in hydroplane racing today.
"I guess I just like doing it," Sabo said at the Stan Sayres hydro pits this week. "If I didn't, I would have quit."
"Ernie's a real quiet, pleasant guy," said Anderson."He's like a lot of volunteers that just keep coming back because they like to help. He'll do anything for you and he does it just because he wants to."
Seafair events around metropolitan Seattle switch into high gear today with a Hispanic Festival and Rainier District Pow-Wow this afternoon at Seward Park; a Mardi Gras Parade down Martin Luther King Way at 3 p.m.; and the Seafair International District Parade through Chinatown at 7 p.m.
This year marks Seafair's 40th anniversary.
And Sabo has been there for all but three of those years. His work comes into play next Sunday, when Seafair culminates with the 1989 Rainier Cup hydroplane race.
Sabo, 67, is chairman of the course and engineering. He still remembers the Friday afternoon in 1953 when his boss in the geotechnical engineering department of the Seattle Army Corps of Engineers asked him to help set up a course for the then-fledgling hydroplane race. The group assembled at the hydro pits near Seward Park early the next morning. Sabo, recently out of the Army, took his place in one of two row boats that were rented to place and anchor the marker buoys.
"They took the oars away from me because I kept rowing in circles," Sabo said. "Then, the wind came up and blew both boats all the way down to the bridge. We had to flag down a couple power boats to haul us back."
Crews on the shore didn't know what was going on because neither boat had a radio.
"We used hand signals in those days," Sabo said. "We didn't have a signal for `drifting boat.' "
Sabo also recalls the day in the late 1960s when a boat - not part of Sabo's crew - dragged its anchor across the lake bottom, cutting the telephone cable serving Mercer Island. Service was out for several days.
"That's when they cut the course down from three miles to two miles," Sabo said. "I said, `No way we're going near that telephone cable again.' I guess somebody agreed."
Powerboats, survey transits and two-way radios are now used to set up the course - which changes in location and dimension each year.
This year's course is a two-mile oval with a starting line 1,494 feet off shore. Straightaways are 3,980 feet long and the outside corners are 1,299 feet around. Eighteen buoys, each secured with a 500 pound anchor, mark the course.
Sabo also sets up two additional markers in the center of the course. Those will be used as guides by the Blue Angels, the Navy jet-fighter demonstration team, when they perform at 2:20 p.m. on Sunday.
"It looks like it's all by sight from the ground," Sabo said.
"But actually those guys are keying on the markers all the time."
Occasionally, a hydro will hit one of the buoys during a race.
When that happens, Sabo is responsible for getting it replaced as quickly as possible.
After replacing a buoy in 1974, Sabo and his crew found themselves stuck in the middle of the north turn. The position allowed them to be first on the scene when one of the hydroplanes caught fire.
"The driver, he's mad as heck at us for not putting it out," Sabo said. "All the time we're hitting the boat with our fire extinguishers and he's in the water swimming in the other direction."
Seafair president Bob Brunkow said 90 percent of this year's volunteers, like Sabo, have donated time to Seafair before.
"These people take a real pride in their community," Brunkow said. "In a lot of cases they are the ones that provide the expertise to pull things off."
Brunkow said volunteers are involved in virtually every event.
| Among the events scheduled for this final week of Seafair are: — Monday - The College Inn Stampede, a 10-kilometer race, leaves the corner of Northeast 52nd Street and University Way at 6:30 p.m. The University District Junior Seafair Parade leaves from the same location at 7 p.m. Miss Seafair will be crowned in Meany Hall on the University of Washington campus during a pageant starting at 8 p.m. — Wednesday - Fifteen visiting Navy vessels, including the battleship New Jersey and the aircraft carrier Independence, parade into Elliott Bay in mid-morning. The fleet brings with them 12,000 sailors. — Thursday - Qualifying time trials for the Rainier Cup start at 10 a.m. on Lake Washington. The Seafair Greenwood Parade is set for 6:30 p.m. and the Seafair Magnolia Summer Festival starts a three-day run at Magnolia Playfield. — Friday - More than 400,000 spectators are expected to line Fourth Avenue downtown to watch the Torchlight Parade at 8:30 p.m. Preceding the parade is the Seafair Henry's 8-kilometer run. The African-American Community Festival starts a weekend of events at Judkins Park. Marching bands from Washington, Oregon and California compete at Seattle Center Memorial Stadium at 4 p.m. — Saturday - The Queen's Stakes is a free day of racing for all Seafair volunteers and their families at Longacres Race Track in Renton. Algona Day opens with a parade at 10 a.m. and the Lake City neighborhood in Seattle opens Pioneer Days with a parade down Lake City Way starting at 7 p.m. — Sunday - The 1989 Rainier Cup is expected to draw 500,000 spectators to shores and waters of Lake Washington. Entertainment at Sayres Park starts at 8 a.m., with the racing set to begin at 11 a.m. The Navy Blue Angels perform at 2:20 p.m., and the final, winner-take-all heat of hydroplane racing is scheduled for late afternoon. |
(Reprinted from The Seattle Times, July 30, 1989)