1951 Harwood Trophy Race
Around Manhattan Island, September 9, 1951

20-Year-old Boat Takes 30-Mile Spin
Kraemer and Leiber’s Davy Jones Leads All the Way in ‘Round-Island’ Test
Starace’s Craft Second — Stinger I Beaten by a Mile
With Keller’s Bevwyn 3d — Victor Sets a Record
By Clarence E. Lovejoy

Lombardo, Sarant to Compete Again Langmuir Will Race Here 20-Year-Old Boat Takes 30-Mile Spin     Detroiter to Drive in Race Around Manhattan R.W. (Rick Keller), son of K.T. Keller, chairman of the board of Chrysler Corporation, who will compete for the Harwood Trophy tomorrow. Last year he set a course record of 40.4 mph for 225 cubic inch hydroplanes in the race. [NYT, September 8, 1951]   Speed Boats in Annual Around-the-Island Race Twenty-five craft getting under way on the Hudson yesterday.  [NYT, September 10, 1951]   The Davy Jones at the finish of the contest. [NYT, September 10, 1951]

There’s nothing fancy, spectacular or souped-up about the Davy Jones. She’s an old-style, traditional family speed boat at least twenty years afloat and probably longer and now

owned by a pair of Port Washington neighbors, C. Leiber and Jack Kraemer. Usually they take this black hulled job out of Purely’s boat yard of a Sunday for a pleasure spin and perhaps picnic down Long Island Sound.

Yesterday Davy Jones achieved a moment in the spotlight. With Kraemer steering and Leiber alongside as riding mechanic, she ran away with the fifth annual Harwood Trophy race around Manhattan Island, leading from start to finish and ending a mile in front with throttle eased off, taking 32:09 in elapsed time for the nearly 30 statute miles for a speed of 54.2 miles an hour. This and five other performances set new records in their classes.

Seventeen managed to finish the sprint out of twenty-five starters, runner-up honors going to Anthony Starace of City Island in Stinger I, a 225 cubic inch entry, and third place to R. W. (Rick) Keller of Detroit in Bevwyn, a plastic hull job tiot was once a 225 but has been repowered this season and is now in the seven litre ranks.

One Regatta a Season

Davy Jones is a Harwood race regular. Indeed, this is her only regatta each season. "We don’t own a truck and trailer," Kraemer explained. "and have to cruise by water to any race meet site." The owners are a couple of middle class amateurs in the costly sport of speed boating where money talks. Leiber is an aircraft radio technician with Grumman and Kraemer a customs-house broker.

Yesterday it cost them about 50 gallons of fuel for the thirty-mile race at top speed and more for chugging back and forth between Port Washington and the race’s start off West Seventy-second St.

The now abandoned Gar Wood factory at Maryville, Mich., built the 33-foot Davy Jones. Strictly speaking she is a Class K runabout, the biggest of the runabout family. Probably fewer than a half dozen of this size are owned in the New York area although they were and are popular on the Great Lakes.

Once she had a World War I Victory motor for power. But Leiber and Kraemer invested in a surplus World War II Allison aircraft engine. It was a good buy. Last year Davy Jones finished second and yesterday was an easy winner, although she had some thrills bucking rough tides and currents turning the Battery and when a Lackawanna ferry was missed only by inches.

In addition to the Harwood Silver Bowl and a $1,000 Government bond, Davy Jones also won a bonus of $100 for a new record in her class, the 54.2 m. p. h. erasing the 53.3 for unlimited runabouts last year. Other bonus prizes of $100 each for new class speed marks went to the following class winners: Starace’s 51.8 for 225s: J. Elwood Lee Jr.’s 50.0 for Class I runabouts: George Reynolds’ 43.8 for 135s: Samuel F. Du Pont’s 41.2 for Class E racing runabouts, and Dr. George E. Firth’s 38.9 for Class F racing runabouts.

Manattan’s three bordering rivers, Hudson, East and Harlem, were surprisingly free of driftwood and rough only in a few spots. As a consequence mishaps and breakdowns were few. The runner-up Stinger I tore off a portside sponson near Spuyten Duyvil bridge and was loaded with water at the finish but managed to reach a rescue crane in time to be lifted free. Joseph Mascari’s Cary from New Hyde Park broke down near Randalls Island and two others were towed to the Coast Guard base at Pier 9, East River—B. G. Bartley’s Fireball from Pittsburgh and Wesley Carman’s Spot Cash from Freeport. L. I.

[Reprinted from the New York Times, September 10, 1951]

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