Word: slo
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...shores of Seattle's Lake Washington last week a man selling opera glasses yelled: "It's up to the old lady, folks! Come and get 'em so you can see her run." The old lady is a fin-tailed, mahogany-plywood motorboat called Slo-Mo-Shun IV, slightly faster than her younger sister, Slo-Mo-Shun V, and holder of the world straightaway speed record of 178.497 m.p.h. With Slo-Mo V disabled by a pre-race accident last week, Slo-Mo IV had to hold off five Detroit challengers for speedboating's most prized trophy...
...last summer, TIME'S Seattle bureau chief. Dean Brelis, was aboard a small launch in the middle of Lake Washington, watching a trial run of the Slo-Mo-Shun IV, 1952 Gold Cup winner. Suddenly a sailboat slid effortlessly up to the launch. As the sailboat started to turn, a young lady standing in the bow tossed a stone into the launch. Brelis picked up the stone, found a piece of paper wrapped around it with thick rubber bands. On the paper was a message for him to get in touch with Western Union's Operator 25 immediately...
...cheerers were silent with dismay when the first heat ended. Soon after Miss Great Lakes II conked out for good with a cracked gear box, Slo-mo IV lost a propeller and also dropped out. On the sixth 3-mile lap, Slo-mo V Driver Lou Fageol knew his boat was a goner: water spewing ominously from the exhaust meant that a cylinder had blown. Detroit's Miss Pepsi won the heat at a speed of 101.0242 m.p.h. in the fastest boat race of all time...
...pits, while mechanics hastily switched a propeller to Slo-mo IV from her sister boat, one grease-monkey advised handsome Slo-mo IV Driver Stanley (Dollar Steamship Line) Dollar: "Remember, the lead is everything." Dollar roared out to challenge Miss Pepsi for the front spot. Suddenly the trailing Such Crust IV, a carbon copy of the Slo-mos, exploded in a flash of brilliant orange flame. A Coast Guardsman dived in and rescued her driver, "Wild Bill" Cantrell, who was severely burned. Then Miss Pepsi, by now the hot favorite and in a slim lead, went dead in the water...
...begin the second heat. As the two boats churned around the course, Hurricane IV's engine balked again and quit. In the face of such universal bad luck, Stanley Dollar carefully crept (heat speed: 84.35 m.p.h.) through the last seven laps alone, prayerfully "counted every lap." If Slo-mo IV had fallen out, Miss Pepsi would have been the winner by default. But Dollar's hydroplane held up: the surviving boat won the Gold...