Inshore competition

While offshore racing is still a relatively new discipline in the 1970s, inshore competition has evolved through decades of practical experience and developments. For racing, as with sailing regattas, the design of the boats always results from clever interpretations of an official rating system. For powerboating, the international regulations are not unified, with the American Powerboat Association handling the North American continent, while the Union Internationale Motonautique rules over “the rest of the world”. Although the engine capacities, lengths and weights used to define the core categories competing in the main respective championships differ between the two organizations, the types and shapes of the boats are tending to move closer together under pressure from a shared quest for speed.

The sporting decade of the 1970s, particularly in Europe, is marked by several technical turning points compared with previous periods, from pure speed racing – such as Grand Prix – to endurance events – such as the 24 Hours of Rouen or the Paris Six Hours races.  

In the realm of speed, the absolute dominance of the three-point hull, which had prevailed since the 1940s, gradually comes to an end. This means that internal engines – usually taken from the automotive sector (from Peugeot to Ferrari, Maserati, Fiat, Lancia and many others) and placed in front of the pilot – will disappear in favor of catamarans powered by outboard engines and piloted from a cockpit located at the very front of the hull. Although the initial adaptation of the twin-hull concept for recreational boats is attributed to the British in the 1950s, it is the Italians who will become the first masters of this genre in the 1960s. Leading the way, the builder Angelo Molinari, based on Lake Como (Lombardy), teams up with his son Renato, a piloting genius who will go on to win a staggering 18 world champion titles in the 1990s…

In endurance racing, during the 1970s, V-hulls, now dominant among recreational boats, still make their presence felt for a time. However, nothing can withstand the consistently superior performance of catamarans, despite the constant danger they pose. The tunnel between the two slender hulls, whether designed by Molinari, Hodge (UK), Velden (Netherlands) or Cormorant (France), cleverly harnesses their aerodynamic effects, which inherently vary from low to high powers and are unpredictable and unstable, at speeds reaching up to 200 km/h on choppy, wind-swept waters. Unfortunately, the 1970s and 1980s are marked by a number of fatal accidents. Nevertheless, catamarans offer so much potential that efforts focus on trying to protect pilots by placing them in highly resistant cells (the first of which are cockpit components from the American F16 fighter jet), rather than abandoning the winning formula. The stakes associated with the inevitable success – still today – of the catamaran become clearer when positioned within the global commercial battle between the two outboard engine giants: Mercury and OMC (with its Evinrude and Johnson brands). While pilots are at the wheel of hulls designed by various small builders, there is no success without the presence of an OMC or Mercury engine at the back of the hull for both speed and endurance racing events. The 1970s are the stage for the rising power and increasing complexity of two or three liter 2-stroke engines from the two American titans who rule the tracks. In the paddocks of major events, there is talk of over 240 horsepower and up to 330 depending on the categories and for the top teams supplied exclusively by the factories, with these figures simply astonishing for the average recreational boater at the time.