On Lake Washington

The Gold Cup race, for the world's fastest hydroplanes, is supposed to end in a triumph of one boat over the others. Last week's race almost ended in a triumph of all the boats over the men who built or drove them. As the six big hydroplanes jockeyed and circled, awaiting the start of the first of three 30-mile heats, some 250,000 fans on the shores of Seattle's Lake Washington confidently cheered the two local entries--Stanley Sayres's Slo-mo-shun V and his Slo-mo-shun IV, setter of the world one-mile speed record of 178.497 m.p.h. (TIME, July 14).

The 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.*

In the 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 with a hopelessly broken gear box. Dollar finished the second heat all by himself.

In the final test he had to beat only Los Angeles' super-streamlined Hurricane IV, whose engine had not been started in time to 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 Cup.

* The first time in boat-racing history that two boats (the other Hurricane IV) averaged more than 100 m.p.h. over five laps of a standard course.

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