Just for Fun

A four-hour pounding down the tricky, debris-laden Hudson River in a bucking outboard motorboat is not every man's idea of the way to spend Sunday morning. But to some people, it is the high spot of the year. This week 234 of such enthusiasts clambered into their tiny, buglike craft and racketed hopefully off the starting mark at Albany, in the 18th annual marathon to New York City. Of the 234 starters, 115 finished, and that was about par for the 130-mile course.

One spun, over and capsized at the start, several ran into driftwood and tore their hulls. Some quit with engine trouble, others gave up out of sheer exhaustion. Ordinary citizens would want a stout reward for taking the punishment the river men take, but the marathon's prizes--an automobile, a television set and a cup--would be penny ante on a third-rate radio jackpot. The pilots of the cockleshells that whined their way down the Hudson were doing it for fun.

Bow Down. The fellow who had the most fun was the winner, pint-sized (5 ft. 31 in., 135 Ibs.) August Nigl, a 33-year-old sheet metal worker of Oceanside, N.Y. Out of his savings, he had put up $400 for his black and yellow hull, Forever Amber. His Evinrude 50 h.p. engine cost another $650. His spare time all year was spent tinkering with his engine, polishing the hull, working in endless tryouts.

Little Augie worked harder than most, for in 1949 he had finished second, seven minutes behind Vic Scott's* record-breaking 3:28.14. This year Augie got a good start, right up with the pack, but soon found himself losing ground. He had gambled that the water would be rough, had loaded his forward fuel tank to keep his bow down. The water just south of Albany was calmer than he had hoped.

Flop Over. But 20 miles down from Albany the river roughened and Augie's gamble began to pay off. By Poughkeepsie, the halfway mark, his boat was bouncing clean out of the water every 20 seconds or so ("I could hear that screw screaming"). His forward gas tank broke loose, and he had to slow down for 20 minutes while he hand-pumped gas into his after tank. But he kept going while the others were having troubles too ("I saw one boat spin right up on its tail and flop over").

Helped by a 3 1/2-knot ebbing tide and an 8-mile quartering wind, Nigl buzzed alone past the Coast Guard cutter Tamaroa, marking the finish opposite Manhattan's west 80s. At first, on the assumption that he was just another sightseer, no one paid much attention to him. He circled the utter twice, waving frantically. Belatedly the marathon committee took note of the approximate finish time: 3 hours 18 minutes. It cracked Scott's 1949 record by more than 10 minutes, for an average speed of 39.3 m.p.h.

-This week Scott swamped at Haverstraw Bay, 30 miles from his goal.

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