Flying Saucer

Headon, the thing suggested an amphibious flying saucer with rudder trouble. From the rear it looked like Old Faithful on a rampage. To the motorboat experts who got up at 6 a.m. one day last week in Seattle to see it perform, it looked like the fastest thing afloat.

The 4,200-lb. monster was a mahogany-oak-duraluminum racing hull, inappropriately named Slo-Mo-Shun IV. At the wheel was ruddy, grey-haired Stanley St. Clair Sayres, who started tinkering with outboard motorboats twelve years ago, switched to airplanes, and switched back to speedboats when his wife made him give up flying. With the help of a Boeing aircraft engineer, he had built his flounder-shaped hydroplane to crack the world's speedboat record.

After waiting for days for the right weather, Sayres sent his craft thundering into the measured mile, trailing a 20-ft. spume 200 yards behind. A 4-in. chop on Lake Washington provided enough lift to send the two-ton craft clipping along on her two 8-in.-square planing surfaces. Offset rudders above & below water held her squarely on course.

On the south-north run, her Allison aircraft engine sent Slo-Mo-Shun screaming through the mile in 21.98 seconds. The return trip was less than a second slower. The combination gave Sayres an average speed of 160.32 m.p.h., 18.58 m.p.h. faster than the old mark, set by Sir Malcolm Campbell's Blue Bird II in 1939. Already looking for a more fitting name for his new world champion (current choice: Miss Seattle), Driver Sayres expects to set his next record at the Gold Cup races in Detroit later this month. Says Sayres: "The boat was not extended."

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