Originally Posted by skrap

Gentlemen,

Here is a photo of Cristex.

John

Originally Posted by digger1

Yeah, I know the boat...I helped rig it, me and Billy Lauden.

The boat never needed "rigging". It came out of Bobby Moore's shop ready to run from Preston. We freshened the motors many times and I added some Kiekhaefer shift and throttle sticks and that's about it except for cosmetics. Billy Lauden was a welder only and new zero about rigging a boat. Any rudimentary machine work he may have learned during his limited time with us like grinding a valve seat he learned from me. Never touched any part of the boat engines. This was a small operation and there was only a handful of people who worked on this boat and its engines I promise, you weren't one of them.

I'm almost positive it was 42' and carried the "Corsica" marque on it.

No idea what you're talking about and neither do you. Boat was a '38 Bertram Competition.

The hull was definitely Kevlar 49 and had four inflatable cells.

Wrong. Boat was fiberglass and had no inflatable cells.

It ran twin 582 big block Chevys with Hilborn injection.

Wrong. 482's with Crower based Kinsler mechanical timed injection units.

The outdrives were of course Kiekhaefer as were the planes.

Of course they weren't. Both the drives and tabs were Mercrusier.

Pumped the throttles for an hour once at about 90 knots in 6 ft. seas during testing (what a rush).

Delusional. From the time we owned it until we sold it nobody ever "pumped the throttles" but me and on it's best day that boat wasn't capable of 90 knots in 6 ft seas with Preston Henn and Erol Lanier or Sammy James or anyone else piloting .(Being an expert surely you realize 90 knots is 104 mph ! This is a heavy V-hull in 1979. ). My father always drove and the third seat was whoever we plugged in for navigator or for a test run.

I worked part time for Gerard, not at the Cape Island Yacht Sales, but rather P.R.E. (Performance Racing Engines).

Have no idea who you are but you never worked for us. The place was not even called Cape Island Yacht Sales it was NJ Yacht Sales.

This was Gerard's (funded by daddy) business located in what used to be the yacht showroom. He loved to spend money on expensive hobbies and daddy just went with it.

My father earned his money the honest way, with hard work and determination. He found financial success operating a couple textile mills in North Carolina (Christensen Textiles = CRISTEX) and used the money to pursue his dream of living at the shore and racing boats. As his son I worked for him right out of high school for a nominal fee ( $80 a week as I remember) just enough to keep me in beer and hamburgers and pay the Snap-On man each Friday. Of course there was a lot of perks that came with that job. I had to grow up fast and learned a lot. By 18 I was proficient at running every piece of equipment in that shop and could blueprint an engine. I had the good fortune of being trained to operate the Sunnen equipment by a gentleman named Frank Steenstra who was the East coast rep and field agent . Great guy and mentor.

After the 1980 or 1981 Benihana (don't remember, I'm old), we took the week off. When I showed up for work a week later, the entire building was empty (were talking a complete racing engine machine shop with over 12 state of the art machines, the Cristex, a few others, engines, cars, etc.). I can't believe they were able to move all that equipment in such a short time.

More nonsense. Our lease on the building was up at the end of 1981 and Grant Bauer who owned and operated NJ Yacht Sales decided he wanted to either sell out or explore new uses for the building. I think he had also grown tired of the noise and commotion associated with the race cars and boats . This was a working marina and boat showroom. We moved the equipment out of the front showroom and consolidated it into the two back rooms where we continued to operate at a limited capacity for another year. Nobody left overnight, it was the complete opposite a long and slow departure. The shop and it's contents was then moved to Rahway, NJ where I continued to do machine work and build competition engines under the same name. In 1985 we powered the American Express Chris Cat with supercharged 482's and set a new world speed record for offshore powerboats at over 140 mph at Mecrury's Lake X . I throttled that boat also .

My guess is they owed someone alot of money considering the way they suddenly departed. Anyway, they left without any forwarding, and all of us were left high and dry. I wasn't at that race because of a family emergency, but I believe they popped the starboard engine if not both. FYI.

My father never owed anybody a dime !

If nothing else you are consistent. Every single thing you said was wrong.