Quote:
Originally Posted by Moonstruck
I never saw Jimmy Clark, and that was a disappoint..
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Jim Clark was my favorite F1 driver. Living in Hawaii other than two years off for good behavior from 1965-1967 in St. Louis and Colorado, I never had an opportunity to go to a race. But I and my equally enthusiastic friends avidly read Road & Track and other magazines to follow his and other drivers' careers. Built models of the cars we liked and so forth.
Same thing with the America's Cup. The big J-boats were way before my time although I think they were the most beautiful sailing vessels ever designed, but the 12-Metres were almost as good. Today, while the Cup boats are amazingly fast and it's probably a much more exciting race for the spectators to watch, the boats themselves leave me cold.
In the late 90s during one of our canal trip in the UK we had the opportunity to go on
Sceptre, the British contender for the America's Cup in 1958. A good friend was at the time one of the owners of the boat which was being used for charter for cruising and racing mainly in the waters off Ireland and Scotland. Other than some rather rudimentary changes to accomodate the people chartering the boat,
Sceptre was mostly identical to the way she'd been when she raced for the Cup. What an amazing vessel, and I can still remember my wife and I being totally stunned by the height of the mast when drove up to her slip.
The two photos are of Jim Clark.