We are preparing the full story on the refurb of the Bruce King designed twin bilge board 37′ Terrorist, and we thought you’d enjoy this onboard experience from back in the day. It is from this thread.
I was a member of the 78-79 superstar UC Irvine sailing team, and I got the job of taking care of Terrorist for the season. Terry Cicero hooked me up, and we borrowed stars from the UC team (Mark Gaudio – Mark Pritchard) and sailed her in some of the local S.Cal races and I maybe even Long Beach race week.
My main job was keeping the boat from dissolving at the mooring via electrolysis, Zincs galore hung from the life lines. Aluminum hull you know. Favorite part of the job was exercising the engine and charging the batteries by cruising Newport Harbor in the evening, with beers procured from my tab at the Club. Once buzzed, the only fun was to crank up the boards flush, then throttle up to 6kts +.
Once hull speed was reached, you yanked the huge rudder hard over, and the keelless boat would spin and swap ends in a crazy spin out. If I took a friend out, we could do a reverse spin out, go flank in reverse, let the rudder go hard over as one of the boards was cranked down, and swap ends, and keep going at speed. Got more that a few dirty looks form Harbor Patrol when practicing this…
That boat could point in a breeze when the sails were working right. Weird off wind, better have enough board down or else! Glad to see it restored and moving again.
– Anarchist Pnaton.
