VETERAN RACER BELIEVES IN THE AMATEUR IDEAL : For Nordskog, Being No. 1 Is Prize Enough

At a time when escalating prize money and overbearing salary demands often make more headlines than performance, Bob Nordskog and his Pacific Offshore Powerboat Racing Assn. offer a refreshing alternative.

They race for trophies. No money, no sponsors, no expensive prizes.

Of course, you have to be rich to race, at least at the upper echelon of the sport where expenses for a single race can cost as much as $20,000--if you don’t crash, or your boat doesn’t sink. And that’s after an initial investment of between $150,000 and $300,000 for a boat capable of bouncing across the ocean at more than 100 m.p.h.

“We like to call ourselves gentleman racers,” the 73-year-old Nordskog said. “We’re the only organization of its kind that I know of in the world, with no prize money of any kind. I’m proud of that.”

Nordskog won the 20th annual Rum Run race that started in Long Beach last month, looped around Catalina Island and returned to the Queen Mary. Driving a 38-foot Scarab with 1,650 horsepower, Nordskog completed the 122-mile race over seas with 12- to 15-foot swells in 2 hours 12 minutes--finishing three miles ahead of Vic Edelbrock.

The trophy was a small rum keg sitting on a tiny raft with a battered brass spittoon atop the keg. It sits in the entry hall of Nordskog Industries, the center of a dozen companies in a multimillion dollar conglomerate in Van Nuys created by the tireless industrialist.

It was Nordskog’s ninth Rum Run win in a race he founded in 1968 to commemorate an era when fast boats transported illegal liquor into San Pedro, Oceanside, Long Beach, Santa Barbara and other Southern California ports from off-shore islands.

“The name bothers me today with all the publicity about boat racers like George Morales (two-time world champion) being jailed for running narcotics,” Nordskog said. “It’s put a hell of a bad name on a great sport. To my knowledge, no one (boat racer) on the West Coast is involved in narcotics traffic.

“When we started, it seemed proper to glorify the excitement of the Twenties, but society has changed and today there is so much opposition, and rightfully so, toward alcohol and dope that the name bothers me.”

Nordskog started holding races without prize money as an experiment five years ago after the West Coast racers split from the American Power Boat Assn. They have since rejoined the APBA but retain their amateurism.

“We decided to find out if it could succeed, if anyone would show up without money as a lure,” Nordskog explained. “It definitely worked. We have more entries than most other clubs that run for money.”

The racers, too, have found there is more camaraderie when they race for fun.

“It seems like personalities and attitudes change and friendships can disappear, or fray, when money is involved,” Nordskog said.

“Before a guy gets into racing for prize money, there’s a lot of backslapping and helping one another. Then you get running for money and everything changes and gets dead serious.”

Nordskog has four big boats in his garage, across the street from corporate headquarters: a 28-foot twin-engine outboard, a 35-foot Cigarette, a 38-foot Scarab, which is the best in rough water, and a 39-foot Cigarette, which he uses for speed records. The hulls are made of Kevlar, the fiber that is used in bullet-proof jackets.

Among Nordskog’s list of record accomplishments are a 600-mile run down the Sea of Cortez from San Felipe to La Paz on his 70th birthday in 10 hours, 34 minutes; a Long Beach to San Francisco run in 6 hours 49 minutes that broke Mike Reagan’s record by nearly two hours; an endurance record of 31 hours 13 minutes from Canada to Mexico in 1980; and driving solo in four 9-hour marathons and winning twice.

“They call me the Iron Man, but I’m afraid some of the joints are kind of rusty,” he said.

Nordskog relishes driving without relief in marathon races where much younger rivals change drivers every two or three hours.

“I’m not built any different. It’s just that I cultivate an atmosphere of being comfortable. People don’t realize the ends to which I will go to create a relaxing environment.

“The two things most important are confidence and concentration and the more comfortable you are, the better your chances of accomplishing both. Tension, which can come from being uncomfortable, can poop a person out in a matter of minutes.”

There are no seats in the big off-shore boats that Nordskog races. There are three well-padded places to stand, one for the driver, one for the throttle man and one for the navigator. Except in Nordskog’s boats.

“I drive and I handle the throttle, the mechanic (throttle man in other boats) watches the gauges and the navigator tells me where we’re going,” Nordskog said.

Norman Teague has been his mechanic for 19 years and his brother, Bob, is the navigator.

A chance association with the late Howard Hughes has had a continuing influence on Nordskog.

In 1937 Nordskog was working at Lockheed, rebuilding crashed planes, when he was assigned to repair an Air France plane that had damaged landing gear.

The plane was similar to the Lockheed 14 that Hughes planned to fly around the world.

“Hughes talked to the president of Lockheed and asked if he could sit in the plane to familiarize himself with the cockpit surroundings while I worked on the outside,” Nordskog recalled.

“From 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., seven days a week, Hughes sat in that plane, conditioning himself to control his emotions, his bladder, hunger, boredom and all the other situations he might face while flying alone around the world.

“It was a lesson for me in perseverance, in the regimentation of life, both in body and mind. I was a young man and I knew he was wealthy, which made his dedication toward stamina and drive even more admirable to me.”

The project took six weeks and Hughes didn’t miss a day.

“About the only conversation we had was when I had to tell Howard that it was time to go home, that I had to lock up,” Nordskog said. “He had been watching me closely, however, and when he asked Lockheed to borrow me to help with the preparations of his plane, I was loaned out to Glenn Odekirk, his chief mechanic. I stayed with them until the record attempt was ready and then I returned to my old job.”

Hughes, 33, set the around-the-world record of 91 hours 14 minutes in July 1938.

Nordskog also worked for two years, on loan from Lockheed, on Hughes’ 8-engine superplane program in Culver City that became the Spruce Goose. Nordskog designed the instrumentation for the plane, but did not work on the hull or wings.

“Years later, when I was preparing myself for marathon boat races, I recalled watching Hughes sitting in that plane and I copied him to a certain degree.

“I was getting my company started about the same time, but after work I would come down to a little Quonset hut, right about where my corporate office is today, and sit in the boat. I’d sit there from 7 to 11 p.m. every night, doing my paper work. I wanted my body to get used to the seat, to how it would feel while I was operating the boat. Every 15 minutes I would put the paper work aside and pretend I was operating the boat. In my mind I would create imaginary water conditions and simulate how I would react.

“By the time the race came around, I felt I could drive the boat through any difficulty with my subconscious. It was something that came directly from my association with Hughes.”

The race was a 9-hour marathon over a 13-mile course on the Colorado River, near Parker, Ariz.

The fuel tank split on Nordskog’s boat early in the race, but instead of quitting, he pulled into the pits and spent 46 minutes repairing the tanks.

“There were 89 boats in the race and by the time I got back in the water, I was just about last. All the other boats were changing drivers, but I kept going all the way and about the seven-hour mark I took over the lead and won the race.

“I’ve always felt like Howard Hughes was alongside me in that race, pushing me. I never knew what perseverance meant before I met that man.”

Fear--or perhaps the fear of failing to overcome fear--has motivated Nordskog since he was a boy growing up in Santa Monica.

He had a fear of flying, so he soloed when he was 13--before he was old enough to drive an automobile--and then became a wing walker at the old Eagle Airport at 90th and Western Ave.

He had a fear of speed, so he built hod rods and drove a Model T Ford a record 125 m.p.h. on Muroc Dry Lake, where Edwards Air Force Base is now located.

“I might have become a famous race car driver, but one day I met an Italian girl named Ellie and I vowed to marry her. I didn’t want her to know I was a race car driver, so I drove my last race in a modified Chevy at the old South Ascot Speedway, at Atlantic and Tweedy.”

Nordskog married Ellie and they are closing in on their 50th wedding anniversary.

He feared water, so he became a world renowned powerboat driver and then forced himself to learn to swim. He was 38 years old.

“I have always had a burning desire to overcome fear,” he said. “I was ashamed to have something conquer me. I guess it was the fear of failing to conquer my fear that made me do a lot of things that I did.”

Of all of Nordskog’s fears, the greatest was of water. He almost drowned twice before he was 8 and was petrified of being around water as a youth.

“For years, I hid my inability to swim by staying away from water. I was a loner when I was young, so I didn’t go near the ocean, or a swimming pool, or anyplace like that. It wasn’t until I began to develop an interest in boats that I decided I had better learn to swim.

“I enrolled in an adult class at Inglewood High School several times but each time I failed. My lungs would hemorrhage, my legs would paralyze and I would quit. The next semester I would try again and have the same results. My family doctor recommended I give up because he said it was damaging my lungs.

“Then I moved to the (San Fernando) Valley to be nearer my business and I bought a house in Northridge with a swimming pool. For days I would sit on the side with my feet in the water, or I’d stand in the shallow end before I got up the courage to paddle from one side to the other.”

Once conquered, though, Nordskog turned swimming into a daily exercise tool.

“I swim twice a day, winter and summer, rain or shine. It’s my prime exercise. I have a lot of joints that like to tighten up and if I don’t swim twice a day, they don’t loosen up. A gin martini will only go so far in loosening you up. Swimming is the next best thing.”

The question most asked of Nordskog, he said, is why (and how) he keeps competing in such a physical sport at an age when many men are cuddled up in front of the fireplace with a beer and a book.

“Age. It’s a word people use who are afraid of it. A lot of people I know use their age as an excuse to slow down and retire because that’s what they’ve been brought up to think all their life. Some people even think up excuses to act old so they’ll get some sympathy or be told to slow down. Not me. I can’t imagine not going on as long as I can. I know I’ll have to stop some day but it sure isn’t in my game plan yet.”

Nordskog will be first in line when the Race for the Blind, the next POPBRA event, is held July 11 at Marina del Rey.

OK, if he isn’t afraid of growing old, how about being afraid of dying. Three off-shore race drivers were killed last year--and there weren’t very many of them to start with.

“Powerboat racing is one of the most dangerous sports there is. I know that. But if I worried about that, I wouldn’t be racing, would I?

“Dying is something that is going to happen to every one. I had to convince myself that dying isn’t that bad. If I get killed, so what? It’s inevitable.

“Any fear of dying, or getting hurt, is secondary to two things--the desire to overcome that very fear, and excitement of being a winner. There’s a sheer enjoyment that comes with winning that I’ll never get over.

“Our airline food services business is No. 1 in the world. I can’t think how I would feel if it were No. 2. Being second is no fun.”