DESIGNING MEN : Creations by Teague Brothers and Patriarch Nordskog Dominate Power-Boating Circuit

Bob Teague is standing in his immaculate 3,000-square-foot garage/shop behind his Granada Hills home, talking about powerboats, his favorite subject, when he does a double-take. There, on an otherwise pristine gunwale of his grand national marathon boat, is a grease smudge, an abomination that must immediately be eradicated with a squirt of glass cleaner and a paper towel.

Teague’s obsession with detail is no doubt a reason why he is one of the best powerboat racers in the world. Inducted into the powerboating Hall of Champions last February in Coral Gables, Fla., Teague, 41, earned the right to the use of No. 1 on his boat by posting four firsts, four seconds and a third in last year’s American Power-Boating Assn. races.

“Boats,” he says matter-of-factly, “are my life.”

Teague’s success in powerboating is even more remarkable because he is a rare breed--a driver who designs, builds and maintains his own boats. He doesn’t even have a major corporate sponsor to defray his costs and relies on his wife Andrea and four friends from the Valley area--Steve Ingram, Todd Mielke, Dale Shrode, Ernie Fusan--as unpaid crew members. Last year, Teague won about $10,000, which wouldn’t even pay one-quarter of the cost of a new engine.

Teague, a captain in the Los Angeles City Fire Department, has been able to succeed in a wealthy man’s sport because of his fierce work ethic--”I’m truly one of these hyperactive people” who needs only five hours’ sleep a night--and help from his older brother Norm, another mechanical wizard with a passion for boats.

Norm, 43, helps build the boats “when I’m in a bind,” Bob says, and also is the co-driver in marathons.

“He’s probably the only person I can rely on to do something exactly the way I do it,” says Bob, who has been racing powerboats for 11 years. “The two of us working together is like one person doing something twice as fast.”

The Teagues also benefit from what Bob calls their “father-son” relationship with Robert Nordskog, the 75-year-old powerboating legend who runs Nordskog Industries in Van Nuys. Teague figures he works one-third of the year at the fire department, one-third of the year on his own boats and the other third with Norm building and maintaining Nordskog’s fleet of off-shore open-class powerboats.

On Nordskog’s world record run between San Francisco and Los Angeles last September--his 39-foot Cigarette boat traversed the 420 miles in 5 hours, 38 minutes--Norm manned the instruments and Bob navigated.

“I owe a lot to Bob Nordskog,” Teague says. “I learned the ropes from him. My success is partially his success.”

Nordskog laughs at the father-figure reference. “I look at us more like brothers,” he says. “But I’m really proud of our relationship. The Teagues work shoulder to shoulder with me. When I worry, they worry. When I sweat, they sweat. When I cheer, they cheer.”

Despite growing up in Northridge, miles from water, Teague says that he has “always been a boat nut--I was born that way.” Both he and Norm developed their mechanical skills because of their father, who owned a gas station on the corner of Roscoe Boulevard and Tampa Avenue.

When Bob was 6 and Norm 8, their father gave the brothers a flat-head Ford engine to rebuild in their back yard. As a teen-ager, Bob worked at the gas station and by the time he got to Cleveland High, he was an accomplished mechanic.

At Cleveland, Teague says, he was the unofficial “assistant auto shop teacher.” He and a friend, Art Gustafson, were the school’s representatives in the national Chrysler Trouble-Shooting Contest--they had to put a car back in working order--and won the L. A. region.

Teague was drafted into the Army in 1969 and spent a year in Vietnam as a Ranger, winning battlefield decorations--Purple Heart, Silver Star, Bronze Star--and going home in 1970 as a first lieutenant.

“I was 10 years older than my friends when I got back,” he says. “I thought the world had changed, but then I realized, it was me who changed.”

In 1971, Teague joined Norm on the Nordskog team. The following year, he was among 200 applicants out of 12,000 who were hired by the fire department. His mechanical and design abilities led him to a special assignment for the department in the early ‘80s. He was named engineering officer and assigned to redesign fire apparatus from chain saws to ladder trucks.

Teague also was responsible for designing and purchasing the department’s 41 new pumpers, which sparkle with chrome. “I’m a custom guy,” Teague says. “I operate on the theory that if you build something really nice, the guys will take better care of it.”

Teague’s own equipment is testimony to his theory. A 1,190-horsepower, twin turbo-charged Chevrolet engine with aluminum heads glistens in the stern of the 20-foot grand national boat. His “family ski boat,” a 21-foot “Rolls-Royce of day cruisers” with a concealed 970-horsepower engine, and a 10-foot “play boat,” an exact replica of the ski boat, are buffed and polished like sterling silver bowls.

The garage itself, designed and built by Teague, is clean enough to hold a wedding in, which did happen--Norm was married there. Bob rigs his Teague Custom Marine boats downstairs in the shop. Upstairs, he builds engines from scratch in the “clean room,” which has its own air-conditioning system, insulation and a floor that is wiped with alcohol.

When an engine is finished, it’s rolled to a bay door, attached to a monorail and lowered to the floor below.

“You have to have a world-class garage to build world-class boats,” Teague says. “We take pride in doing things right.”

Teague built the garage behind his house for another reason. With all the time he spends working for the fire department and for Nordskog, plus 20 weekends a year racing, he wouldn’t get to see his wife and two young children if his shop was anywhere else.

“It’s nice to be home once in a while,” he says. Then he squirted the glass cleaner and went after another smudge.