“SEARACE!"...A HISTORY OF OFFSHORE POWERBOAT RACING”
Acclaimed the most complete work on any motorsport under one cover
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MIAMI,
FLORIDA - A six pound, 685 page tome, “SEARACE!...A History
of Offshore Powerboat Racing”, is the most
complete documentation ever done of any motorsport.
Packed with 423 historic photos...lO5 in full color ...and featuring an imposing 27 page index containing 5400 separate references, the massive work took author John Crouse, a veteran of 45 years of racing, reporting and staging such classics as the Searace-Jockey Club and Miami-Nassau-Miami Searaces, 12 years to complete.
“SEARACE!...A History of Offshore Powerboat Racing” is lavishly illustrated with 17 original paintings of the legends by the famed illustrator George Bartell and six by artist Richard Merchan. Most of its photos were taken by the author but many were by the late Sal Maugeri, the celebrated aerial photographer Ron Thibedeau, and Forest Johnson, son of one of the early racers!
BOATING magazine’s Dave Speer wrote “Virtually every boat in these pages owes something of its design or propulsion system to the proving ground of offshore powerboat racing. And with the publication of SEARACE, the sport and all of us, owe author John Crouse a debt of gratitude. The book is replete with with explosions and swampings at sea, dare-devils and heroes, politics and tragedy. Crouse, who has covered the sport as an outspoken journalist for three and a half decades, writes with knowledge, wit and sharp opinion. Far more than a casual coffee-table undertaking, this book is a must for an aficionado.
MIAMI (Florida) HERALD boating writer Eric Sharp called Crouse’s epic“...lively, awesome in its scope,” containing “...fascinating archives of people, places and boats” with “...the good, the bad and the ugly all tucked into its pages.”
SOUNDINGS offshore expert Bill Sisson wrote, “The biggest surprise of the ’89 offshore season was the appearance of John Crouse’s long overdue opus on ocean racing, SEARACE!. It contains the best collection of of offshore photographs ever published...and is written in the distinctive style that Boating writer Eric Sharp and others have dubbed Crouse-ese: punchy, like newspaper headlines; emphatic.” Crouse is honest and his candor is refreshing in a sport where sponsor conscious competitors increasingly speak as though they just stepped out of a Dale Carnegie course.
English offshore journalist Derek Lloyd, in the British boating magazine POWERBOATING, writes “...John Crouse seems to have been around forever...and claims, quite rightly in most instances, to have known, been friends with, advised or disagreed with almost every other name and personality in this exciting, exclusive and dramatic sport. SEARACE!, which weighs six pounds, has been visited and approved by the whole of the international family at its birth at Donald Trump’s Castle at the World Championships. If anyone’s done anything or been involved internationally (in the sport) they can check their facts in the more than 100 pages of records and 27 page index. Apart from the hundreds of historical and fascinating photos, the book is interspersed with specially commissioned color plates of the sport’s giants over the years. If you are lucky enough to get one...don’t think of lending it even to your best friend, because you will never get it back!” Lloyd writes.