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Billy Whizz
BMW's Bill Auberlen tunes boat engines in his spare time. His latest creation will top 130mph - and it's got cupholders. Hang on to your gin & tonic...
Bill says he misses the adrenalin buzz of motor racing when he's not doing it. He's also an inveterate tweaker, which is why his relationship with Carrera Boats (his chosen manufacturer) didn't end with the purchase of the 257 Effect X catamaran. The engine in the back is now more highly tuned than that of any other boat you're likely to see; he's at the Carrera workshop so often that its proprietor thinks of him as part of the staff.
The shop is in Corona, an un-suburb of Los Angeles - one of those places that maintains sufficient distance from the suburban sprawl of the bowl to enjoy the crisp Southern California light unhazed by LA's omnipresent grey-brown smog. From Bill's Redondo Beach pad it's a brisk drive east of the metropolis on Highway 91, scrolling past rows and rows of dry hills etched with the detritus left by periodic brush fires.
The smell of paint and glass fibre resin wafts out of the Carrera shop's sliding doors. Inside, Bill's catamaran rests on a trailer amongst a collection of boats in various states of completion. The cosmetics of the 26-foot boat are impressive: the swirling paint job was applied in the mould rather than as a set of stick-on decals, the leather upholstery is opulent, the cabin details are picked out in anodized blue metal, and a bank of Fosgate amps tucked under the dash pump out 3100 watts of music power and keep the captain's feet warm in winter.
But you can get these as standard fitments or optional extras. It's the engine that makes it special: a 540cu motor that Bill has hopped up with higher-spec internal components and a ProCharger centrifugal supercharger to make 1300bhp and 1000ft lb torque from 4200rpm up to almost 6000rpm.
"Technologically, the boating scene's a few years behind the car industry," explains Bill. "Most of them still run carburetors. This boat not only has electronic fuel management systems, it has selective maps so that when I hit the nitrous a whole different set-up comes in. It's also got a shift interrupt, like the one in our BMW, that kills the engine as you shift up. "
Bill's problem isn't so much where to start modifying the engine, but where to stop - it's now so powerful that it keeps shredding transmissions. But Bill has run into these kinds of obstacles before.
"By the time I was t4," he says, "my dad was racing cars and I was already working on engines and building the gearboxes. I always had my hand in it. All the years where I was paying the bills for parts that were breaking, I got very sensitive to mechanics. You find ways of making things quicker, more reliable and less expensive."
The test bed for the project is Lake Elsinore (which, according to the girl in Starbucks who asked if I was an actor, is nicknamed 'Lake Smell-some-more' on account of the volume of algae growing within its depths). If you're fortunate, and we are, there aren't many other boats ripping about on Elsinore and its surface isn't choppy. A perfect day for ripping about at 130mph - if Bill's new transmission were ready. Instead, he offers me a ride in another 26-footer with a pair of outboards that can run it up beyond 100mph. Which, given my inability to swim, is quite enough for me.
"Boat engineers could learn a lot from car racing," he says. "We've tuned the aerodynamics of my boat to give it less drag. If you take weight out of the front - just these cushions in the front here weigh 321b - you get three and a half miles an hour. I built a NACA duct to direct air into the engine and got more power because it was breathing better. We got almost 3/41b more boost through that. We've done a lot of things they'd never do in boating. "
As a final aerodynamic (or hydrodynamic) frisson, Carrera trued the base of his boat and coated it in Teflon. Ordinarily you could squeeze in a gag about Ronald Reagan here, but not if you want to get out of Southern California with all your limbs intact.
I slip into the co-pilot's seat and Bill steps on the gas. For an instant there's nothing but noise as a vast plume of spray erupts aft, then the nose belts itself out of the water, the tail lifts and the boat surges forward. Just the sponsons are in contact with the water now, skipping lightly over the gentle waves. Nothing beneath us now but a bunch of startled fish. Ladies and gentlemen, we are cruising at an altitiude of about three feet.
We're fast approaching 100mph and the ducks in our path are, well, ducking. The wind rips at our clothes and beats an insistent rhythm on our cheeks. The only thing for it is to clench my jaw shut (to stop the wind inflating my mouth into an involuntary Mick Jagger rictus) and hope my sunglasses don't fall off - because these small things in life are important. Oh dear, Lake Elsinore seems to be running out, and I'm sure boats don't have brakes.
Bill lets up on the gas and brings the catamaran about in a shallow turn, instinctively flipping the wheel into opposite lock, race car style, as we come about. We've come a long way in what seems like less than a minute. In the passenger bay up front, Regis is taking pictures with one hand, holding on with the other, and cackling like the witches from Macbeth. He wants to water ski.
"Put somebody out the back of my boat and they're going to have the ride of their life, " Bill says. "It could do about 130mph before and now we've added the nitrous... we're not sure exactly what speed it's going to have... "
This, apparently, is some quirk that enables boats to duck the law of diminishing returns. The only way to find out the top speed for sure is to open it up and see.
"Boats are weird, " he says, "because they keep giving every time you add more horsepower - especially with a boat like this. It's designed to fly, not to run in the water. It acts like the opposite of race car aerodynamics: as the air gets packed harder between the sponsons, the boat is forced out of the water."
This is part of the performance envelope I'm not keen to explore. But Bill already has plans which will utilize the experience he and Carrera have gained with his current boat: the next one will be 9801b lighter and just as strong.
So that's it: we're going to need a lighter boat. But I'm happily married to dry land - and what God has joined together let no man put asunder. So, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get out now and kiss the ground.
From Le Mans Series & Sportscar Racer, November 2000
by Kevin Spaise
Photography by Fernando Escovar
BMW's Bill Auberlen tunes boat engines in his spare time. His latest creation will top 130mph - and it's got cupholders. Hang on to your gin & tonic...
A pivotal moment: in the third reel of Jaws, Roy Scheider is spooning raw meat into the sea when the titular shark rears up out of the water gnashing its teeth. Astonished, he turns to his colleagues and mutters, "We're going to need a bigger boat."
Another pivotal moment: Mosport, 1999, and Bill Auberlen and fellow racer Kelly Collins are thumbing through a speedboat magazine. The lure of something bigger and faster than his own is irresistible. Bill makes a decision: "I'm going to need a bigger boat."
A final moment: when Bill tells me the engine that propels his 26-foot catamaran is making 1300bhp - that's without deploying the two bottles of nitrous - I think, "I'm going to need a life jacket. "
 |
"Nothing beneath us now but a bunch of startled fish. Ladies and Gentlemen, we are cruising at an altitude of about three feet." |
 |
Bill says he misses the adrenalin buzz of motor racing when he's not doing it. He's also an inveterate tweaker, which is why his relationship with Carrera Boats (his chosen manufacturer) didn't end with the purchase of the 257 Effect X catamaran. The engine in the back is now more highly tuned than that of any other boat you're likely to see; he's at the Carrera workshop so often that its proprietor thinks of him as part of the staff.
The shop is in Corona, an un-suburb of Los Angeles - one of those places that maintains sufficient distance from the suburban sprawl of the bowl to enjoy the crisp Southern California light unhazed by LA's omnipresent grey-brown smog. From Bill's Redondo Beach pad it's a brisk drive east of the metropolis on Highway 91, scrolling past rows and rows of dry hills etched with the detritus left by periodic brush fires.
The smell of paint and glass fibre resin wafts out of the Carrera shop's sliding doors. Inside, Bill's catamaran rests on a trailer amongst a collection of boats in various states of completion. The cosmetics of the 26-foot boat are impressive: the swirling paint job was applied in the mould rather than as a set of stick-on decals, the leather upholstery is opulent, the cabin details are picked out in anodized blue metal, and a bank of Fosgate amps tucked under the dash pump out 3100 watts of music power and keep the captain's feet warm in winter.
But you can get these as standard fitments or optional extras. It's the engine that makes it special: a 540cu motor that Bill has hopped up with higher-spec internal components and a ProCharger centrifugal supercharger to make 1300bhp and 1000ft lb torque from 4200rpm up to almost 6000rpm.
"Technologically, the boating scene's a few years behind the car industry," explains Bill. "Most of them still run carburetors. This boat not only has electronic fuel management systems, it has selective maps so that when I hit the nitrous a whole different set-up comes in. It's also got a shift interrupt, like the one in our BMW, that kills the engine as you shift up. "
 |
 |
Bill's problem isn't so much where to start modifying the engine, but where to stop - it's now so powerful that it keeps shredding transmissions. But Bill has run into these kinds of obstacles before.
"By the time I was t4," he says, "my dad was racing cars and I was already working on engines and building the gearboxes. I always had my hand in it. All the years where I was paying the bills for parts that were breaking, I got very sensitive to mechanics. You find ways of making things quicker, more reliable and less expensive."
The test bed for the project is Lake Elsinore (which, according to the girl in Starbucks who asked if I was an actor, is nicknamed 'Lake Smell-some-more' on account of the volume of algae growing within its depths). If you're fortunate, and we are, there aren't many other boats ripping about on Elsinore and its surface isn't choppy. A perfect day for ripping about at 130mph - if Bill's new transmission were ready. Instead, he offers me a ride in another 26-footer with a pair of outboards that can run it up beyond 100mph. Which, given my inability to swim, is quite enough for me.
"Boat engineers could learn a lot from car racing," he says. "We've tuned the aerodynamics of my boat to give it less drag. If you take weight out of the front - just these cushions in the front here weigh 321b - you get three and a half miles an hour. I built a NACA duct to direct air into the engine and got more power because it was breathing better. We got almost 3/41b more boost through that. We've done a lot of things they'd never do in boating. "
As a final aerodynamic (or hydrodynamic) frisson, Carrera trued the base of his boat and coated it in Teflon. Ordinarily you could squeeze in a gag about Ronald Reagan here, but not if you want to get out of Southern California with all your limbs intact.
 |
 |
| Left: Anodised metal details. Right: You need more than 3000 watts to hear over the engine and wind noise. | |
I slip into the co-pilot's seat and Bill steps on the gas. For an instant there's nothing but noise as a vast plume of spray erupts aft, then the nose belts itself out of the water, the tail lifts and the boat surges forward. Just the sponsons are in contact with the water now, skipping lightly over the gentle waves. Nothing beneath us now but a bunch of startled fish. Ladies and gentlemen, we are cruising at an altitiude of about three feet.
We're fast approaching 100mph and the ducks in our path are, well, ducking. The wind rips at our clothes and beats an insistent rhythm on our cheeks. The only thing for it is to clench my jaw shut (to stop the wind inflating my mouth into an involuntary Mick Jagger rictus) and hope my sunglasses don't fall off - because these small things in life are important. Oh dear, Lake Elsinore seems to be running out, and I'm sure boats don't have brakes.
Bill lets up on the gas and brings the catamaran about in a shallow turn, instinctively flipping the wheel into opposite lock, race car style, as we come about. We've come a long way in what seems like less than a minute. In the passenger bay up front, Regis is taking pictures with one hand, holding on with the other, and cackling like the witches from Macbeth. He wants to water ski.
"Put somebody out the back of my boat and they're going to have the ride of their life, " Bill says. "It could do about 130mph before and now we've added the nitrous... we're not sure exactly what speed it's going to have... "
This, apparently, is some quirk that enables boats to duck the law of diminishing returns. The only way to find out the top speed for sure is to open it up and see.
"Boats are weird, " he says, "because they keep giving every time you add more horsepower - especially with a boat like this. It's designed to fly, not to run in the water. It acts like the opposite of race car aerodynamics: as the air gets packed harder between the sponsons, the boat is forced out of the water."
This is part of the performance envelope I'm not keen to explore. But Bill already has plans which will utilize the experience he and Carrera have gained with his current boat: the next one will be 9801b lighter and just as strong.
So that's it: we're going to need a lighter boat. But I'm happily married to dry land - and what God has joined together let no man put asunder. So, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get out now and kiss the ground.
From Le Mans Series & Sportscar Racer, November 2000
by Kevin Spaise
Photography by Fernando Escovar