Team Honcho

[Sharp shooter]

Paul's and my boat side by side almost 2 years ago. Hey Paul, how about an update.

[Wendi]

Wow those are two badass boats!!!

[GotHalos]

Beautiful love the metal flake!

Is the one on the right the barn find from a while back ?

[Sharp shooter]

Beautiful love the metal flake!

Is the one on the right the barn find from a while back ?

Yes it is.

[Sharp shooter]

Wow those are two badass boats!!!

Thanks Wendi!

[HB Vic]

Pretty sure I have some shots of that boat somewhere. Badazz

[Sharp shooter]

Pretty sure I have some shots of that boat somewhere. Badazz

Which one?

Here's a few more.

[Sharp shooter]

This is the 3rd of 3 Honcho Biesemeyers from back when. This one crashed at firebird and was destroyed.



This is Paul's boat from Long beach 1976.



Paul's boat again with then owner Jack Rohr.

[314joey]

Cool looking boats, curious, what't the story behind the two honcho's or isn't there one, beautiful looking boat for sure.

[Sharp shooter]

Cool looking boats, curious, what't the story behind the two honcho's or isn't there one, beautiful looking boat for sure.

Thanks Joey!

The late John "Pete" Peters raced in the Desert Boat and ski club and named his boats Honcho. Up until the time he switched to a bigger Hallet around 77 John ran flattys.

John was into ski racing but entered the hotboat class after the ski race. I know for sure he had an aquacraft back in the sixties (not sure if he had the Honcho name on it) and maybe other boats that I'm not aware of after that. Jump ahead to 1974-5

John was good friends with Julian Pettingill who owned Arizona ski boats and was the builder of the dominate -post 1970 Biesemyer boats.

In 1974 or '75 John had a ski deck Biesemeyer that he campaigned in the K class with Painter/driver Jamie Jameson at the wheel. Jamie crashed and destroyed the boat at firebird raceway and the deck was left at the end of the course for years. See black and white pic above.

There were 2 other boats built, they were the newer style "race deck" boats. I have one and bagged taco- Paul has the other. Mine was built for ski racing and Paul's (I believe) was built for K racing to replace the white ski deck boat. After the crash Jamie said he wouldn't drive K class anymore so they ran in the PC Class. Around the same time, a new Ski racer was also layed up which is the boat I have.

Pauls boat originally had K-32 painted on the side with verigated gold leaf. As far I as know from talking to Julian and Jamie, John took the ski race engine he had and entered the boat in the newly formed PC class. That engine had 2 4's on a tunnel ram and went undefeated in PC all year. It wasn't long after that Jack Rohr bought the boat and added the stack injection and PC23 numbers. My boat (the ski racer) was raced in the 100 mile Lake mead race and according to Doug Peters in the Catalina ski race.

Pauls boat was found fairly recently in a barn and in tact from when Jack Rohr raced it. Paul is currently piecing it back together.

When I found my boat in washington state this is what it looked like.



I commissioned Billy B and Dave Sammons to do a full resto on my boat, but it was really hard to see exactly what the original paint looked like. Visible through the red we could see a lot of similarities to the design of the PC racer (Pauls boat) which is/was common practice for same owner boats (example: Chuck Boyds Sanger Hobbits, Lloyd Stephens 6 boat OFIXCO team, Mike Harrah's 3 boat team and the 2 K-69's and matching paint SS-690 that Richard Thompson built).

After stripping and sanding we (Billy B and I) decided to use the old pictures and video I had of the PC boat as a template as well as what we could see while stripping the boat. We didn't have any pictures of the rear deck or any really good color pics so Billy called Jamie (who painted all these boats) and tried to jar his memory.

Jamie was helpful, but we were still guessing on a lot of things which was fine because I also wanted to change some things. One of those things was the Honcho character next to the HONCHO name. I used the gun toting character off of Doug's newer t-shirt whereas the original has a whip. I also had Billy use a bullet between the K and the 32 instead of a "dash".

The cap and deck color on my boat is different than Pauls and the nose of the deck design comes to a point on my boat (Billy's idea). The rear deck is also a little different and my boat has an inspection cover cut into it.

I've always wanted a K boat and the ski race and K layups are both heavy. Using a blown injected engine I aquired from John's old friend and past ski racer Tom Buckles it all came together. I had Billy paint on the K-32, but we used spun leaf instead of varigated because I like it better. My original goal was to have a fun river play boat that I plan to race a few times (money and schedule permitting).