Two of the legendary names from Gold Cup racing in the 1930’s are SCOTTY TOO and Sam Dunsford, her owner. Dunsford commissioned John Hacker to build a racer for the 1929 season, which turned out to be so problematic that John Hacker himself came to Lake Winnipesaukee, with his lead boat builder and they worked tirelessly to correct the problems which were finally rendered as hopeless. Hacker then offered to build a second boat at a reduced price. Hacker returned to Michigan and turned out what some feel was one of his masterpieces.
SCOTTY TOO, as she was named, is not what most people would describe as beautiful. She has strikingly severe lines and shapes which render her a peculiar mix of handsome, charismatic, and a ballsy hot-rod., Her knuckled cutwater extends from her plumb bow like a giant menacing meat cleaver. And her stern is chopped off in a “V” tail that looks like a slice of apple pie. She is a multiple stepped hydroplane. Her engine drives forward through a large cast aluminum V-Drive gearbox. When she travels at high speed the gears can be heard whining from a great distance, a faint and eerie sound that can be heard coming down the lake, well before the engine’s soft bellowing exhaust.
SCOTTY TOO ran successfully for many years, based out of Dunsford’s boathouse on Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire. She won many races locally and also competed Nationally in the Gold Cup, President’s Cup and National Sweepstakes races. Dunsford was a colorful character who was well liked in the race circuit. He epitomized the “Gentleman Racer” and enjoyed being out on the race course in the “thick of it” more than he had aspirations of actually winning. SCOTTY TOO finished races consistently and consistency is what counts. So she placed well at the end of the regattas and took a trophy home almost every time.
In the late 1930’s near the end of her career, a young neighboring cottager named Bill Marriott, watched her being tuned up and raced from the Dunsford boathouse. Occasionally he would row over to Dunsfords and peer up under the boathouse doors at the great racer sitting in it’s cradle. After WWII in the late ‘40’s, one of the last times SCOTTY TOO was run, Bill got a long awaited ride which he never forgot.
Dunsford died in the 1950’s leaving all his boats to his caretaker who eventually sold them off. In the 1960s Ted Larter acquired SCOTTY TOO and had her refurbished to run at his summer home on Lake George, NY. In the 1980’s, Mason was involved in restoring her for Ted, and repowered her with a WWI Hispano-Suiza aircraft engine.
In 1993, Mason told Bill Marriott that SCOTTY TOO was alive and well, running on Lake George. Immediately an offer was made to buy her but Ted refused, a few months before he died. In 1997 the Larter family pulled her from storage and had her freshened up at Mason’s shop. She ran out of Mason’s boathouse cottage for a few weeks before being taken back to Lake George. Mason and Ted’s son Alan, invited Bill Marriott to go for a ride early one morning. After the ride, Bill asked to buy her on the spot. Again the Larters refused. Within the next year, Marriott approached Mason to build a replica of SCOTTY TOO. With the Larters blessings, their original boat was measured and a very accurate reproduction was begun.
Early on in the project, a 1918 Hispano-Suiza aircraft engine was located and has been restored to better than new condition. In the summer of 2011, Bill Marriott will have a fabulous new ‘old’ boat named SCOTTY TWO which will shoot across the waters of Lake Winnipesaukee like a scalded cat.