"Your body takes a pounding," Betty Cook admits. "You're standing for two and a half or three hours, under tension throughout the race, your arms tucked in close to your sides, fighting the wind, trying to keep your head level. Your neck and shoulder muscles really get sore. So do your feet. After a race in rough seas, you just want to get home, wrap your body around a bar of soap and take a long, hot shower." In other words, she loves the sport.
Cook now races out of Newport Beach, Calif., but she grew up in a Glens Falls, N.Y. family which did not want her to be a tomboy. She studied ballet and the closest she got to the water was a boyfriend's sailboat on Lake George. Then 12 years ago she and her husband, Paul, bought a 27-foot Chris-Craft, upgraded to a custom-built cruiser. Gradually Paul got interested in offshore racing and four years ago Betty was persuaded to try it.
Her debut was a 60-mile race for rookies off Long Beach, Calif. "I had never driven a boat before because no one let me," Betty recounts. "But three days before the race a friend said, 'It's simple. I'll teach you.' He gave me some quick instructions and then had me back it out of the slip. The slip was about 50 feet wide, but I hit it on both sides. Out in the main channel, I didn't know about the sensitivity of throttles and we took off like a jack-rabbit. It was rough and when I came in I said, 'Damn it, there's no way I'm going out there again.' But my husband insisted and said he'd race with me. I ran the whole race flat out." Against all-male competition, Betty and her ancient Bertram won her class.
The Cooks met when Paul was studying at MIT and she was a student at Boston University. They married after World War II, and while he finished his chemical engineering studies, she worked in MIT's nuclear science lab. She later housewifed, ran two leather goods shops, and was secretary to JFK's California caucus at the 1960 Democratic Convention. He worked for the Stanford Research Institute before starting a plastics company, and the couple formed Kudu Aeroseacraft Corp. in 1972.
After her 1974 win and two more races, Betty entered the world speed trials and set a new record—77 mph—for the Sports Class 6. Then she became the only regular female competitor in the Open Class. (The sports, or performance, classes involve smaller boats and shorter courses.) In her first race, off New Jersey, she could not finish. "Within about 10 minutes I lost my power steering, then blew an engine and it caught on fire." But last year, in her maiden race in a new $80,000 cigarette-shaped Scarab, she took the Bushmills Grand Prix. Finally, in November she won the World Championship in a pounding sea off Key West, when only six of 17 boats finished. (Drivers can be casualties too. After Cook's boat became momentarily airborne last year, it landed with such force her elbow slammed into her abdomen, breaking a rib.)
First-prize money, she says, has barely covered expenses—because "the ocean's free and you can't charge admission out there." But as for racing against men, Betty explains, "It doesn't come down to strength; you don't have to muscle your boat. All a woman needs is the desire—and the money." Lots of money. Each race costs her about $10,000, and a blown engine can add $6,000. Her annual racing expenses approach $100,000. Though she and Paul separated in 1975, he still underwrites her racing career.
Betty lives in an apartment at Newport Beach (Paul has remained in the Palo Alto area along with their two grown sons and two grandchildren). Her immediate goal is to be the first powerboat driver to top 100 mph—the record is 97 mph. "I'm going to have to start acting my age," she says. "But I've paid my dues as a mower of lawns and sweeper of floors. Before this I'd never won anything in my life—always second best. Now I have an enormous amount of self-confidence. I feel worthwhile."
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