Both roads were dealing with an increase in vehicular traffic. They were not built even for small Japanese made sedans. Those were the first of the taxis coming over from the mainland. Those old jalopies had been driving around French Harbour and Roatan for years. Then there were the busses ferrying passengers from the bus depot on the Hill to Coxen Hole, points further west and to Oak Ridge to the east. Some islanders had the latest models of Ford and Chevrolet trucks and SUVs.
This would have been the setting in French Harbour when I joined my older brothers to visit our cousin Howard [Howie] Woods beneath his parents’ house on the Point. In the evening time, in his back yard, Howie was building a speedboat from the bottom up. This would have been after a long day’s work of preparing shrimp boats for the approaching season.
It all started with a movie that Howie saw.
We enjoyed taking some time to watch Howie work. I listened to him tell me what inspired him to build the speedboat and what his plans were for the structure that was slowly coming together. Others enjoyed doing so as well, and there was usually a small gathering of friends and family – distant and near – observing Howie’s progress on the speedboat.
It all started with a movie that Howie saw at Mister Homer’s movie theater, a structure that stood next to the cement bridge for decades. The movie was Tequila Sunrise, and featured a speedboat that captured the imagination of the eighteen-year-old. Howie was so impressed with the custom-built Chris-Craft 312 Stinger that he decided to build one himself. Albeit his version was to be a smaller, one engine boat.
Working for roughly one year, part time in the evenings, Howie figured the process out along the way by trial and error. He did not have a blueprint. He did not have the internet. It was difficult and time consuming to get the supplies he needed, but he persisted. “I was going to name the speedboat the Tequila Sunrise,” he said. “But people started calling her the Red Devil.” That is the name that stuck, although it was not painted on her.
It was on the Red Devil that, on the day the speedboat was launched, many folks made their way to his father’s wharf near the harbor entrance. She was twenty feet long, eight feet wide at the widest point, and carried a 200 horsepower Yamaha two-cycle engine that reached speeds of 62 miles per hour.
It seemed that half of French Harbour had come out to that wharf and Howie was giving quick rides to most of them. Three or four people at a time went speeding west just past Sarah Key and speeding back. It seemed Howie did so for hours. I am happy to note that I was among them that day.
With the proof being in the pudding, over the next several years Howie built five more speedboats. While most of them were for folks in French Harbour and one was for a lady from California who lived in the West End area. After some years, Howie parted with the Red Devil, selling her to Mister Arnie Grant from Coxen Hole, who named her the Morat Queen.
Then for decades, nothing. Until his son, Howie Jr., who had grown up with the stories about the Red Devil and had seen the photographs, set out to track down the speedboat. She was found ashore, a total mess and abandoned for at least a decade in Calabash Bight.
Howie Jr. and a friend or two set out to renovate the Red Devil, with advice and assistance from his father available whenever it was needed. They did the renovation in French Key and once completed she was christened Tequila Sunrise. Today she carries a 300 horsepower Suzuki motor and tops out at 62 miles per hour.
