Have hydros in Seattle lost their thunder?

Not too long ago, Chip Hanauer was one of Seattle's most famous sports stars. A household name.

Hanauer was a hydro driver. One of the best ever. Winner of 11 Gold Cups and 50 other unlimited hydro races. A big, big deal around here. He made a ton of money and retired young, like they used to do at Microsoft.

Today you might catch him playing his guitar at The Mix in Georgetown or a coffee shop in Port Townsend. It shouldn't be hard to get in; he's not a star anymore. And neither is the sport.

"I've been gone 10 years now. There's been a great deal of change in Seattle in that 10 years," Hanauer said recently. "A lot of people don't know anything about the races or the legacy of the races ... . So if you're not at least 40 years old, you probably wouldn't know who the heck I was."

As the hydros fire up their engines today to begin their annual weekend of competition on Lake Washington for Seafair, thousands of people will line the shore or watch from boats as they've been doing for decades. On the surface, it may appear that time has stood still, that we can still party like it's 1959.

But many say that if it weren't for the Blue Angels, a Seafair attraction since 1972, there might not be much of a reason to watch the hydros, a Seafair staple since 1951.

It's a sport with a rich history in Seattle. But does it have a future? Should anyone even care about it?

To answer that question, I turned to three of the biggest names in the Seafair hydroplane world — Hall of Fame driver Hanauer, legendary announcer Pat O'Day and popular comedian John Keister, a lifelong fan.

They all were hooked by the hydro races on Lake Washington at a young age, as was I. But that was a long time ago.

The fan

John Keister, 53, was the longtime host of "Almost Live," the popular KING-TV comedy show, and now is the head writer for the PBS program "Biz Kid$." Keister has watched every Seafair hydro race since he was 4 or 5, except for one year when he was at Boy Scout camp. "But I listened to it on the radio." He lives one block from the racecourse, not far from where he grew up. He misses the old "thunderboats," the unlimited hydros that were powered by World War II-era fighter-plane engines. Now the hydros run on quieter turbine engines.

"The boats don't make noise anymore. They sound like a microwave oven as they go by ... like you're warming up a burrito or something," Keister said.

"When you'd see them [the old boats] all line up and roar down to the starting line, it would just give you chills. It was amazing. It was some of the most exciting things I remember about my childhood. I thought it was just incredible."

Keister was one of those countless kids around the Seattle area who built miniature hydroplanes and dragged them behind their bicycles. (A group of 60 kids briefly revived that activity as part of last weekend's Seafair Torchlight Parade.)

Did Keister ever think about passing on that tradition to his children? "No, they would look at me like, 'What, are you crazy? We do what?' " he said. "That's not something that kids do anymore. They do things on computers. They do video games."

Unlike most hydro fans, Keister actually got a chance to ride in one about 10 years ago, a vintage boat with an old, loud engine and an open cockpit. "It's like the funnest thing in the world from zero to 80 miles an hour," he said. "And then it gets very frightening between 80 and 100 miles an hour and then between 100 and 150 miles an hour ... it's just sheer terror. It's like you feel like you're just about to die."

The announcer

Pat O'Day, 74, has been an announcer of the Seafair races since 1967, when he was one of the nation's top disc jockeys working for KJR. Today he sells real estate in the San Juan Islands and does radio and TV commercials for an alcohol-treatment center. O'Day was at Seattle's first hydro race in 1951, when he was a high-school student in Bremerton. It was the Gold Cup, the Super Bowl of the sport, and it attracted what was heralded at the time as the largest crowd ever assembled for a sporting event.

"Seattle was starved to be major-league something," he said. "We had the Indy 500 on a lake and we loved it.

"They stated the crowd was a half-million. Now I don't know if there was a half-million, but you couldn't find a place to sit or stand. It was free, people had spent the night in the sleeping bags. It was like a big family picnic."

But that was 58 years ago. Why would anyone even go to the lake this weekend?

"No. 1, you're looking at the fastest boats in the world, going 180-190 miles per hour. You're looking at the greatest airplanes and up-and-coming boat racers with the unlimited lights. In the end, it's just a smorgasbord of delights that endures despite predictions of it being dead on arrival for 60 years. It's just a great event."

The driver

Chip Hanauer, 55, loves the hydroplanes but when asked about the future of the races, he quickly replied: "Horribly bleak, if they continue on their present course," citing the loss of major sponsors, the use of the quiet turbines and a seeming inability to attract new fans. Yet he understands why thousands will watch this weekend.

"There is nothing like it in the world of motor sports. If you go to a NASCAR race, it's a little bit like sitting on the side of the freeway," he said a couple of weeks ago while visiting the Stan Sayres Pits on Lake Washington, where the hydros are put in the water.

"But the boats are balletlike. The boats are a visual feast. I mean, this 5,000-pound boat becomes weightless and literally dances over the top of the water while throwing out this beautiful plume of water behind it. There's just nothing in the world of sports that's as visually stimulating as an unlimited hydroplane."

The hydroplane racer turned philosophical when talking about the virtues of the sport and its role in creating community.

"It goes beyond the racing," Hanauer said. "It goes to a feeling that we all shared from one generation to another. And in our communities and our country we're losing that. If it's not perfect, we throw it away. And once it's gone, it's gone forever. I just can't imagine Seattle without the hydroplane race."

As he got up to leave, he briefly stopped to talk to a fisherman about his catch. As Hanauer drove away, the fisherman, Fred Jones Jr., is asked if he knows who he just talked to. The 44-year-old man shook his head.

When told that he just spoke to Chip Hanauer, his eyes lit up.

"That was really Chip Hanauer?!" Jones exclaimed. "Damn. He owns this lake!"

Bill Kossen comes from a hydroplane-loving Seattle family. His father once got pulled over by police for dragging a miniature hydro behind their Chevy Impala station wagon. Reach him at 206-464-2331 or bkossen@seattletimes.com