Episode 131: Chris Martin and Jason Colean, Part 1

After a 2 month hiatus we are back and streaming with part 1 of my interview with Chris Martin and Jason Colean.  Chris and Jason are crew members for the U-27 Apollo Mechanical racing team.  Listen to their story as they went from hydroplane fans to crewing for the winningest hydroplane driver of all time! Part 2 of my interview with Chris and Jason will stream November 19th.  Enjoy!

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:25

Ruchetel Talk, the podcast dedicated to everything about the sport that we all love, Hydroplane racing. I am your host, david Newton, and it's time once again. So sit back, relax and welcome. Rooster Tail Talk talk. It is November 12th, 2024, and this is episode 131. Well, welcome back, reese fans.

Speaker 1 1:00

I know we've had a lull in our service in our episodes and I apologize to you. Fortunately for me, life just finds a way to keep on throwing curveballs and whatnot, but I got a little distracted there I'll be honest with my RC racing the end of the season there. It was a successful year and I really enjoyed all of that, and thanks goes out to Don Mock and Paxton Runanen and all the other people that helped me have a very successful year this year. But after the season I had some great interviews lined up and I actually had some interviews with some various people around the sport sport, one of which you're going to hear today my interview with Chris Martin and Jason Colleen, two gentlemen who have really put their all in the past few years and dedicated their lives really since COVID to pushing the sport forward and helping out Charlie Wiggins and Wiggins Racing and the U27 Apollo Mechanical, and you're going to hear more about them. But fortunately I had. I always feel like every year I have some health problem and hopefully I can kick this habit. But I had some blood clots and I got had to get those extracted, but feeling better now and got a good path. So I'm excited to get this interview out to you so you can listen to this and to to to enjoy more of the sport, because the season's over now for about two months.

Speaker 1 2:28

Unfortunately it's a dead quiet season, but let's talk more about hydroplane racing and keep it alive in the off-season with some interviews. This will be a two-part interview I had with Chris and Jason and you're going to enjoy that, and then afterwards I have a longer interview. I think it's actually going to be a four-part interview. Hush hush. Right now I'm not going to tell you who it is, but you'll enjoy that as our season six closing act as we gear up for season seven, and then you can enjoy that around the holidays before the end of the year.

Speaker 1 3:01

But this episode is all about Chris Martin and Jason Colleen, and they're two fellows that joined Wiggins Racing a few years ago. Chris is a local boy from Alabama, so we're Wiggins Racing, their hometown right by there in Alabama and then Jason's from Eastern Washington, both longtime fans of the sport, and it's really a great story. I know they're not household names. I often try to get interviews with drivers and owners and some big people around the sport and I don't want you to feel like this is any less, because these are crew members and without crew members we wouldn't have a sport and crew members have such an important part in the sport that really drives us forward and and gives us such a great spectacle of hydroplane racing right. So before the race at Wiggins Racing, they they didn't crew, they weren't on a team, and I just find it fascinating how someone can go from a fan and have their own personal lives to become a full-time crew member and what experiences they have and how that brought them to their journey and what they've learned along the way, because I know there's a lot of fans I've talked to before that are interested in crewing and want to help out teams. So I feel like this is a good episode for you.

Speaker 1 4:21

I could lay out much more background information and all that, but I think we need to get into the interview, get into this episode and listen to part one of my talk with Chris and Jason. Well, I'm sitting down here in my ResearchTel Talk office on Zoom talking with Chris Martin and Jason Colleen, two crew members for the U-27 Apollo mechanic. How are we doing boys? Two crew members for the U-27 Apollo mechanic. How are we doing? Boys Doing very well, how are you doing?

Speaker 2 4:48

Wonderful day. Yeah, I'm doing great. Yeah, in. Washington it's nice, I don't know how it is down there in Alabama. But it's a nice day, Muggy like usual. It's about 85, 86 right now, with about 90% humidity, so it feels about 90.

Speaker 1 5:03

Yeah, all right. All right, you avoided all the hurricane stuff down there, right.

Speaker 2 5:08

Yeah, it went farther east than what they were expecting, so we just got about two inches of rain off of it, thank goodness, but they got hammered to the east of us, so pretty bad up there.

Speaker 1 5:18

Yeah, that's pretty scary stuff. So don't worry about hurricanes, or Jason and I are.

Speaker 2 5:25

So that's the's. No, you got my beauty of washington it's like I told him everything out here in alabama tries, it tries to kill us, the weather to the animals all right.

Speaker 1 5:34

Well, we're here to talk about hydroplanes and people and crew members, uh, together, for I want to say more than just this year, because this is a whole process for you guys but rebuild this, this boat. But before we talk about the 27, I always like to ask people on the show what your favorite hydroplane of all time was. Do you guys have a favorite you followed, or kind of reflect back on?

Speaker 2 5:56

I guess older style favorite is for me personally is the Wahoo. It's just a beautiful boat. And then I guess the boat I followed would be the Elam it was just a beautiful boat. And then I guess the boat I followed would be the Elam it was just a bad fast boat.

Speaker 3 6:10

How about you, jason? For me, I mean, that's a really tough question. I've always been a fan of the underdog boats. So you know, through the 90s I liked the boats like the Appian, geronimo, you know, maybe stuff like the boats like the red dot, I was always a big fan of.

Speaker 1 6:27

Yeah, I was definitely more of an underdog fan as well. So those are some some fun boats to recall. Do you guys have a favorite driver of all time?

Speaker 2 6:36

I'm going to be a Homer here. Mine's Dave.

Speaker 1 6:41

Is he in the room right now forcing you to say that answer?

Speaker 2 6:45

No, no, I think he's up there in Washington, at least I think he is. He could be on his way down here, who knows with him how?

Speaker 1 6:53

about you.

Speaker 3 6:53

Jason. Oh, that's a tough one too, man. You know I was always a really big fan of George Stratton. I was always a really big fan of George Stratton. He uh, when they, when the when the Gregor's first bought their boat, they came out to the tri-cities to test it out and you know, I mean a couple of friends went down there and checked it out and he basically spent the entire time that they weren't doing anything just hanging out with us kids and giving us a show. He let us sit in the boat, close the cockpit, showed us how to fire it up. We need to do something like that for a 10-year-old, when you basically got a fan for life.

Speaker 2 7:29

You're hooked.

Speaker 1 7:30

Yeah, that was such an unfortunate tragedy in the sport. He was a great guy and he had a lot of talent. It would have been fun to have seen what he could have done. I agree, awful. You guys have gotten to know each other pretty well working for Wiggins Racing, but you have some different backgrounds.

Speaker 2 7:52

How did you get involved to work with Wiggins together. Oh well, me personally it was. Charlie put a post on Facebook in 2018 or 2019 when they were building the new boat, and he put the post on that they were short on help, that progress had stalled, and I just commented on the Facebook post that I don't have any experience. But you know, I'm less than an hour away. I would love to volunteer my time, and he shot me a message, told me to direct message him back and throughout a few conversations it turned into me going down there in November of 2020. It started with me not just joining the team, but I hired on with his company, chase Building Group also, so it turned into a crew position on the boat and a career also. Oh, wow, okay.

Speaker 1 8:43

Yeah, so it was more than just the boat then for you.

Speaker 2 8:46

Yeah, yeah, so so, so, more than just the boats, what's uh, it's opened up, uh, a world of opportunity for me Charlie has. So I'm super grateful, super grateful to Charlie. Are you still working for his company? Oh yeah, absolutely I love it. Yeah, Okay.

Speaker 3 9:02

Well, Jason, you were more than an hour away. How did you get involved with this? Well, I also started with a Facebook post. It was 2021, and you know it was during COVID. My family's restaurant had just kind of not made it and I was out looking for a job and I stumbled across a Facebook post that Charlie was looking for help and I said, hey, if it pays enough to relocate, I'd love to come down and help. Next thing, you know, yeah, hop in the car with a few possessions, drive across the country, get to work on the boat.

Speaker 2 9:38

No biggie, just a short drive. Yeah, just a quick little hop.

Speaker 1 9:43

Well, I remember that because you were racing the RSU back then and you just disappeared from us. We got a full-scale boat and so that boat crashed in. Was it 2018? It crashed or 2019? Correct, yeah, 18. 18? Yeah, it was a long process to get that boat back together. Why did it take so long to get that boat back together?

Speaker 3 10:10

Well, Charlie, did most of what was there when I got there had been done by Charlie himself.

Speaker 2 10:17

He cut the original boat apart, he built the center section, did most of the molds and essentially did all of that by himself until we showed up right when, uh, when I got there, it was just just a center section in the cockpit, and then obviously, uh, I was there a lot about a year or a little bit more, year and a half, before jason joined up, and I mean just the thing. The thing is, we're in alabama and there's really nobody around us that knows how to build a boat or anything like that. So, like jason said, it was all pretty much on charlie and what little bit of help he could get to come down and help just very sporadically until I hired on, and then I don't have much experience, but Charlie's a great teacher and I'm a pretty quick learner myself. So we were able to get not a lot done but more than had been done. And then when Jason came down, that was just another big help right there well, not to mention that that all happened during the covet era too.

Speaker 3 11:18

So work shut down on the boat for two, I think, maybe even three years of that time.

Speaker 2 11:23

Oh, wow, okay yeah, so yeah, nothing. Nothing happened on the boat for really, like jason said, for almost two years, for sure nothing.

Speaker 1 11:32

Nothing happened to it at all yeah, yeah yeah, and I know that the boat when it flipped in seattle didn't look as bad on the shoreline, but there was a lot of internal damage to it, right, structural damage which really kind of had to pretty much start from square one, right it would have.

Speaker 2 12:52

From what my understanding is, it would have been easier to do what we did than it would have. From what my understanding is, it would have been easier to do what we did than it would have been to tear the old boat apart and repair that damage.

Speaker 3 13:01

Yeah, yeah, so the the original boat was built with, so the the frames were foam core with fiberglass skins, and when the boat landed it just kind of cracked like an ice cube train. Everything that was touching foam delaminated.

Speaker 1 13:17

Oh, they didn't have any honeycomb frames.

Speaker 3 13:20

No, that whole center section was all foam. Wow, all foam core.

Speaker 1 13:25

Wow, that's wild.

Speaker 3 13:28

Yeah, tell me about it, Okay.

Speaker 1 13:32

Well, yeah, so it kind of makes sense more why it took so long. I mean, you put in those COVID years and you're kind of on an island out there in Alabama with expertise.

Speaker 2 13:46

Yeah, not a lot of experience around here other than Charlie, yeah.

Speaker 1 13:49

Yeah, the other closest team is Madison, but they predominantly keep the stuff in Seattle. Anyways, right.

Speaker 2 13:55

Right in Seattle, then I guess other than that would be the uh, the u3 team. But they're uh, you know, they're piston, they're not turbine right, right, all right, pretty wild stuff.

Hydroplane Racing Team's Expert Mentorship

Speaker 1 14:07

So when you got the alabama, you both guys didn't really have much experience on an unlimited team, correct I?

Speaker 3 14:14

had zero. Yeah same here. All my experience came from RCU and building little eight scales.

Speaker 2 14:23

Yeah, my background is drag racing so I had a little experience with turbines and jet cars. That would come to the drag strip. But as far as boat racing, I had none. Yeah, racing, I had none, yeah, other than you know, growing up right there on guntersville lake you hear stories about when the boats came came in the 60s and everything but there was never.

Speaker 1 14:40

as far as experience I had zero okay okay, well, my dad was huge on rcs and he always said that the, the big boats, were just a bigger scale than the rcs. So it's just, it's, um, just a bigger learning curve. But how, how was that learning curve for both of you?

Speaker 2 15:00

You went from little to none experience to building a brand new boat basically, it was a shock at first, that's for sure, but I think Jason could add on to this Charlie's an awesome, awesome teacher. Absolutely. As long as you pay attention, he will uh, he'll teach you anything you want to know, and he's a super, super smart guy yeah, I was pretty impressed with charlie.

Speaker 3 15:21

He has that entire boat built in his head from beginning to end, without missing a step. He's he's the mastermind behind that boat. But he's right it is. It is a lot like building a scale boat. That was, you know, one of the things charlie said. You know, man, I I've never worked on an unlimited before. I don't know.

Speaker 1 15:39

He's like yeah, you worked on the scale, but it's the same thing, but bigger just just bigger, yeah, and a lot faster, just bigger, faster and a few more headaches along the way yeah, just just a little bit more expensive but, jason, you did something kind of cool in the process. You you built a 110th scale or repurposed a 110th scale, alongside building the full scale boat yeah, that was a lot of fun.

Speaker 3 16:06

I uh yeah, I took that down with me, so I went back for an additional three months after the couple of years that I'd been down there. I took that with me when things were going slow. I'd have a few minutes to put something together.

Speaker 2 16:22

Yeah, it turned out really nice.

Speaker 1 16:25

Yeah, it turned out beautiful. You've raced it a few times this year at RCU. I think it goes pretty fast. I'm excited to see it.

Speaker 3 16:32

It's pretty quick. It just needs a better driver, I would say you're doing about as good as the real team.

Speaker 1 16:38

I think you got third place at one race this year. I got a couple seconds. Okay, there you go. Well, at some point Villawoc came down there and worked with you guys. I'm sure that was just a wealth of knowledge and a lot to absorb. What was that experience like? Having him in the shop, you know?

Speaker 3 16:59

yeah, where to begin on that? Yeah, he, he, just, he has a never-ending supply of energy and he knows everything about everything. I mean, what more can you say he's? He's up at seven o'clock and he's working till midnight, one o'clock just an absolute wealth of knowledge yeah, dave is a.

Speaker 2 17:22

Dave has forgotten more than I will ever know as far as boat racing and how to build a boat, and it doesn't matter what, what part of the boat you're talking about. You could go ask dave with a specific question about any part of that boat and he could tell you why that part is how it is, why it's made like it is in the history of how it got to the point of you know where it's at.

Speaker 3 17:43

Dave is just or you'd ask him a question about something and he'd say, hold on a second, I'll be right back and he'd go up and pull out a binder. He still he kept all of his records from budweiser. Wow, he just yeah, he yeah, there's, he's blueprints of all those boats are sitting in the Wiggin shop.

Speaker 2 18:01

Wow, yeah, the Dave that the public sees versus the Dave that behind closed doors is just he's Dave's awesome guy. Yeah, super, super lucky. I couldn't ask for a better guy to learn from than Dave and Charlie.

Speaker 1 18:19

Yeah, yeah, well it's the wealth of knowledge that he has is just amazing and, uh, that's one thing I've experienced seeing, like seeing him in the shop, like he and people I've talked to working with him too.

Speaker 2 18:30

And back to stockland's team his skills, like the dude is just super, super talented fabricating things as well, I mean yeah awesome fabricator he's a good motivator and a teacher too, like he just he gets the best out of people.

Speaker 1 18:47

That's awesome, have you guys been able to look through that binder.

Speaker 2 18:52

Oh yeah, oh yeah oh yeah, look through the binders. I've looked through all the uh, all the prints from all the old the budweiser boats and everything that he's kept over the years, and there's some cool stuff there, some really cool stuff.

Speaker 3 19:07

His propeller stuff is just amazing. Some of the tests they performed on him back in the Budweiser days.

Speaker 1 19:13

Yeah, and do you have a machine down there now to make props? In Alabama we do.

Speaker 2 19:20

We do. Charlie got that. In the last two years We've picked up a 5-axis machine.

Speaker 1 19:28

Then you also have a dyno down there as well, right, we do.

Speaker 2 19:32

As far as I know, we're the only team with a dyno. That's a big plus for us. That's cool.

Speaker 1 19:39

That's a lot to incorporate down in your shop down there.

Speaker 2 19:44

The ability to build like we did. I mean we built that boat here in our shop. So I mean if we can build a boat and dino them right there in the shop, then that's something no other team can do.

Speaker 1 19:56

That's a huge advantage.

Speaker 3 19:58

Well, we almost need to do that with. I mean, there's no facilities to do any of that stuff within a thousand miles. So we got out. We do have to do it now. 100% correct on that.

Speaker 2 20:08

Yeah.

Speaker 3 20:10

And we're, we're sending. We were sending our turbines off to Nebraska to have them dynoed, and Nebraska or Montana.

Speaker 1 20:18

Right yeah, that's just a few hours away. Right yeah, that's just a few hours away, right yeah.

Speaker 2 20:24

It's a lot of money to be shipping around too.

Speaker 1 20:27

Yeah, no kidding. Well, when Veloc came on board I think it was it wasn't necessarily a secret, but it wasn't really publicized either. Was that hard to kind of keep under wraps and, and I'm sure people were kind of reaching out to you?

Speaker 2 20:43

I think that was the worst kept secret hydroplane. It wasn't hard, I guess it wasn't hard to keep a secret because everybody pretty much knew. So for me myself I just had to be careful, like making comments on Facebook that would allude to him actually being our driver, other than just helping us finish the boat, and was that decided when he came on board that he was going to drive, or was that open up in the air still?

Speaker 2 21:14

I'm not sure, but I want to say it was more than likely. It was decided from that he was going to at least drive and shake the boat down to get the boat set up to where it needed to be yeah, well, what were your thoughts when you initially heard that he was coming to the team? There's nobody else, I'd rather have I was excited.

Speaker 2 21:35

I could not be more excited other than you know, just watching him drive our boat, just getting to learn from the guy. I mean, there, there is nobody other than him and Charlie, there's nobody I'd rather learn from in the sport. I mean, who else would you? There's nobody with his knowledge and experience, nobody else. I mean he's awesome.

Speaker 3 21:54

And Chris and I had we had spent, you know, half a season working with the bucket list team when he was driving for them, and so we had a little bit of a taste of what it was like to work with him. Yeah, just we knew it was coming Right. And to piggyback off of that real quick.

Speaker 2 22:14

I owe a huge thank you to those guys over at the bucket list team, because they really they're the ones who threw me into the fire. It taught me what I need to do during a race. As far as being a crew member, I mean, charlie, charlie and dave taught me how to build the boat, but it's being a crew member, oh, everything to taylor, taylor and all those guys over at bucket list yeah, absolutely you building the boat in the shop down there.

Speaker 3 22:40

You do kind of feel isolated. You know you're working, working on a hydroplane, but you feel completely isolated from hydroplane racing. You don't get any experience with being crew members or anything that goes with the boat once it leaves the shop.

Speaker 1 22:54

Yeah, yeah, I'm sure I'm thinking back to the days when I was hanging around the muscatel shop a lot. I'm sure it was just really different. You're not having people come in and check in on the progress and come in to just kind of stop by on the way home from work and give a hand for an hour or so, not really.

Speaker 2 23:12

The only time I can think of people stopping by to check on progress would be like well during the build. Would be like well during Guntersville Hydro Fest when the build would be like a well during Guntersville Hydro Fest, when the teams would be in town. We would have people come by the shop and just check on things. But throughout the year there would be nobody.

Speaker 3 23:28

Yeah, anyone who would come by to look at it wound up peeing on the crew when we finally got out there.

Speaker 2 23:33

Yeah, we tried not to let them leave.

Speaker 1 23:38

That's one way to get crew members, that's for sure. Well, that's all the time we have for this week. Boys and girls, make sure you turn in next week, that same hydro channel, that same hydro time, and we're going to come back. Next week we're going to conclude my interview with jason colleen and chris martin. They're going to hear more about their experience getting into the sport. But they're going to talk more about the experience of that rebuild and this past season, some of the successes that they had, some of the challenges, highs and lows, and we're going to talk more about that next week. But I hope you enjoyed today's episode. It was great getting back on the air and getting some more episodes and interviews out to you, the listener, and I just want to say again thank you and appreciate the support that everyone's pulled for me in the challenging times, but also just for this podcast, because your support means so much to me and really this podcast is all about my love and passion for hydroplane racing and just your support keeps me going for this.

Speaker 1 24:39

A new thing to the podcast I started a few months back. I did have a subscription service to Richie Tell Talk Plus and if you're interested you can choose your level of support. You can go to my website I have a link in the bio below and you can sign up for a monthly subscription to Richie Tell Talk Plus. With Richie Tell Talk Plus, every month we have a drawing. With Richel Talk Plus, every month we have a drawing for the subscribers, and so far I've given away a hat, I've given away a Richel Talk tote, I've given away tickets to a race and I've got some more fun prizes and things down the road that I'm going to give to you, the listener, because this podcast is all about sharing our love and passion for the sport, so I think this is another fun way to do that. Well, don't forget to check us out on social media. We're on Facebook, instagram, we have our website, bruceteltalkcom, and I guess that's all I got for this week. So until next time. Hope to see you at the races.