Chuck Stark

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By Chuck Stark

For those of you who read this (mostly) weekly column, you might remember the question I posed last week: Did someone actually ski behind a Washington state ferry on the Seattle-Bremerton route, or is the story an urban myth?

Emails and text messages poured in, and most clues pointed toward Bremerton accountant Clarke Whitney.

Whitney confirmed the story, and it turns out former Kitsap Sun staffer Terry Mosher, who also writes a weekly column, actually wrote about it a few years ago.

Nonetheless, the story is worth repeating.

Can you imagine the trouble Whitney and his cohorts in water-ski shenanigans would be in if they'd pulled off this stunt today?

"It would be a really big security breach," Whitney admitted.

Back then, in the mid-1970s, it was just a few die-hard water skiers being adventurous.

Whitney grew up water skiing on Oyster Bay.

"We had our own little playground," he said. "It's all we did all summer."

Bruce Amundson, a friend and roommate from Whitney's college days at the University of Puget Sound, was also an obsessed skier and the guy who actually hatched the plan to ski behind the ferry.

"He told his buddies, 'Well, maybe when we go to Bremerton to see Clarke, let's see if we can get somebody to throw a rope off the ferry,"' Whitney said. "And that's what we did."

One of the guys tossed a 500-foot tow rope with a handle into the water. Amundson was skiing behind Whitney's boat, which was following the ferry HV Hyak in Rich Passage. He wound up skiing behind the ferry for a few hundred yards as the ferry headed toward the Bremerton terminal.

The next year they managed to pull off a similar stunt behind the Princess Marguerite, the vessel that hauled passengers from Seattle to Victoria, British Columbia.

This time, they managed to get three skiers up at the same time, pulling the feat off as the Marguerite reached top speeds somewhere near Whidbey Island.

The first time they tried it, a member of the crew on the Marguerite saw what was happening and cut the line, said Whitney.

That didn't stop the skiers. They went back to the drawing board and came up with a spool of steel leader that was impossible to cut. They put the spool in a porthole and pulled the pins to lock the tow-rope in place.

"They couldn't take it out," Whitney said. "We had three handles and three guys that we had in a tow boat that was trying to catch up to the Princess Marguerite. The first time we only got two guys on, but we eventually got all three on. I've got video on it. It was on the front page of the Seattle Times. I've got a picture in my office."

It was a good conversation piece back then, said Whitney.

Forty years later, it still is.

Quick hits:

ROOT Sports baseball analyst Bill Krueger had a lot to say about the new-look Mariners during an entertaining Kitsap Athletic Roundtable meeting on Wednesday.

Comment: I'll write more about Krueger's views later, but it was interesting to hear his take on Mike Zunino, the young catcher who's struggled mightily at the plate. Krueger, who pitched 13 years in the majors, brought into question Zunino's ability to call a game and laid part of the blame on coaches who don't let catchers call pitches in high school and college.

"Catching (Felix) Hernandez or (Hisashi) Iwakuma, that's eeny, meeny, miny, mo. It doesn't matter what (signs) you put down, it's a good call, right?" he said. "The rest of the guys need to have someone back there who has a clue."

Krueger calls Chris Iannetta "a real catcher" who has caught big-league staffs for a decade, and he likes the backup, Steve Clevenger. "It seems like kind of a yawner," he said of the Clevenger pickup, "but a left-handed hitting backup catcher is a manager's dream," because it makes it a lot easier to give his regular catcher the day off instead of wearing him out by running him out there day after day.

The Seattle area has proven to be a hotbed of basketball, but is Zach LaVine the best player to come out of Washington state that nobody ever heard of?

Comment: It's amazing how many people didn't know the two-time NBA slam-dunk champion played at Bothell High. The four-star recruit averaged 28.5 points while earning state player of the year honors as a senior, and played one season at UCLA before landing with the Minnesota Timberwolves. The 6-foot, 6-inch guard was the 13th overall pick in the 2015 draft. His vertical leap has been measured at an insane 46 inches.

Silverdale's Harland Beery and South Kitsap grad Benji Olson are on the ballot for the Class of 2016 State of Washington Sports Hall of Fame. Beery, a sports writer/assistant editor at the Sun from 1977-92, is nominated in the administrators-coaches-media-officials category. He was also involved in semi-pro baseball, serving as the president of the Western International League, and was commissioner of the Nor-Pac, a college baseball league.

Olson, a University of Washington All-American, was an NFL lineman for 10 years, all with Tennessee. He started 140 of the 152 games he played in.

Comment: Both face some stiff competition, but they'll get my vote. They don't come any better than Beery and Olson.

Hats without flat brims are now known as Dad Hats.

Comment: Only thing worse than the flat-brim look are white belts on golfers.

Chuck Stark is the former sports editor of the Kitsap Sun. Reach him at chuckstark00@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @chuckstark10.