DONALD ARONOW, BOAT DESIGNER AND CHAMION RACER, SHOT TO DEATH (Published 1987) (2024)

Donald Aronow, a boat builder and champion racer who designed the sleek, speedy Cigarette boat, was shot to death today, the authorities said.

Mr. Aronow, 59 years old, was pronounced dead of multiple gunshot wounds at Mount Sinai Medical Center about 4:45 P.M., the hospital reported.

At the time of the shooting, Mr. Aronow was in an automobile leaving the Apache Marine, a boat-building shop north of Miami. A spokesman for the Metro-Dade Police Department, Dick Turner, said he had no other information about the shooting.

Mr. Aronow formed a string of high-performance boat companies: Donzi, Magnum, Cigarette and Squadron XII.

Popular in competitive racing, the powerful, sleek-hulled Cigarette boats also became favored by drug smugglers and were featured on the ''Miami Vice'' television show.

Federal Customs agents started using the craft to keep up with the smugglers, and Mr. Aronow helped design ''Blue Thunder,'' the Customs Service's drug interdiction boat. Early Days on Jersey Shore

Mr. Aronow, who would have been 60 on March 1, was a New York native and grew up racing speed skiffs on the New Jersey shore. After serving in the Merchant Marines in World War II, he married and became a builder in New Jersey.

By the age of 28, he was a millionaire, and in 1964 he moved to Florida where he began his boating career, racing for the first time in the 1964 Miami-Nassau race.

He had little success winning races until he began designing his own boats in the mid-1960's. He went on to win the world championship of powerboat racing in 1967 and 1969.

In 1969, Mr. Aronow also became the first man to win eight offshore races in one season, including the Sam Griffith Trophy for the world championship, and the United States National Champions competition in open class.

In his early victories, Mr. Aronow used the ''V Cigarette'' prototype boat, which later became a famous offshore racing hull.

Mr. Aronow was a friend of Vice President Bush, who owns a 28-foot Cigarette boat designed by Mr. Aronow.

Mr. Aronow's survivors include three children from his first marriage, Claudia, David and Michael, as well as his wife Lillian, and their two young children.