Powerboat racing this weekend - Cowes

Thanks for that, I will do. I saw a very clean classic something smallish open back deck leaving Southampton water as we headed to the town quay. I suspect heading your way.

I'd love to see some of the classic craft. I agree the start is unlikely to move from the East End of Christchurch Bay but I wonder if there might be slight tweaks to Saturday's times so racing doesn't clash with testing.

Henry :)
 
Well the sun is shining and the thunder is starting to roll across West Cowes. The thunder of exhausts :)

Timings are as per original post, start is from the Eastern corner of Christchurch Bay at North Head running down towards the Needles Fairway. C T C boats then head West, C P C boats do a number of laps each time rounding North Head and the Needles Fairway marks.

C T C boats round North Head, enter Solent close to Hurst point en route to the finish line between Gurnard Ledge and East Lepe.

Just to confrm that all 3 Harbour Authorities Portsmouth, Cowes and Southampton were happy to see a Solent start. There would appear to be ample safety boat coverage so the descision was made elsewhere.

It promises to be a good weekend's racing with around 40 boats taking part.

Henry :)
 
I shall be heading that way from Poole in a rather slow sailing boat. I'm looking forward to the spectacle along the way but am anxious to stay out of their way. How will the course be marked so we don't stray too close?
 
colhel said:
I shall be heading that way from Poole in a rather slow sailing boat. I'm looking forward to the spectacle along the way but am anxious to stay out of their way. How will the course be marked so we don't stray too close?
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Hi there. The Torquay boys and girls will be taking a line from Needles fairway to St Albans head. The Pool boys and girls will be running a course from North Head, Needles Fairway, slightly South to 2 Marks at 50 37.979N. 001 43.019W, BP Wytch Farm, South Bourne outfall, Hengistbury Head, then back to North Head.

Keep in mind the Torquay race finish will run from St Albans Head to North Head (rather than Needles Fairway).

Both races then run up through the middle of the Solent to a finish line between Gurnard Ledge and East Lepe.

Hope that helps.

Henry :)
 
A little bit of video footage from the wet pits yesterday.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGnDi3ioKfU&feature=youtube_gdata_player

That may be a link to the mobile version, if it is please forgive me. Posting from an iPhone.

Course has changed slightly in that the Needles Fairway bouy is now not being used. The first mark is a pair of bouys in position 50 37.979N. 001 43.019W.

A little more choppy than might have been hoped for by some, others will no doubt relish the conditions and see them as a chance to shine.

Good luck to everyone taking part including E66, the forum's own John Cooke from Bananashark racing who has posted on here in the run up to the event.

Henry :)
 
Cowes Torquay Race Report

Just a quick post to tell you about our race at Cowes in Cinzano:
Sunday morning was dry and not so windy, although I knew that the headlands would still be rough so we ran a fairly short pair of props. Assembly and run down Solent was in my opinion almost more dangerous than racing with fast ribs etc trying to muscle in to the middle of the fleet. Start off North Head was all OK and we, as usual, were not quick off the mark. Markus takes a little time to warm to the conditions, so we were about 7th at the first mark; 2 bouys. ( Turn moved there from Needles Fairway to miss the expanded Shingles bank).
Run across Poole Bay uneventful, short sharp confused seas, ran inshore from Anvil to Portland and ran very, very close to the Bill, picked us up 4 positions, turned the Bill, ran North for about 3 miles, hugging the coast to miss the race, then turned West.
Stayed a few miles North of the rumb line to find lesser seas which seemed to work as we got to Berry Head we only had Fury and Powerboat Asia in front. Water had calmed slightly so we sped up and saw 87-88 knots on the GPS, by the first Torquay mark we were leading. First 10 miles back across the Bay was a pretty flat following sea and fast, then built up a bit, so we kept Northerly and headed for the middle of the Portland landmass. About 1/2 mile from the bill we again hugged the land closely following the line of Lobster pots about 50 metres from the rocks. Found a nice tranquil patch and sped off to Anvil.
Anvil was fairly horrible whilst the photo chopper was fololwing us we had a big stuff that tore off the screen top foam cover and soaked everything, pumps on !
Ran very very close to the shore as the race was big, could see Powerboat Asia in the distance, further out having a pretty rough ride.
Cut North into Poole bay up towards Hengistbury, coming to North Head almost from due West, Powerboat Asia lurking up, closer and closer. She's bigger than us, in the A class but actually no faster.
Turned into the Solent hoping for some calm, very close in the Hurst Castle, about 20-30 metres, off the groynes, to try to miss the rough stuff.
Trimmed her out and went for it, at one stage we were 2nd then 1st, then 2nd, a couple of really hairy moment on washes at nearly 90 knots, but we bit the bullet and won by 8 seconds, after over 3 hours of racing. All a bit close but a terrific win.
So all 3 of us are now multiple winners and the boat has won 5 or 6 times, (no one actually knows as Della Valle had a few hulls to play with).
Great weekend of racing, organised by the BPRC with very little sponsorship budget, in a tough economic climate.
For the race to continue a new, ideally longer term, title sponsor is needed, its not a lot, so do enquire !
Very fortunate indeed to be part of a great team, in a classic boat.
Back at work now nursing the blisters and bruises, but so worth it !
 
Nice one :)

We watched you all go past from Fort Victoria - waddaracket!! ;)
Going by the timescales - by the time you were rounding the buoys in Torquay we were watching the Lifeboat antics in Freshwater Bay with a coffee and icecream :)
I think we must've heard you come back through Hurst and past Yarmouth just as we were getting back to the boat - just before the heavens opened ... good timing ! :)

Managed to get a few pics - but a) didn't have the big camera and b) we were quite far away really ...
 
Pennpromo said:
henryf said:
A little bit of video footage from the wet pits yesterday.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGnDi3ioKfU&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Henry you should have come to say hello, I was sitting there, SIMON
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The trouble is I never know who anyone is, hence my "where are you now thread" so people can arrange to meet up!

I had a good chat with a lovely bloke towards the end of Friday, he was tinkering with the boat, short hair blonde / ginger, was in Barry The Badger's boat "Bandit" for one of his races, possibly round Britain. Talked me through the boat in a bit of detail and brought me up to speed in terms of controls etc.

Your main man is a really nice guy. I had a quick chat after the race and he talked me through the race. The coolest memory from the weekend........

Sunday lunch, you lot took he boat out for a quick spin, probably to go for a spot of lunch. No overalls, helmets etc, just out for a Sunday potter like any other boat on the Solent. Reminds me of a time my co-driver and I were marooned in Zolder Belgium with no transport to get to the restaurant so I said we'll take the race car. Never intended to be driven on the road but it was either that or go hungry. We did get a slight ticking off from the authorities (it drew a little bit of a crowd and was, on reflection, a tiny bit on the noisy side.

On the plus side dinner was excellent with a couple of pints of Hoegaarden to wash it all down :)

Well done. A great achievement for a 30 year old banger :)

I was surprised how many of the P1 boats ran into difficulties. In principal a good idea. An off the shelf race boat, not silly money to buy, guaranteed to finish, looks the part, a healthy entry list, but it didn't inspire me to rush out and buy one!

Henry :)
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Oh, meant to add lovely to meet you Ben on number 333 (in the classic rally.

I'm thinking next year:

Race start across Cowes. Classic boys lining the route from the start to the Solent......

You can see my thinking. A great spectacle and everyone out on the Solent would know you were part of the organisers by virtue of the fact you are a bit different to all the other White boats out there.

Just a thought. I bet you could muster 30 boats as well.

Henry :)
 
This'll be you then,:D


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henryf - Did you know there is a car and plane section for the Round Britain race next June? www.rb12.com

Our weekends racing went like this:


The dust has settled (or should that be spray?) and we have sorted out what happened and what we need to do.

First of all well done to the winners and especially for Martin Lai who has struggled with that boat from the start.

We drove the boat up by water from Salcombe on the Friday afternoon and had a very uneventful journey. It was good to see the wet pits fairly full of boats when we got there.

The measurement certificate difficulties have continued but they will eventually be sorted out properly once Guy Child (thank you Nicky and Guy) has come down with his measurement certificate - should have called it the BananaShark Cougar - it would have been a lot easier!

Once we had made it down the Solent to the Muster area (glad we had a biggish boat it was choppy going down there!) it was race time and we were looking forward to the race - Jeremy Gibson on the wheel, Graham Lawton on the Throttles and I was navigating with Adrian Everett from E-Lites providing moral support in the fourth seat.

We had problems getting the boat on the plane - our new faster bigger props would not spin up in the lumpy conditions (fine in testing in the flat) meant being at least 5 minutes behind at the start - a navigational error by myself meant we headed off to the Needles Fairway buoy - I had changed everything on the plotter for the new course to two buoys but for some reason it still sent us the wrong way, my fault I should have checked it better.

We caught six boats by Portland and were trailing Jon and Nick by around six miles - when we were approaching Portland we caught a big swell and landed a bit on the side and we think this may have been the start of the end for the trim ram on the Starboard side - we also had an alarm going off but as all of the temperatures and pressures were good we decided to carry on taking it easy at first and increasing speed as we reached the more sheltered waters nearer Torbay. Another couple of awkward landings must have damaged the trim ram further resulting in a very impressive rooster for my wife watching us from Berry Head and a bit of a list to Port!

We were also suffering from a loss of power as we had been running pretty much on one tank and we were getting a little air into the fuel system - with the damage and fuel issues we decided to retire the boat in Torquay instead of the middle of Lyme Bay - we had the boat back at BananaShark and cleaned off by 6pm!

A big thank you go to all of the team and especially Kitten for all of the late nights and our sponsors E-Lites who made the boat look fantastic in the pits (and paid for the fuel and entries!).

We are pleased with the way the boat performed with only the second set of props we have tried - none of the problems are a long term issue - we will turn the rams upside down and look at the size of the skeg, do a little plumbing and we'll be ready for RB12 - see you all at the start!
 
henryf said:
Pennpromo said:
I had a good chat with a lovely bloke towards the end of Friday, he was tinkering with the boat, short hair blonde / ginger, was in Barry The Badger's boat "Bandit" for one of his races, possibly round Britain. Talked me through the boat in a bit of detail and brought me up to speed in terms of controls etc.
That would have been Max who is Eric's son.

Your main man is a really nice guy. I had a quick chat after the race and he talked me through the race.

MArkus is great, and so enthusiastic !

The coolest memory from the weekend........

Sunday lunch, you lot took he boat out for a quick spin, probably to go for a spot of lunch. No overalls, helmets etc, just out for a Sunday potter like any other boat on the Solent.

I think that was Monday lunchtime we had to take her back to Driver's Wharf, we ran back at about 50 knots, a great "wind in the hair" experience! I like your analagy with driving a racer on the road !

Well done. A great achievement for a 30 year old banger :) MArkus regards her in the same vain as you might a lightweight E Type racer, with lots of love, the whole patina of the boat is important to him, and we still have more work to do on that.

I was surprised how many of the P1 boats ran into difficulties. In principal a good idea. An off the shelf race boat, not silly money to buy, guaranteed to finish, looks the part, a healthy entry list, but it didn't inspire me to rush out and buy one!

A few of them broke their saddles which could be work for us, so I'm not complaining !

Glad you had a good weekend. SIMON
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jfm said:
Congratulations Simon! Nice job. I think I recognise that handle across your transom too :)
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Many thanks JFM, a really terrific days work, yes it has Oval handrails, actually very close replicas to the originals, re-made in aluminium Oval.
The boat has now won more times than Fabio Buzzi's mono so that's good enough for me!
Still nursing the bruises and blisters.
Hoping your big boat is still all you hoped that it would be !
We are planning a new 50+ ft mono for the Cowes- Monte Carlo in 2013, bigger and faster ...
 
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