March
15th, 2003
- Orewa - Kawau Island Longhaul
Round 5 NZ Inflatable Boat Championships
'0' '0' '0' Orewa
Three laps around Kawau Island - just over 200km
if you went from point to point, but most of the boats were looking
for flat water so they would have driven an extra few
kilometers. Although the chop out the back of Kawau was only a
metre or less, with a following wind and the odd set of big swells
coming through several boats literally drove into a brick wall. This
happened to ETA Ripples Kelvin & Kendall whilst fighting for the
lead during the last lap & they both exited the boat but were relieved
to see it had remained upright. Armour Linings Waz & Flash were
able to take the honor of first place with ETA Ripples still
managing to place 2nd.
Greg & Kevin in Waikato Sandblasting 2 were
running a little way behind in 3rd place, but dropped a carburetor
linkage & lost a few places on the last run home.
Tony and Jason Smith of GB Aquarius lost the guts of their gearbox (and
a prop borrowed from Greg for the day!) on lap 2 while running near
the top of the field and had to be towed in some 30km back to race
control. Thanks to Dave & Tama in Cooltech who
stopped to offer assistance.
For a while we lost Gavin & Ivan McCarthy in
Uniden - they broke their tiller arm and came home at half throttle
which must have felt like an eternity for them - I know because
watching the horizon for half an hour takes ages in itself!
Well done to new crew Phoenix Freight who showed good pace to finish
5th.
Judging by the limping bodies, blisters, raw
flesh, and several rather haggard looking crews, not to mention
broken gear our boys knew they got their monies worth today.
A big thank-you to the our marshal boats, two
sweeper boats, and officials who made life easy for me once again.
In the National standings, a change for the lead sees ETA Ripples in
1st with Waikato Sandblasting2 2nd and
Armour Linings 3rd and a veritable bun fight lower down
the list with very few points difference between them.
It's all going to come down to the wire in the big surf at Murawai
in 2 weeks time!
Alan Astrop
Race Director
