LONGHAUL.
The Longhaul course was laid in a long thin oblong off Maraetai Beach 15 laps
of 9.6km were planned but due to time restrictions had to be cut down to 12 laps. A strong North Easterly breeze building through out the morning brought the white
caps into play on the outer side of the course, giving the boats a four and half
kilometre run bashing into heavy chop.
Several boats would have been six meters and more off the water and to my surprise
no flipped boats but heard on the grapevine later, more than a few crews went
for a swim. Longhauls are HARD! Testing the endurance of the crews and their gear, a planned
race can give exceptional results, with a combination of tactics and practice
will see a team do well. What a test the day turned out to be broken gear and raw flesh all over the place,
I saw one crewmember with Duck Tape on his bleeding feet. Why would you inflicted this kind of pain on yourself, ask any Thundercat boat
racer and the answers would probably be “you obviously have not been in one of
these boats”.
The boats were going hard out with a first lap time of 9.25 minutes, the tide
wind and water conditions slowing the boats down to 11.50 minutes on the last
lap. Kelvin Kay and Paul Collins in the Bay of Plenty Finance Boat set eleven
out of the twelve fastest lap times, lapping some of the slower boats two thirds
of the way through the race. Takapuna Panel Beaters crew would have been gutted
after being second and third for most of the race only to have gear failure on
the tenth lap, finishing tenth overall, hard luck guys.
Another crew having a bad day was More FM losing all their gear over board on
the first leg and then running out of fuel on the last leg, lessons learned eh
Tony. Steve & Steve from PlumbQuick showed some late form putting there Trans Angulus
experience to good use and picking up a well deserved third place, then they were
seen to be partying hard for the rest of the afternoon. Five boats had to pull out because of broken gear, engine mounts and tiller arms
being the main problems. PCI Electrical would be pleased to have picked up a fourth place, as a rookie
team they are learning the ropes real quick.
With the racing all done and dusted we watched the big boats strut there stuff
doing an estimated 100mph on the water, this would not be for me, no thanks, I
will stick to Thundercats any day.
Thanks to the Northern Offshore Powerboat Club for hosting this event.
