Hi All,
We arrived at Boston airport Tuesday afternoon to be greeted by Mike Bontoft.... the old team back together travelled down that night to Providence and set up camp in the Marriott. Weds am & as we pulled up at Outerlimits we could see the boat.... wow. Tools out ...straight to work, there were a few Jobs left to do & we worked till 5 that night then 12... the next then 1am the night before the race..... Life never changes, the boat was ready to race but we were changing gearbox ratios.... adding GPS and just stuff that you need like cleats etc.
During the week the testing had gone well but the boat was tricky to get up & going, there was a special technique that worked but was slow, over the week we improved this from 50 seconds to 25 seconds with more to come in the next 2 weeks
Unfortunately a Hurricane then blew in & the planned test of 152 miles to Long Island was curtailed & we went by trailer.
Jan put the course in as I studied how to get this boat out of the marina with crash boxes
The fleet of 14 boats was reduced to a hardy 4 boats in the end due to the bad seas expected after the Hurricane & Tornado that had hit NY the night before.
We had a terrible start, the pace boat was only doing 45mph so we were up & down off plane 2/3 times... clearly in the US there is no muster so just as we came off plane the last time the Green flag went up & we were screwed, I tried to catch it but that made it worse so we had to stop.... go thru the sequence then go go go ....
The sea was about 1m going to 1.5m up Long Island Sound, we were cruising between 98 - 102mph, the ride is very smooth, when the heli came along side to flim, Dave stood up.... got his bag out of the pocket in the boat t- get his Video camera to film the heli.... all at over 100mph in 1.5m.... the boat just sits level
After 24 miles the boat slowed to 75mph & 1 engine was on the rev limiter, it was clear that we had lost something..... a prop ????, we discussed this for 2 miles & decided that we could not complete another 250 miles on three engines especially as another one had started to get hot with the extrat load.... we knew if we stopped the boat would never get up & going again... however we had to look so that was the end of the race, 2 hours later we were taken in to Oyster Bay by the local water Police who were fantastic.
This race will get bigger each year.... just check the course out.... we will be back..... the hospitality is second to none & a big shout must go out to Charlie McCarthey & Billy Frenz who even when everybody else let them down ploughed on & put a race on that will be there in 20 years...... this race is the new CTC of the USA
We learnt alot about the boat & have an improvement list as long as our arm
ATB
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