The Saturday was the first day for the ‘Honda’ boats, these races are a new series sponsored by Honda and for many of the guys racing this was their first time. The weather did them no favours and the wind blew up to between a Force 5-6 and the sea became rougher and rougher. I felt for the guys as they set off. Boats were being flung everywhere as the sea tossed them about like toys. Out of the nine boats that started only 2 completed the others retiring as the seas proved too much.
Sunday now loomed ever nearer, this race would be a huge challenge for me, my limited experience had never endured such rough sea and I was extremely nervous to say the least. We ensured before we left that night that the boat was near the craning area so that we would be first in the morning to ensure we were absolutely ready.
We were up the next morning very early and had moved the boat into position for craning before the crane driver had even got there! His face was a picture when he turned up to find a patient crew and prepared boat ready to be craned in… the race wasn’t until 2pm and it was only 8.45am! Successfully craned in we were ready. Just as well…the course, which had been planned weeks ago, was changed as the forecast showed gale force winds approaching. The course was shortened to 83 nautical miles and brought closer in shore. This left all the Co-drivers frantically amending their charts.
We then had several hours to spend. With time on our side we had a while to relax… yeh right! Our small moment of relaxation was spent watching a large pleasure boat for sightseers miss our precious boat in the marina by a cat’s whisker as the wind caught the stern and it drifted near the right wing of the boat. Daren and I stood helpless as we watched, if the boat had been hit then it would have been written off due to the size of the pleasure boat… a heart stopping moment!
Time was now getting nearer and we jumped into the boat, got ourselves ready and left the safe marina. I felt ready and the sea although rough, didn’t seem too bad. Then disaster struck…the intercoms went down. The intercoms are absolutely vital to enable me to follow navigational instructions and hear ‘encouragement’ from Daren. After some fiddling we managed to fix them so that I could at least hear Daren but he could not hear me, which in hindsight was a huge benefit to Daren!
So the race started, 45 boats in about 8 different classes facing 30 knot winds and 8 foot seas, all lined up and all thinking ‘what the hell are we doing here!’ Again I had a good start but then hit a particularly large wave and the boat launched like a rocket skyward and then proceeded to land hard on its left side. It then bounced over landing hard on the right. I thought we were about to be thrown from the boat and wondered what would happen if the boat came over! Unfortunately, this knocked the wind out of my sails (no pun intended!) and we lost some valuable time…my fault.
We were then on catch up, with every wave the boat was flung about and Daren and I were treated like rag dolls but with every moment my driving improved and we came out of each crashing wave more and more smoothly and losing less and less time. Once or twice we nose dived into a large wave but my experience has grown enough now to manage the boat and we survived each ‘stuff’ and continued to catch the field. We could see boats all around us doing spectacular things as all the teams struggled to drive through the viscous conditions.
By this time we were well underway and had got involved in some close races with other 2 litre boats. After two arduous laps we had overtaken several boats including the British Champion, ex Offshore 2000 champion and guys placed in the European and World Championships last year. We just now had to survive the race. By this time my arms were numb, my sides battered, Daren had bashed his arm badly and the handles he relies on to hold himself in had snapped and we still had another hour to go!
We carried on, encouraged by the helicopter filming the event that would swoop down every so often to film the boats. By this time several incidences had taken place. Max Walker with his large 4-litre Batboat had hooked and nearly overturned the boat while taking a corner bravely at 70mph, people had been chucked out of boats, an engine had all but fallen off another. Boats and people were falling apart all over the place!
We were now getting into the swing of the race and were relieved we were holding together. Any weakness at all in a boat in this kind of sea can cause a retirement. If it’s weak it’ll break and the boats get a huge hammering in these rough conditions. It is a huge compliment to Daren that the boat held together and we had no mechanical problems.
We finally dived to the finish just ahead of some of the RIB's fighting off hard some of the faster boats to finish 5th out of the 12 starters in my class and majority of the other boats in the other classes…well those that finished!
In summary, this was one of the toughest things I have ever done in my life. Nearly two hours of basically sitting on a roller coaster ride without being strapped in would be the only way of describing the race. Afterwards there was not one bone or muscle in either of our bodies that did not ache.
After the race though the work goes on and after the prize giving, tidying up and putting everything away including dropping off the boat in Poole, I finally went to bed at 2am that night, thoroughly exhausted but with additional points in the National Championships accumulating.