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Despite the long
journey up this is one of the best events of the season. The
people are incredibly accommodating, the venue is beautiful and
where else would you get undercover pits? The downside of racing
in Scotland is the weather which is always a challenging part of
the event!
The Scottish Stockdale
Grand Prix hosted racing from a mixture of classes:
A huge variety of boats
could be seen in the pits.
The course for the event
comprises of laps around the islands of Great Cumbrae and Little
Cumbrae, which makes a change from the normal offshore racing. The
racing takes place near to the sea but within the River Clyde
between two coastlines. With the 2 islands in the middle of this
stretch of water the sea state changes very quickly and a
successful racer has to be able to adapt to changing conditions
very quickly.
For us the event started
at 4.30am on Friday morning. Mike was working in Chicago and was
flying directly into Glasgow. I had arrange to travel up with
another team and share driving with them. Unfortunately, bad luck
hit and their van broke down leaving me to tow up to Glasgow
alone.
Amazingly the journey only
took 8.5 hours with a couple of fuel stops and in general was a
bit of an adventure on my own! I picked Mike up enroute, we
passed scrutineering and were ready for a days racing.
The first race on Saturday
was the V24 National. Starting in sunshine it looked like a good
race was going to take place, one lap and 10 minutes later a
squall had come in reducing the visibility to less that 100 yards
and the race was curtailed, a huge disappointment for the teams.
An hour later it was our
turn. Whilst we hit heavy rain and high winds we didn’t have to
contend with any squalls until near the end of the race.
Sadly for us our F1 class
was depleted to only a few and we ended up in direct competition
with 4-litre Batboat Powertrucks driven by Mick Archer and
navigated by Colin Bower. This is a 90mph boat, so
the race was on!
The start was had us
heading South around Great Cumbrae. Despite what felt like a Force
6 the wind was blowing the course flat and the boat was travelling
very well. I looked across briefly to find Powertrucks alongside
us already, it was going to be a tough race.
We travelled a few miles
and then turned right between Little and Great Cumbrae. Here we
had a short leg of about 1.5 miles of initial beam see which was
getting bigger and bigger. The trick here was not to let your
speed drop or else you would hit every wave hard. We then turned a
Cardinal marker and headed North to continue around Great Cumbrae. Here
the sea state was effectively my least favourite, a big beam
sea. The first leg here was about 3-4 miles however later legs in
this sea had us travelling in these rough conditions for over 7
miles. If ever there was a way to get used to a beam sea this was
the occasion!
Fortunately, the next part
of the course was a lot flatter. Heading around the top of the
island and down towards the lap line we found flatter following
sea which took us towards the harbour. Along these legs we were
staying slightly ahead of Powertrucks but staying level with them
for the rougher legs.
Together we sped through
the lap line, Powertrucks half a boat ahead. We both headed out
onto a bigger lap.
Once again we had a nice
bit of flattish chop which suited our hull and we edged past Mick
Archer. By now the sea conditions were changing once again and the
bottom leg along the bottom of Great Cumbria had turned into a
fairly sizable head sea. You had to be focussed. Sadly the big
head sea turned into a bigger beam sea as we headed out on the 7
mile leg back North.
This was very hard going
and concentration was at an all time high as I had to focus hard
on the waves and Mike’s GPS had gone down ensuring that he was
very focussed on navigation! Going back to compass and chart was
good practice!
We turned the top of the
island and headed out towards the harbour. Then onto what was now
my favourite, a nice short lap around the island. Once again we
were level and then overtaking Powertrucks through the lap line
and storming ahead with Powertrucks on our tail. The funniest
thing here (although at the time it was not entertaining!) was
that we were both vying for the race line and despite the expanse
of water we were in, on occasions we were literally inches apart
with each navigator carefully watching the other boat to ensure we
didn't collide.
Once again we turn around
the bottom of Great Cumbrae and headed into the ever increasing
beam sea. Then I hit a big one which caught me off guard and for
some reason I could not get the same rhythm back again. Whilst I
could see Mick only a few seconds away I knew if I hung on I could
catch him on the last shorter lap where we had repeatedly been
faster on previous laps.
As we flew down the leg up
to the lap line it became increasingly apparent that a large
squall was approaching and the last mile and a half was torturous
as I slowly began to realise that if the weather was deteriorating
then the race would be curtailed and I would lose the advantage of
the last lap.
That last mile was
agonising, we were catching up with Mick and reaching some
significant speeds and every second we were gaining on him but it
just wasn’t enough and despite screaming at the boat until I was
hoarse, we got pipped to the post by mere seconds. So incredibly
frustrating …..however we had earned our National points for the
National and BIBOA championships (1st in class) and
that’s what had counted.
Mick finished 10 seconds
ahead of us with an average speed of 60mph.
The Formula 2 class also
faired well and despite the conditions no one retired.
Gareth Williams, and Jim
Fry in the F2 championship winning boat ‘Comfortably Numb’ got rid
of their bad luck by winning their class, their diesel inboard
making short work of the rough conditions and finishing with an
average speed of 55mph. They were closely followed by John
Puddifoot in Dragon’s Revenge and then 3rd place were
father and son team Andy and Mel Wilby. The petrol outboards
struggling in such rough seas, a result which was to be reversed
on the Sunday when the seas were calmer.
All in all the event was a
success and as usual, the conditions were challenging and the
social side fantastic. Looking forward to next year! |
