Hydroplane inaction
Posted Aug. 4, 2008 at 12:21 pm by Don WardAnother season of hydroplane racing has sadly come and gone and with it the annual opportunity to watch clips of old vintage thunderboat crashes spliced between soliloquies by Pat O’Day about how great the sport was fifty years ago.
As a Northwest native this writer loves the hydros. It’s one of those secret handshake deals we few remaining locals can use to show how we really belong here and you don't. Slo-mo-shun V, Hawaii Kai, Miss Bardahl. They’re secret passwords that are used to know who is really in the club.
With that said, yesterday’s Seafair Chevrolet Cup had to rate way down there in terms of being a wet squib.
For those of you who weren’t drunk and passed out by the time the final hydroplane heat ran, the U-37 Miss Beacon Plumbing, piloted by driver Jean Theoret was stripped of the checkered flag by being penalized on the start for being “off-plane”; i.e. being too slow on the start.
So instead of a classic finish with the U-1 Miss Elam Plus reeling in the “Freakin’” Beacon in a duel of dual rooster tails you had a four minute exhibition heat where the boat that won the race really didn’t.
Unlimited hydroplane racing has finally returned to the point of actually being competitive again now that the 800-pound gorilla of the Budweiser racing team is gone from the sport. And for the past two decades boat race watchers have been treated to the same sob story put out by the American Boat Racing Association bemoaning the fact that no one pays attention to the thunderboats anymore.
Here's a suggestion.
How about figuring out a different way to start your boat races? It’s an arcane, arbitrary and pedantic exercise which makes harness racing look space-age in terms of how drivers get off the starting block.
Boat drivers spend more time milling about in a circle, trying to cheat and get into the inside lane and jumping the starting flag than they ever do actually racing. Maybe a page needs to be taken from auto racing by introducing a "pace boat" to the racing scene.
Extra: Tracking down the root to this year’s lame Seafair Cup is tricky. The one thing that sticks out is the use green, “environmentally friendly” biofuels in the hydros. This is obviously an affront to King Neptune and pussified eco-conscious Seattleites risk his wrath at their own peril.
Topics: Glory Days
