San Diego review -

Thursday night:

The boat is in the pits after a long drive down from Seattle. We had to tear down the motor after Silverdale to discern what was causing the pistons to hit the spark plugs. Everything is back together now - and with an additional 40 horsepower. Looking forward to seeing what we can do.

Friday night:

We ran our fastest laps of the season. Five laps over 100mph with one lap over 105. Had severe rudder flutter in the third qualifying session and nearly tore the rudder assembly off the boat - but we’ve managed to shim the bushings and it appears that everything is tight now. Still have a bit of lift on the starboard sponson but we have some ideas that we’ll test in the morning. The weather is fantastic and the weekend is off to a great start.

Saturday night:

Add more power – find the next weak link. Went out in the morning to test a new air deflector, hoping to combat the starboard sponson lift. Went up the front straight without lifting and into turn 1. Everything felt good until the apex when we sheared the stub shaft and threw our prop 200 feet in the air out into north Mission Bay. Have located a machinist to fabricate a new stub shaft if we can find some stock on a Saturday away from our home port.

Sunday night:

No love in San Diego, none of the Unlimited teams had any broken parts that we could use and none of the three shops we left voice-mail at returned our call. We are spectators for the weekend. Nice weather and some of the best Unlimited boat racing heats I’ve seen in 15 or 20 years. With both the UL13 and UL-40 out the ULs were set for an 8 boat final but penalties and carnage took their toll and the deck to deck battle between the UL-1 and UL-72 ended when the UL-72 went dead in lap 2.

This was weekend that started on a high note for us but didn’t end as we had hoped and planned. When we get back to Seattle we’ll have a new stub shaft made and hopefully have put the mechanical gremlins and equipment failures behind use. My thanks to Dean, Jim, Christopher, Cody, Kathy and Donna – a long weekend away from home where we didn’t get to see any competitive action. We have one week before Port Angeles – here’s hoping the season finale bookends the way things started at Tastin N’ Racin..