Chamberlain review -

It is windy in South Dakota!

Friday night:

The boat is in the pits but we’ve had a long two weeks getting here. The engine was in and seemingly set to go on July 3^rd. We test fired Thursday evening but something didn’t sound right so we came back the morning of the 4^th to look at things more closely. Took the valve cover off to check the gap and behold the push rod for 5 is sitting on top of the head – this is not good. The Black Dart has to come out and the Red Dart, freshly rebuilt, prepared to go in. Two long days later and I hit the road on July 6 to catch up with my wife and daughter who are in Billings, Montana by now.

Catch up with Megan and Bryn in Billings. We spend the night with family and then hit the road for a short family vacation on the way to Chamberlain. Day one we drive into North Dakota and tour Theodore Roosevelt national park. Day two we drive across North Dakota and then down to South Dakota, stopping at Lake Poinsett to camp for the evening. Day three we drive down to DeSmet and take the Laura Ingalls Wilder tour then drive over to Lake Thompson to camp for the night. Everything is pleasant, we walk on the beach, we barbeque a nice dinner and then the wind begins to blow. When we get up in the morning there are whitecaps on the lake and the waves are breaking three feet high onto the shore. When we get to Chamberlain and move into the pits the pebbles are being catapulted with enough velocity to sandblast anything they impact. This does not bode well for racing in 12 hours.

Saturday night:

We didn’t get off the trailer. The wind blew 25+ knots all day long and silenced the entire fleet.

Sunday night:

Things did improve and we were able to race. Although we didn’t get off to a great start. In our first heat the oil pressure sensor came unplugged and it appeared that we had lost all oil pressure, so I shut down. Fortunately this was not the case and we merely had to reconnect everything before the next heat. Things still weren’t right though – in our next heat we simply couldn’t build rpm. This left us with only 225 points and a great deal of ground to make up if we wanted to appear in the final. A great deal of thrashing by the crew and we went out for the BMain. The boat still wasn’t where we needed it to be, but due to violations by the first two boats across the finish line we ended up first and advanced to the final. After a bit more work we crossed our fingers and went out. The boat was better but still only about 90% - finished fourth. After the start to the season we’d endured this was at least progress.