Richland review -

Every have one of those days…

Saturday night:

Boat was running great in testing and to start the first heat - but things went bad heading up the backstretch on lap 2. We had planned to replace the fuel delivery system before Richland but ran out of time. This turned out to be a very costly omission. The UL-13 vapor locked and quit delivering fuel, boat shutdown on the backstretch and started to drift down course in the river current. This would have been unfortunate but not disastrous until the UL-929 lost its’ steering wheel in the turn and ran into us – parking on top of the UL-13 and trapping me in the cockpit.

Back at the dock we drained the water, cleaned up and blew the water out of the engine. After borrowing a header and putting in new oil we trailer fired and prepared for racing on Sunday.

Sunday night:

Things didn’t improve. Boat was running a bit rough in morning testing but appeared to be o.k. We made the start in Heat 3 and were running strong until the exit of turn 2 when I felt a vibration. Slowed down and moved into lane one but the vibration got worse and we had to shut down. The engine had detonated. Certainly didn’t help that it had gotten wet on Saturday.

Our weekend is over and what had looked to be a somewhat relaxed June just became anything but as we need to build two new engines and repair the boat to prepare for “The Gauntlet” in July and August.