Pateroes

Well what a crappy weekend that turned out to be. And from that you should read, "it sucked immensely". Ok, I will start from the top. Friday, we get there, and at 6:30 pm it was a balmy 106. Yuck. Friday night it cooled to a chilly 82. Double yuck. Saturday temp wise I'm not sure what it hit, but in our camper, (where it was cool) hit 102. Sat night, not much better. I think we need to find an ac that works on 12 volt for these races where we don't have a power hook-up. So the weather was actually the better part of the weekend. As for the boat.....well that is a different story. Our first heat wasn't until almost 3 in the afternoon, and after being hot, sweaty, and cranky, that was a VERY long wait. So in the boat Jim goes, and then....sits. For a really long time. In the sun, black race suit, helmet, boots, you get the picture. So we are dumping water down his suit holding an umbrella over the cockpit, and feeling very sorry for him and all the other drivers sitting in the same position. The reason was the buoys wouldn't stay put. They kept floating down river. Soooo we finally get out, and being we were on a four minute gun, the boats are tooling (sp?) around the course. So we decide to do a timed run, just to get an idea of lap times and what not. Well we didn't get those times. In the front stretch, just before turn 1, the boat starts to overheat, shake like a 5.0 earthquake, and bounce in the back. Not normal. Ever. So of course he shuts off the boat, while drifting toward the shore of rocks. The race starts like normal, without us, and Jim gets to watch it go by. Finally get the boat towed into shore, and get to take a look at what happened. Unfortunately, we will never know what really happened, just get to see the effects, not cause. The prop, (we run a four blade) was toast. All blades were chewed down about 2 inches shorter than normal, the rudder, which also has a water pick up tube on it to cool the motor down, was toast. And sharp! The shaft, which runs from motor to prop, well, it was dangling. Some various other parts that are normally there weren't. So, basically what this means is that we were done for the weekend before we even started. We were passed in points last race by 2, now more by a few hundred. But not passed by any others, so we still hold 2ND, but this hurt not having this race included. So, we dropped off the rudder and a few other parts to be fixed this morning, and dropping off the shaft log this week. We then get to pull out the motor, put the old one back in until we get time to tear this one apart and make sure nothing was beat up in the process. Oh, and that prop? Remember me telling you we bought a new one a few weeks ago? Yep. That was the one! I will take a picture of it and post it for you soon. So we have 2 weeks to fix everything, and it should be done in plenty of time, so we will be at the next one. So there you have it, all the gory details of our crappy weekend! I hear we had a lovely thunderstorm on island Sat?! Sorry I missed it! I love them!