BAY TO BAY RACE South Africa

Manos · 26 May 2004, 07:42

Hi guys,

Not very exciting photos but this is the story as I received it from Dirk Schlechter the Pilot and Andre Beuster the co-pilot of the OK FOODS Team and the FALCON F2 boat. May be I will get some action shots later on the day and post them.

COMMENTS FROM DIRKHope you and your family are well, here in SA things are very well and busy.
We went to Durban for that race BAY TO BAY and with a bit of bad luck it went very well.
Andre and Maruis jnr drove to Durban with the boat.
We went there very well prepared to go and break the overall record time set by Hennig Blaaw of 1h34,39s over a distance of 160km.(He was riding a Gemini with 2 x150hp motors.)
The morning of the race the whether was good light winds and small swells. We started and everything was going well we were running at speeds of 103km-108km with full fuel.
Then about 88km from the end my revs went up and my speed came down to 98km-101km,we stopped and Andre could not see anything at the prop he said all is fine.

I started the motor again and got going but it was not well we stopped again and I checked to fined a piece of the prop was busy coming of.
Then I said to him we have to just ride like that, we got to the beach in a time of 1h34,49s can you believe it we missed it with 10 seconds.

The next boat in was 34min after us. So on the 1 side it was nice got a lot of TV coverage and compliments on the boat.

COMMENTS FROM ANDRE We received a first place covering 160 km in 1 h 34 min missing the existing record by 10 seconds held by a 9 m Gemini with 2 x 150 hp motors . Notice the damage to the prop ...just sheered off - we did not hit anything