Ron P

Hello Race Fans,

Wow what a great time we all had in Ocean City Maryland this past weekend. Teams and fans that never went to Ocean City before were blown away by the venue. The town offers way too much fun and the logistics for the race are perfect. The pits are just inside the inlet and the racecourse runs in front of two and half miles of high rise beachfront hotels. This is one of those race sites where you can claim 200,000 people saw the race. I’m sure they all came away with the impression that OPA Racers are nuts. 34 boats registered, only nine finished. This was a brutal race.

On Saturday a soft westerly breeze made the ocean dead flat and fins from a large school of Dolphins were present just outside of the surf line. By Sunday morning the effects of Hurricane Florence could be felt. The outer wind bands were blowing a stiff wind from the East, which turned the water into a rough snotty mess. This wasn’t big water, it was rough water.

Wazzup stepped up to the P1 class by putting big power in the Super Vee and was the pre race favorite but the Wazzup motors overpowered a drive and they didn’t even finish a lap. The cats had their own difficulties. This was NOT cat water at all. Their engines kept going into guardian mode forcing the teams to stop and reset the engines every few laps. In the end it was.

Showtime
Pour it On
Traffic light

On the Chip ran a flawless race in the P2 class from wire to wire. This is a big boat with big JC Performance power and #6 drives. In a smaller Fountain with 525s and bravos, Strictly Business came in second while holding off the big-blown-#6-packing-Top-Gun of Xtreme Racing. Once this Cig burnt off some fuel it was flying. The whine of the blower actually overpowered the sound of the exhaust to people on the beach. It was a tight race with all three boats running to the end.

Buying the Freeze Frame Video will be worth the price of admission just to see this race.

On the Chip
Strictly Business
Xtreme Racing

In P3, the local favorite - Wanted stayed right with On The Chip for a few laps, then joined Wazzup in the infield. Hardway had a hard day too, eventually breaking, leaving the little outboard cat that was totally out of its element today to win at the survivable speed of 42mph.

Crime Pays
Wanted
Hardway

In the P4 class, it was another battle of attrition; USA Auctions in their Phantom held off the much larger Formulas and Scarabs. In the middle of the hunt was the old fox, Billy Martin on his maiden comeback race, with his son at the wheel of a twenty-year-old Cigarette. Bounty Hunter lasted until the end and took second place! It’s just amazing to have this legend from the Aronow era to be racing with OPA. Glad to have you aboard Billy!

USA Auctions.com
Bounty Hunter – The Original P4 - 51
Twin Screws

Someone had to finally beat Typhoon and it took the Jokers to do it. What a great battle. Typhoon got caught sleeping at the start and Joker started out with a nice lead. The entire 8-lap race we watched Typhoon gain ground on the leader. On the last front straight they swapped the lead four times but at the Start/Finish line, it was Joker by a nose. Great race guys! Xtras ran a consistent race behind the leaders and held it together until the end to take third. Panther was in the hunt for a while but after standing it up on it’s tail on too many times, a few thing decided to relocate themselves and ended their day.

Joker powerboats
Typhoon
Xtras

Not one of the P6 boats finished but geez what a show they put on while they ran. Every single person on the beach with a camera got a photo or two of Papa Duke flying twenty feet out of the water. It all came to an abrupt end when they busted the gas tank and several more internal items. Regardless they ran more laps than Not Guilty and the little Bat Boat looked more like a submarine half the time while it struggled around the course but still took a third.

Papa Dukes
Not guilty
Reindl Power boats

Check the results page on www.oparacing.com in a few days for the full results and updated point totals.

In a few days check out the helicopter photos on www.freezeframevideo.net. Jeff took a few hundred photos and you’ll be able to see all of them. He also filmed the race from the air and had a few on board cameras on the boats. Jeff says this was one of the best races to watch in years. You can order a DVD of the race from Freeze Frame Video.

Tim Sharkey took a few hundred photos from the Commander Hotel, you can get to them by clicking on the Photos/Videos button on www.oparacing.com.

There’s a lot of people that need to be thanked for their time and effort in bringing racing back to Ocean City, Rob Asner, Phil Houck, Will Lynch and Bill Purnell for reviving this great race site and getting the ball rolling again. The Sunset Marina for their fantastic location and run of the house tolerance of the mayhem. The US Coast Guard, Ocean City, Maryland for being so unbelievably helpful and deploying 17 (YES 17) boats to help keep our racers safe. This is an amazing number of waterborne assets for the Government to provide to us, we’ve never been treated like this, ANYWHERE. We can only say thank you, thank you, and thank you!

And finally, we need to say THANK YOU to the Volunteer captains that assembled out of nowhere. Just a friend of a friend, or a member of this email list or they saw it on OffshoreOnly.com. You came together and gave forth a great effort asking nothing in return. Thank you for towing our broken race boats back home and thank you for braving less than ideal conditions. It was a pleasure to work with all of you. We hope you had some fun along the way and will come back next year to do it all over again.

So long to Ocean City and now onto Cambridge!!!

OPA

louietherigger

Ditto!
And Ron, I would like to thank you.

See You in Cambridge,
Louie

AugiePensa

Yeah Ron, THANKS for ALWAYS taking the time to write all this stuff.