Fueling ops stop at airports when lightning is sighted within five miles of the airport.

Beckles,
We have OSS Board meeting this week and I'll bring up your questions ref. the schedule of the St. Pete races and our ideas of safety. Thanks for the support we hope to see you in St. Clair.

Ben Hedrick

Ben, thanks, I'm sure everyone will want to take a look at what happened ... just seems to me that it's always better to end up not running as long as you expected, in hindsight (which is 20/20 of course) there was no reason to schedule the second start at 3 pm if you were trying to fit three starts in before 5 pm.

Refueling the helicopters was not the issue, they were refueled and in the air for the start of Race 3 when the race was cancelled.

I think you would get less complaints about time between races if there was some other activity to use as a fill in. The unlimited hydros use other racing classes as fill in between heats, e.g., OPCs, Joisy Skiffs, Vintage hydros, etc.

Last year at St Pete they at least had the Supersports to fill in some time.

But, in my wanderings around the top of the pier (people close by and those in the restaurant) the majority of complaints centered on the distance from shore.

Just my $0.02

As Ben indicated, there were a lot of special rules, and we were happy to comply, no questions asked.

St. Pete is the lightning capital of the world, I am told, and we got a taste of it. During this afternoon, 4 persons were struck by lightning in the Tampa/St. Pete area. One of these persons was on a spectator boat out on the racecourse. According to the St. Pete Times, "a spokeswoman said the unidentified fan was in good condition."

We raced when the CG told us it was ok to race, and we scrubbed the last race when the CG told us that we had to.

Beckles,
Ok back to you reference some of the delays during Sunday’s race in St Pete. As I stated we had an OSS Board meeting (which was tonight) and this subject was discussed and here is some additional information.
Part of the delay was directed by the local medical/safety group insisting that the divers and safety crew stationed on the patrol boats were mandated to a required break onshore in the shade being that it was SOOOOOOOOOOO hot. With the patrol boats being so far out, on the 2004 revised St. Pete course, it just took a long time for these safety boats to get back to shore for this timeout & cool down period and then back out on the course. So this caused a delay that was unknown when we scheduled our racing time slots. But, as I stated before, it had to do with safety. And remember this, inconvenient or not we will follow our very stringent safety rules. I hope that helps.

Ben