|
Sean and Smitty,
Thank you for your help and input!! Its guys like you that make me proud to be a Offshore Boat Racer. If I can do anything to help please let me know!!! Smitty, We plan on hitting a couple of your races this year, I know I said that last year, but it just didn't work out. This year I will make it happen!! Afterall it was the OPA that caught my attention and drew me back to racing instead of watching!!! |
Smitty,
Thanks for chiming in and clarifying how OPA is able to do away with entry fees. OPA has a great business plan and it seems to be working well. Plus, we do need to consider JC's business plan (i.e. for profit) is much different than OPA's. Since I don't want to focus on entry fees just yet, I'll go back to discussing the speeds. I like the idea that OPA runs the boats, I've always supported that idea. But just as you mention, the focus in SBI is not the P classes, so our inspectors are more focused on the spec classes (as they should be). And I agree, OPA has the north covered while SBI has the south and I know guys stick more to the proximity of races, it's not that we refuse to race with each other. I'm also glad to hear you and JC continue to have a great relationship, because if we're ever going to align the "P" class rules, it's going to take the leadership of both organizations to do it. So here's why I think you "Kings" need to take the lead, and I'm sure I'm gonna upset some SBI and OPA team owners with these comments. The problem is not all the owners are going to agree and the debate on changing the speeds, or better yet, aligning the rules, could continue to rage on until we end up doing nothing. If the Kings said "we're going to align the rules and have only one set of rules; owners figure it out or you won't race until you do", I bet folks would start figuring out what we need to do to align the rules. Of course, that's an extreme example I use, but I really believe because most of us are happy with where and who we race with, we'll be resistant to change. We've seen examples of it in this post and examples in the post on the OPA forum. Personally, I recommended the old ABPA speeds because they are not OPA's speeds nor are they SBI's, and everyone will have to adapt, again, not favoring any one organization. I do believe in the prop calc and running the boats to ensure they're in the right class. We know break-outs will always occur, but the answer should not be to increase the speeds to accomodate the boats, but put the boats in the right class (or as Trent usually says, build a boat for a class, not a class for a boat). I'll be the first SBI guy to say I'd be happy to adopt the OPA rules in SBI if that would help align the rules. But I'd rather see the speeds lowered just a bit so we'd have the 5 classes instead of the 6 you have in OPA. I do believe we need to have less classes with more boats, while at the same time, the boats need to be a equally matched as possible for that deck-to-deck racing we all love....whether on or off the race course. I would like to start working on rule change "proposals" sooner than later. That way when OPA's 3 year anniversary is here, we can have a standardized set of rules implemented for all the "P" classes. Of course, that's if I was the "King". I'll take any suggestion, as I think will Brad, on which way we should proceed toward standardizing the rules. Sean |
Originally Posted by Wazzup Racing
(Post 2042623)
Ok, you caught me. I have to say, the board is loaded with some great debates. This is the first time I have really enjoyed reading this forum. Congratulations to all of you. It shows how serious you all are about this sport of ours. Most of what is going on is productive. You know, I thank you for the compliments in ref to OPA. Yes it is true the sites support us. However our budget is far below that of the other groups. How do you say, Shoestring. The problem we saw in Offshore was. You cant get the boats without the money, and you cant get the money without the boats. We decided the hell with the money, we need boats. Thus out went the fees. With the increased boat counts, the money is coming much easier. Hence growth. Not in leaps and bounds, but steady. It has been the effort of many good people. The problem with OPA and SBI rules being different, lies with me. We were always aligned very closely with SBI. The fact that we only run the 6 classes, made it very important for us to get it right. SBI runs many more classes than we do, so the focus is not as strong on the P Class. In order to accomodate our teams changes were made on our end to the rules. We found many of the boats were very capable of running over their index, and capable of breaking out. To avoid having everyone sitting on their limiter all day, we bumped the speeds. And even at that we have to watch the boats very closely. I have to ask, I saw in the results from KW, a lot of breakouts. Leads me to believe your boats are faster than you think. In OPA, out of the entire season, we only had three breakouts, by less than 5 tenths of a mile per hour. Not only do we use the GPS, but the main tool is the prop calc, and limiter. We also run the boats. Either before or after the race. Any team can protest any boat, and we will run it. It has proven to be very competitive. I am sure we can work something out. I'll get on it. Sean, your ref to the KINGS, John and I have always had a great relationship. One that lasts even until this day. Rest assured neither one of us will stand between what the racers want. Bruce is right. The distance between the two organizations keeps the racers local. That was the plan. SBI always had the south covered, we wanted to bring back the north. Thanks to our dedicated teams we are back. I hope to race together, we have done it with the OSS, and it was great to see all the boats, and meet some great people. I know our guys had a blast. Looking forward to 07. Smitty
ps Smitty if you think your gonna stick us in px your probably gonna get us hurt. We will go though if the purple goes with us. . |
Let's dust this post off once again! OPA is coming to the big game in Key West!
Sean |
I rarely give opinions here cause i know that someone will come up with some negativity to throw at it, but I say SBI'ers should just ramp up to OPA's speed brackets, Lookin at the worlds a bunch of people broke out, so they would probably be close to perfectly setup for OPA speeds. Or they may need to ramp up the program a touch to keep up. I certainly wouldn't have a problem with ramping up a bit, going a few faster sounds like fun, however i would think you are asking a lot to have guys that are allready going fast to slow their boats down to meet SBI speeds. Plus OPA has "boat count" and fun from what i understand. So why would they want to and why would SBI'ers even ask them to change their allready great program. I beleive that JC has his stuff together just from what i read others saying about him. But aside from the world's in Key west '06 where a few extra boats came in, even the P classes are short on boats for each event. Don't get me wrong i think the P boats are where the competition is and the fun, but when one team or another can't make a race here and there it ends up spotty as too who is going to each venue, and what are the reasons for going if there is not going to be some competition. A guy can drive around in long rectangles at his or her home town lake by oneself and save a bunch of money instead of getting in a race with himself in some distant citys race site. That's just my opinion, i have some good points i believe, however I am sure the negativical, non racing computer vultures will start to pick it apart leaving the standard OSO carcass of a post to rot on this thread.
|
So lets say we go down a couple MPH and you guys come up a couple. Dont get too wound up. This will be easy to adjust, mainly because we all want to race together. smitty
|
Bilgerat,
Okay...good points. But my proposal is that we need to meet in the middle on the rules. If we don't and only favor one group or the other, I can just about guarantee we're going to lose some folks. BTW...we've had a great time in SBI P5 this last year. Especially since our boats are very evenly matched and allowed us to race deck-to-deck. Sean |
Originally Posted by Wazzup Racing
(Post 2042623)
... We found many of the boats were very capable of running over their index, and capable of breaking out. To avoid having everyone sitting on their limiter all day, we bumped the speeds. ...
I hope this isn't a foolish question, but rather than bump up the speeds to accomodate the boats, why didn't you just move the fast boats up to the next speed bracket? |
Ok, Mark Henderson needs to jump in here, he created the changes we made last year. OPA had basically what you are running now, The addition of class 6 came about to separate the 24's which measure 23 something and smaller boats a place to race. These changes fixed a lot of problems up to class 1. It separates Factory 1 (class 5) Boats from Racing big Twin boats with lots of torque such as Augie's and other Factory 2 boats (Simmons Racing in class 4). It also separated the SuperVee's from the Cats but Mark or Smitty can explain. Currently you have registered in P4, Pitman Photo (canopy boat), Great Adventure (90mph cat) Konrad Fontian (twin engine33' boat) and Rum Runners (26 Scarab) all running in the same class. Tweaking the rules as we did made our boats competitive at all races, you didn't have boats competitive a flat water races or rough water races.
|
Eddie, Who's "SMUTTY"?
|
| All times are GMT -5. The time now is 10:09 AM. |
Copyright © 2026 MH Sub I, LLC dba Internet Brands. All rights reserved. Use of this site indicates your consent to the Terms of Use.