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

Alright pal I figured I could keep my shut but I'm on vacation and got a pretty good buzz kickin. I'll probably regret this but what ever. First of all OPA is hands down the best sanctioning body out of the three or four we keep talking about. We will follow Smitty Augie Ron and th e rest of the VOLUNTEERS where ever they go. As far as I'm concerned there is nothing wrong. We show up we race we laugh we drink we joke most of all we have fun. When it comes to competetion Smitty does what he thinks is right. I don't always agree but he's the boss and I believe in him. We pretty much cleaned up in p2 and most folks said that it was just cause the boat . well we built the boat within the rules for p2. We did not ask anybody else what they where running but there where at least 4 other boats of equal power and size. ( unleashed , extreme, wazzup when they got there nerve up ) ok sorry three. When Destin came we had to go to p1 . We where the only vee with 7 cat's of equal size or bigger. Yes some where underpowered like the orange boat that kicked our arses. I think I forgot my point thinking about that race. Anyway !! what's the problem if you can't afford the $500 to join our series you should not be racing. Everybody Is welcome come on down. We are jonesing to race those badass dudes from Predetor Dyin to race our friend joe sgro. Had a great time getting past by MOJO in cambrige. ( for one lap ) Gonna sabotage Jem so he can't beat us . Well again I'm not sure what's wrong? If you in this to become a star or make money forget it it's not gonna happen. Do it because you love it.


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

Smitty,
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"?