Watergate Bay, Cornwall - 13th / 14th June 2009

Saturday
The day started with slightly overcast weather, with average-sized 3.5 foot swells rolling in. We had a short practice to make sure that the boat was running well, and to get us used to the surf conditions – but not too long to tire us out for the day!

As the tide went out, the swells increased to 5 foot by the end of the day, making for a difficult first leg of the King of the Surf competition.

In the heats, we managed to obtain a first position, two seconds, a third and a fourth place, putting us second on the grid for the final. After a slow start, where Chris wasn’t actually touching the floor on the difficult beach starts, we found ourselves in third place, fighting with our team mates Delta Jets for the rest of the race. We eventually crossed the line in third place, obtaining a bronze medal.




Sunday
Sunday’s surf started similarly to Saturday, but with a scorching sun shining down on us. The waves grew slightly quicker, however, so more of the races were spent in the 5 foot waves.


We decided to conserve our energy and miss out on practice, and this resulted in us obtaining two seconds, a third and a sixth. In the last heat, however, we were disqualified for apparently running over a marker buoy. If it wasn’t for the flag being wrapped around the propeller guard, we might have got away with it! This left it uncertain as to whether we would make it into the final or not.

We squeezed into 8th out of 9 boats for the final, lucky that other boats had made mistakes in the qualifiers too and we had good results to back us up.


We started the final and managed to get around some of the other racers going into the first buoy. We were up into 4th, when the boat in front made a mistake and we were side by side going along the beach front. However, we got nudged going into the first corner, and ended up facing the wrong way on track, slipping down the grid. Luckily, another boat flipped resulting in a restart to the final.

On the restart, we only had two laps remaining to make up the positions again. We finally went across the line in 4th, just missing out on 3rd place by a boat length.

We managed to achieve second place for the entire weekend, putting us in a good position for both the main championship and the King of the Surf championships.

'Team Lost Buoys'
Delta Jets finished just behind us on both days, resulting in a good stack of points towards the team championship.

Championships
At this current moment in time (after 4 days of racing) we are sitting in third in the championship, 5 points behind second.

Bournemouth, 30th & 31st May 2009

A Great Start to the 2009 Season

Saturday

The weather was fantastic, the warmest day of the year so far and the beach was crowded. The Zapcat racing provided the crowds with exciting entertainment.

After limited practice throughout the winter, we don't like getting cold!, we did very well in the heats achieving a couple of 4th places and three 3rd places, putting us in 4th place on the grid for the final.

After an exciting race and a good pit lap we came out in second place which we were able to hold onto until the end of the race giving us a silver medal.

The racing was incident free and the new organisers ZCR Ltd made the day go smoothly.

Sunday

Again, the weather was great and the beach was filled with thousands of holiday-makers and spectators.

We achieved two 4th places, two 3rd places and a win in the heats, putting us in 3rd place on the starting line for the final.

Despite doing deep water starts, we did not have the best start off the line and struggled to overtake any other teams throughout the entire final. The course has also been changed from Saturday and we were unable to take advantage of the pit lap to make up any places. We finished the final in 5th place.

At the present time, we are 3rd place in the entire championships, after the first weekend's racing.

Team Lost Buoys

For 2009, we have joined forces with Boat 09, Delta Jets / Marin Subsea, whose crew previously raced as the Huntzpill Boyz.

They started racing on Saturday in Division 2, as they had only completed two races in 2008, but won every heat and got a gold medal in the final, so they were moved straight up to Division 1 on Sunday.

Boat 09 acheived a 6th place, on Sunday in the Division 1 final. The team's combined points for the weekend puts us in 2nd place of the team championships.

Watergate Bay, Cornwall 18th & 19th September 2008

Watergate Bay, Cornwall
Our final weekend’s racing of the season and the forecast was good, with a bit of surf, to provide some action.

Friday
The weather was glorious, beautiful clear skies and sunshine, but a keen wind. The surf was about 4-5 feet – it didn’t look much from the beach, but as soon as the practise races started, we could see this was not going to be easy racing.

We had a couple of good heats on Friday, despite the races being restarted several times due to other teams flipping their boats and losing pilots / co-pilots, including the pilot of the No1 boat. Unfortunately, he was pretty badly injured and was out of the racing for the entire weekend. They managed to find a replacement pilot and were able to continue racing in a bid for the Championship.

The third heat was going well, when on one of the corners, we were caught out by one of the waves and were flipped over.



We were both rescued by the safety crew and taken to the beach, but we were concerned for the boat, as we needed to get it flipped back over as quickly as possibly, which in the end it did on its own, but seemed to be drifting towards Newquay.

We were supposed to be racing in the next division one heat, which only gave us one heat in which to get the engine wiped dry and running again. Unfortunately, we did not manage this, though we got the engine running quite quickly, so we were disqualified from 2 heats and put in doubt whether we would make it to the final. Our only hope, was that a lot of other teams had been put out of racing completely by their boats flipping. We did well in the final heat and fortunately managed to get into the final and succeeded in getting 4th place after starting in 8th position.

Saturday
Again, the weather was glorious and the surf was possibly a little higher, but the sets seemed to be more organised than Friday.

After spending some considerable time last night cleaning the engine out, we were keen to get out on the practise lap, to see if it was running as good as before. Everything was going well.

We stayed upright in all our heats, although Chris did come out on one heat. We gained some good positions in the heats and the boat had been performing well. We even managed a win in one of the heats.

We were successful in getting through to the final and had a starting position of 3rd place. Unfortunately, the start was straight into a set of big waves and we fell back to 4th place, behind the top 3 teams. We managed to stay in 4th throughout the race and finished in 4th place.

We were pleased with our results for the weekend, although it would have been nice to get a medal.

Despite a few problems at the start of the season and being relegated to Division 2 for a few races, which limited our points at the start, we finished the season in 7th place, out of 35 teams who entered the Championship.

Bournemouth 30th & 31st August 2008

Bournemouth
FINALLY WE HAVE GOT A MEDAL IN DIVISION ONE!! YEAH!!!!

Saturday 30th August 2008

This weekend started off with a nice warm sunny day today and the sea was quite calm, which made for some easier racing. Bournemouth beach was heaving, as the Zapcat racing formed part of the MoreBus Air Festival.

Our friends and family were also out in force, which gave us more enthusiasm and we appreciate them all coming to watch and support us.

We were doing well in the heats, achieving some good results. We had one bad heat, where Chris fell out of the boat (he seems to be getting a liking for the water, but this time he thought he would try some water-skiing, by managing to hold onto the side of the boat!), giving us a disqualification and we thought our chances of getting in the final were ruined.

We did manage to grab the 9th place in the finals and raced hard to successfully finish the race in 6th place.

Sunday 31st August 2008
Not such a nice day, weather-wise, but the sea remained calm.

We had another good day’s racing. In a couple of heats we managed to stay ahead of Boat 1, Pegasus Vortex, last year’s champions to achieve 1st place twice. We also had good rankings in the rest of the heats and no disqualifications, which resulted in a 3rd place starting position for the final.

The top 3 boats were in position 1, 2 and 4 and off the start line, we got squeezed back into 4th place by these teams. We knew the tactics of these three teams, who normally leave their pit laps until the last lap, so we decided to take our pit lap on the first lap and try to get some clear water to make up some time. Our plan worked and we managed to gain several places throughout the race and on the final lap, we were clear to race to the chequered flag and the three leading boats still had a pit lap to do. As we were going through the turns, we were watching the first two boats coming out of the pit lap, but we just managed to turn ahead of the third boat, snatching third position. We kept the power on and took the chequered flag in third place getting us a nice bronze medal.

We are aiming for gold at the next weekend’s racing on 18th and 19th September at Watergate Bay, Cornwall.

Round 9 & 10 - Littlehampton, West Sussex

Saturday 16th August 2008


We had an earlier start this weekend, to fit all the racing in before the tide turned and the sea disappeared. The day started off sunny, but a brisk wind made the sea a bit choppy and not as warm as the other weekends have been.



We had a good day’s racing. We got very good positions in the heats, including two 1st places and had a grid position of third for the final.

The tide was well on its way out by the time the finals took place and the course had to be moved before the race could begin. The marker buoys closest to the beach were in quite shallow water.

The final race was a bit of a struggle, as we were holding our position in third place going into the third lap, with the other teams closely following behind, we still had a pit lap to do and didn’t think we would come out in third. Unfortunately, a freak wave caught us and flipped the boat over, tossing us into the sea. I was floating around in the sea waiting for the rescue crews to come and pick us up and turn the boat back over, when Chris shouted to me that the sea was shallow enough to stand up in. So we righted the boat and were towed back to shore and spent the next hour or so clearing the water from the engine. Finally, she cranked over and roared back to life. We were disappointed not to have finished the final, but ready to try again on Sunday.

Sunday 17th August 2008
The day started brighter and warmer than yesterday, but the wind was stronger and the water was choppier.

It was a hard day racing and this was Chris’ first real experience of choppy conditions. We were coming in the top four places in the heats, until the last race when going round a buoy, Chris lost his grip and took another swim in the sea. Unfortunately, this meant we just missed out on a place in the final.

We are extremely pleased with the way the boat is performing and thrilled that we are able to keep up with the top three boats, which includes the champions from 2007. Unfortunately, we seem to have difficulties in keeping hold of everything into the final races.

We will be ready to race again at Bournemouth on 30th and 31st August 2008 and will be pushing even harder for those elusive medals.

Round 7 & 8 - Cromer, Norfolk

Our most successful weekend’s racing yet!!
The weather was glorious, mainly hot and sunny and nice calm seas. We were relieved, as we were anticipating the North Sea to be hard work. It was just like a resort on the English Riviera this weekend!

Saturday
Co-pilot, Chris has returned from his holiday in the Sun and is ready and raring to go again. We had some good clean heats but just missed out getting into the final, so had to settle for 9th place.

Sunday
More good racing. It was becoming much more competitive, due to seas being calm, the course which was set up with a chicane made for some close racing.

We were coming in second and third places in the heats, thanks to some advice given by one of the officials on Saturday evening. Unfortunately, early in the afternoon thick sea mist rolled in and we couldn’t see our hands in front of our faces, so racing was suspended, while the officials had a discussion on how we would continue. After some time, racing continued, despite the mist still lying low and some of the racing was a bit dicy. We earned a starting position of 4th in the final on Sunday and just missed out on a podium finish, but we were extremely happy with 4th place.

The league tables were completed yesterday and to our delight we came joint 6th overall for the entire weekend.

After a few weeks of practising in the boat, where we were not happy with how the engine was running, we finally think that the problems have been sorted out and are looking forward to the next weekend’s racing at Littlehampton.

Round 5 & 6 - Bournemouth

The weekend was tough. Despite clear skies, it was very blustery and the sea was very choppy – not ideal conditions for Zapcat racing.

We managed some good clean heats, and maintained our position in Division 1, but did not get into the finals, so we had to be satisfied with just adding some points and keeping our place, just above mid-point in the league tables.

We were fortunate to have a weekend without any incidents, but Ian still got his battering, due to rough sea conditions. His mind has now been made up that he will not get in a Zapcat again.

Many Thanks to Ian, for hanging in there for the entire weekend.