Double Trouble’s crew spent the days before the Cowes Torquay Cowes fixing a sheared supercharger belt spline, the replacement part arriving from America via a chain of favours that closed with hours to spare before racing begins on Sunday.
Chris Davies was at Cowes Yacht Haven as Gary Aldington and Anton Modin’s Class 1 team turned the engine around in time for the 181-nautical-mile race to Torquay and back.
What went wrong: Supercharger belt spline sheared during Wednesday testing on the River Itchen.
The fix: A replacement part, sourced through Cade in America, flown to New Jersey and hand-carried to Cowes by a DJ attending Rob Lockyer’s pre-race party on Friday night.
Status: Fitted and ready. Double Trouble runs race number 1-88 in Class 1 on Sunday.
Chris Davies, at Cowes:
We were out testing on Wednesday and it had gone well. As we were coming back up the River Itchen an engine made a noise that mechanics don’t like to hear. At first I thought it was an expensive noise, but it was the spline on the supercharger belt that had sheared. We’ve been working with Cade and they had one on the shelf in America. So they sent it to New Jersey, and the DJ, that was at Rob Lockyer’s pre-race party last night brought it over with him and gave it to us yesterday. It’s now in the boat and we are good to go. We spoke to them late on Wednesday and it was here on Friday.
In a way it was best time for that to happen. We got the test in, and then it broke then, that’s fine. Well, we don’t want these issues on race day.
Short Course or Long Course
The Cowes Torquay Cowes route runs 181 nautical miles round trip to Torbay, weather permitting. Organisers can shorten the course if conditions in Lyme Bay are too rough, and Davies says the tactics, and the boat itself, would change if that happens.
I would always love to run the long course, but it’s very easy to say that now but when you’re in the middle of Lyme Bay sat in eight foot rollers trying hard to keep it on the plane, you’d probably then reconsider what you thought was a good idea.
Running the short course will [change] tactics completely, and probably we would make some changes to the boat to run the short course, because, you know, we’re set up to run probably 20% less revs than we would, you know, normally, so that we’re not ringing the life out of the engines, but still getting the speed. Running the short course, I would probably set it up to let it sing, and because it’s not going to do the same amount of time. Plus you get better acceleration. And so that’s the difference really. It will still be gnarly, because if it’s rough enough to run the short course, you’re still going to take a beating. This is supposed to be the toughest powerboat race in the world. We don’t come here to run around Christchurch Bay, we’re here to run to Torquay and back, we don’t expect it to be easy and it shouldn’t be.
Double Trouble runs 1-88 in Class 1, the fastest class in Sunday’s race. The Cowes Torquay Cowes overall winner takes the Beaverbrook Trophy.
If it happened in powerboat racing during the last forty years the chances are that Chris Davies was there either photographing it or writing about it.
During that time, he has travelled the globe covering both offshore and circuit racing for series promotors, race teams, PR companies, and a whole raft of publications.
