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The Grand Prix of Malta

5th-6th May 2007

Grand Prix of Malta – Race 1

It’s hard to believe that 7 months have gone by since we raced in Portugal.  Testing over the winter has at times been frustrating as things have not always gone to plan. Suddenly it’s weeks not months away from the first Grand Prix of the season. Finding a sponsor has also proved to be difficult and as we speak we have not yet signed anyone to fill ARPRO’s place. 

Click here to see a short video of Extremeboat airborne whilst passing Wettpunkt in the big swells at the bottom of the island

P1 has also changed, new management, continued investment and a lot of new teams including high profile American factory teams means that P1 is really now a highly competitive international series. 

In SuperSport many of the same teams have new boats, including Hustler (previously Microlink), Hotel Roscioli (previously Oba Oba), Carpenter has a new boat, Sunseeker is in the for whole series and Chaudron have larger engines so from our perspective, coming into Malta we were starting afresh and we firmly had in our minds that we were only as good as our last race which had been some months ago!

Malta is a wonderful venue to race.  The scenery is fantastic, the people incredibly friendly and the sea conditions are challenging.

As usual Malta was its usual windy self.  Testing took place on Friday, on a shortened course.  A big mistake by me gave us one spectacular moment when I backed off coming into a very large wave, the boat went vertical landing on its transom and I really thought she would go over backwards.  Several teams saw what happened and promptly turned back into the harbour sensibly not willing to risk their vessels and themselves for the following day!  However nothing could have prepared us for Saturday’s conditions…..

Saturday dawned bright and sunny and very windy gusting to Force 5 and 6. The great thing about P1 is that they will continue to race until the conditions are very serious. Unfortunately the changing weather was making this decision very difficult.  We were not going to get away with an easy start to the season and the forecast was for it to get worse as the day went on.  So the decision was made to bring the race forward by one hour and run the round the island course first with some laps in front of the crowds in Sliema afterwards. SuperSport were to do four laps, Evolution 5.

Finally, the moment came and off we went to the muster area. I was strangely and uncharacteristically calm for me and whilst I looked at the sea all I could sea as far as the eye could see was white horses, I just had a good feeling for the race. 

Finally the start boat manoeuvred into position and the yellow flag was raised, we all got our boats on the plane and the green flag was dropped and we were off! 

We were going into a head sea which seemed quite large, maybe 2 metres I had the boat balanced and kept her fairly well glued to the sea to make sure she didn’t get too flighty and just floored it.  She took off and ran absolutely beautifully, not going out of shape and running perfectly level even in the rougher waters. 

We were now running with all the Evolution boats Giancarlo in OSG to our side, Fainplast to our other side and Kiton not coming up between us.  I could not quite believe it.  It was all too easy though to lose concentration and get excited.  We were both very calm and took the decision to back off slightly and let them go, we weren’t racing them and had no need to bash the boat to hell and risk losing the valuable ground we had gained.  So much as it went against our competitive spirit, we kept back.

It felt so good though, there we were just behind the Evolution boats and we weren’t even pushing that hard!

We were to find out later that Sun Lik Beer (Ocean Dragon) suffered steering failure at this point resulting in a 360 degree spin on the course which ripped off on trim tab and both drive legs! Both crew were ok, but Andreas did have some nasty looking bruised ribs!

We came between the two islands and it flattened out slightly into a beam sea. Although it looked innocuous the odd wave really pushed the boat about and I was working hard on keeping the boat in shape to stop us from losing any speed.  All I could think of was that the SuperSport boats must be close behind and we could not afford to back off for a moment, if we could go faster in these conditions then of course they could as well!

We continued for a few miles and started to come around the back of the island, there was absolutely no one in sight behind us and all we could see were the roosters of Wettpunkt.com, OSG, Outerlimits, Fainplast and the helicopter.  They were not far ahead at all.

But now the sea was getting rougher and rougher and the swell and waves were getting huge.  I don’t think I have ever seen anything like it, great walls of water which we were driving over at about 70mph it was just incredible.  The boat would jump from one crest to another and as long as I stayed in a rhythm and didn’t make a mistake we just continued in this fashion.  However, the world is not quite like that, whilst she was flying over many of the huge waves, I did get a few wrong and wow did that hurt.  On a couple of occasions the waves acted more of a launch pad for the next NASA moon mission than a racing environment.  We leapt clean off the top of one of the waves which must have been about 20 feet high and just fell, fell and fell before landing like a lump of concrete onto concrete.  Both Mike and I gasped and pain from the landing shot up our spines, this was agonising to say the least and we weren’t even half way around! 

I looked into the cabin and there was our door and door frame smashed on the floor, whilst the boat was holding together, some of the less important features like these were not!  The added incentive not to keep practising NASA launches was to prevent us breaking ourselves and the boat. 

Mike’s belief was that when I made these mistakes it was because I was bored, but it was very hard to keep as focussed as you needed to!  Well not for long, the waves just kept growing and growing and we started to catch up with the Evolution boats, flying past Outerlimits (who had stopped with a broken water pump), and then Wettpunkt, which just left OSG, Kiton and Fainplast ahead of us.  I could not believe how well we were going despite the door smashing around in the cabin and our backs going through hell on every hard landing!  The waves by now were reaching 6 metres in height, the biggest I think nearly everyone had raced in.  

Hustler later stopped at this point and one of their crew members had to be airlifted to hospital with a back injury. We later heard that Martin McDonald had suffered two damaged vertebrae, so we hope he recovers soon.

The secret I found was to be aggressive with the boat and whilst we were not going full throttle, you could not back off, the minute you did you were in for a harder ride and more flighty moments! 

We were now in amongst the fish farms and here it was really big and not always easy to read.  What was funny was that I could not always see the waves.  The bow of the boat was sometimes so high in the air negotiating the waves that I could not see anything oncoming.  So much so that after a while Mike would tell me when an extra large roller was coming our way enabling me to prepare the boat and not take a flyer.  Often Mike would ask me to follow the helicopter in the distance but I would struggle to see it, seeing only sky or sea more often than not!  By now, I was really having to feel the sea and what it was doing to the boat rather than react by sight.

We were now getting tired but we were catching the Evolution boats again.  Every wave I got wrong really hurt, our backs were getting sore from the constant pounding (thought to be a G force of 8-9 so you can imagine how that felt!). We continued on relentlessly and finally I could see the walls of Valletta harbour, we had made it around the island in third place overall, minutes ahead of both the SuperSports teams, Wettpunkt and others. 

By now all we had to do was complete 4 small laps of the course in front of the crowds.  Although they had warned us that if it was rough the race would be curtailed.  Whilst we had really enjoyed the trip around the island we had now had enough!  We were hoping that we were not going to break anything, we ached like hell and I really hoped that they would finish the race……..

But no! They continued so we had 4 laps to go, agony both physically and mentally!  The first lap was hell, because we were having to slow to turn the boat, the waves whilst not the height we had experienced around the island, were still around 15 feet high and it was hard to keep the boat from getting all out of shape.  When we did get it wrong it was really hurting. 

We were now racing Wettpunkt who had caught us up again as we had slowed to save the boat.  So blissfully unaware was I that we were in the top four overall I just wanted to shake them off and get then out of our way.  We chose to take Kiton on the safest part of the course (if you could call it that!) and then left Wettpunkt to go after OSG, I was not going to battle a 43 foot boat in seas like that when they weren’t even in the same class (but secretly I was itching to charge past them!) but what fools we would have been to have gone through that rough course and fallen at the last hurdle, it was worth keeping the brain engaged and not letting the red mist take over, hard though it was.

With both boats safely out of the way we continued onto the second lap, after going through the lap gate Mike screamed at me to go left and not right where the course was taking us.  I really thought the race had got to him and he was going barmy but did I was told, turning tightly around a Navy boat and taking a closer than usual look at the islands coastal hotels!  I then realised that Ocean Dragon was being towed in and they’d not seen us until too late and gone straight in front of us so avoiding action was the only choice. 

We surged on and continued our third lap, it was becoming more fun as we got into the swing of it.  Then the SuperSports boats were starting to join the laps with us having finished going around the island.  The new Chaudron 41, Hotel Roscioli Roma joined us on the course but we were so far ahead both teams knew we didn’t have to race each other so we chose to keep out of each others way.  However, one of the most memorable moments from the race was when we caught a following (surfing) wave whilst turning on one of the markers.  We must have been lifted 15 feet into the air and looking down you could actually see inside the Hotel Roscioli boat!  Quite amazing!

We took it very easy for those last four laps, just wanting to finish in one piece, which is exactly what happened.  We were delighted with the result, thanks to Race and Marine and his team the boat had stunningly held together with the only casualty being the cabin door!   

Whilst the sea was the biggest we had ever seen, I can honestly say it was one of the best races we have run.  It involved excellent navigation and wave spotting from Mike, teamwork in negotiating the large seas and a aggressive driving, all the ingredients that make offshore racing so spectacular…..and what helped us win the first Grand Prix of the year!

The results for SuperSports were as follows:

Grand Prix of Malta – Race 2

Sadly, Sunday had got worse and with 1-2 metre waves and an underlying swell of 5-6 metres there was no way a race could be run.  P1 were ingenious in deciding to run a time trial in the harbour and with the help of the authorities and the blessing of the drivers (who I think had all been hoping that a sensible decision would be made after three drivers were carted off to hospital following Saturday’s race!). 

Click here to see a short video of Extremeboat putting in the winning time for the SuperSport class

As it turns out, this change in plan proved to be a great success with the Maltese loving the action. It was amazing to see tens of thousands of people line the harbour walls, 5-6 deep.

The plan was to muster near the harbour wall. When your number was displayed from the committee boat you drove the boat outside of the harbour through a tiny gap in the wall (not my idea of fun with huge great waves with white crests crashing towards you!) come back in again via the main entrance and drive as fast as your props could carry you to the end of the harbour (and hope that you could stop at the end!). The atmosphere was electric as the crowds were given the chance to see top race boats going at full speed just metres from them. The sound reverberating around the harbour was quite something. Add to that a helicopter hovering above each boat, filming each run, it must have been quite something to see. 

So off we all went to the entrance of the harbour and took it in turns to run down. All the teams had set up for another round of rough water racing so all the boats were full of fuel and running rough water props designed for acceleration and punch in the water but not top end speed so none of us were expecting out boats to run fast least of all us!

First boat off was 07 VoomVoom. They drove through the small gap in the wall and then was gone for what seemed ages....had he had a problem, had he broken down. I think everyone was wondering what had happened to them, then they appeared through the entrance and off they went with a helicopter in hot pursuit.  Our number was displayed and off we went through the tiny gap in the harbour wall and were confronted by vicious seas... P1 had definitely made the right decision. No wonder it took VoomVoom so long to come back in again!

We shot through the main entrance off a huge following (surfing) wave. I let the boat settle and level itself and then trimmed her out as much as I dared trying to get the bow up and the speed with it.  Off we went flying down the harbour. She felt so lumbering though with all that weight and the wrong props. It actually was more difficult than it looked with the cross wind in the harbour really hitting the high side of the boat, a couple of times she felt like she wanted to side step to the left in the wind. 

As we came back up to do another run we were surprised that everyone was waving and shouting at us, ‘bizarre’ I thought.  Mike suggested we’d perhaps been the fastest in our class but I highly doubted it as she felt so lumbering. So we just continued on with another run, which ended in us chining badly as a cross wind caught us so our speed was not the best.  I was quite stunned to get back and find out we had won the time trial as well! Looks can be deceiving and the boat was obviously loving the Maltese waters and on a mission to beat everyone!

So all in all we had a stunning weekend, as they played the national anthem on the podium in front of several thousand people it was hard to believe that all that practising up and down Southampton water, all the worry that the boat would never get there, all the sleepless nights worrying about lack of sponsorship seemed to be worth it! It was a highly emotional moment for us all.

Without the team behind us we would not have made it and I have to mention Steve Causley from Race and Marine, our chief mechanic who had many a sleepless night and bumpy test ride in the boat to enable us to win first time out.

The results for SuperSports were as follows:

Click here to watch speed trial run (sorry, no sound).

For more video coverage from Malta, look on YouTube at Video1 and Video2

This was shortened due to the bad weather such that we did a full circumnavigation of the Island of Malta first, followed by 4 shortened laps of 3.3nm when we returned for a total race distance of 53.60 nautical miles

The only laid marks were the cardinal marks at the south end of the island designed to keep the boat out of the local fish farms!

The numbers in the black boxes show the bearing (direction) we have to race in.

The numbers in the brown circles show the direction we have to turn to at each laid mark, in terms of numbers on a clock face. So, the number 3 in the brown circle at the bottom right of the picture at Mark F means that we had to turn right to 3 o’clock.

The red arrows show the direction of the course which was clockwise for each of the laps and anti-clockwise for the course around the island.

The chequered box represents the lap line in front of Valletta Grand Harbour.