Watch for P-94, the 2nd Cracker out of the Doidge Boat Works stable. Chuck will have his Cracker on the water during the 2008 season. The P-94 will have a Ford power plant.
COMING LIVE FROM BURLEY, IDAHO...
Saturday, June 28, 2008
We are at Burley and having a heck of a weekend! Arrived in Burley Wednesday night and immediately began to prepare for testing on Thursday.
Thursday was a full day of testing with everything starting out routine, testing props and set-ups and getting the boat faster & faster. Then we had a little accident with Gramp's slicing his finger with the grinder resulting in a trip to the emergency room at the end of the day. The big event of the day was a blown engine towards the completion of testing. Yep, a blown engine.....it overheated (probably a steam pocket) and a hole melted in the head. Top that off with Harry getting run over at least twice by the boat and dropping the rudder on his toe which is now black, no black & blue, just black. We thought that was it for the weekend! Then last Saturday afternoon things took a turn....
We sat out the Happy Hour Shoot Out on Friday as well as the heats of racing on Saturday. We put the boat on the beach for spectators to take pictures and talk to Danny and the crew throughout the day. But then around 5:00 Scott Schatz from the P-9 offered to put their spare engine in the P-21 for racing on Sunday. The crew immediately went to work tearing down our engine and preparing the boat to drop the P-9's engine in. Thanks to additional help from the P-9 crew, the use of Dave Rankin's engine winch and other volunteers, by about 11:00 pm our engine was out of the boat and the P-9 engine was sitting in it. They called it a day at that point and decided to come back early Sunday morning to complete the installation.
Sunday, June 29th
It is 8:00 Sunday morning and after working until about 11:30 last night the crew is back at the race course finishing up the engine installation. The engine change is almost complete and their shouldn't be any problems getting on the water today. We'll post results as soon as the day is complete. Wish us luck!
Oh what a day....the engine swap is complete and we even had a chance to run a couple of test laps. Some fine tuning is needed but we will be ready for race time.
Race time...we leave the pit area and our fans seem to be excited that we are back out on the water. Unfortunately, we are not able to complete the heat of racing, actually we only complete just over one lap when oil begins to blow everywhere. Afraid of damaging the P-9's engine, Danny shuts it off and we are towed in at the end of the race. After looking things over the crew finds that the engine is fine, it seems that excess oil overflowed out the tank and went everywhere, including all over Danny & Jennifer. We will be ready for the 2nd heat!
The 2nd heat was not successful either! this time the P-21 came out of the pits and thanked the fans for their support by tossing Frisbees from the boat onto shore. At the drop of the green flag we got a decent start but we were only able to complete about 2 laps before the oil pressure dropped. Dan reached up to shut off the engine and it shut off on it's own before he could hit the switch. Once we get home we will check to see if everything is okay in the P-9 engine and get to work on our engine to prepare for Long Beach in August.
Thank you to all of the fans at the Idaho Regatta and thank you to the Best Western Burley Inn!