Top 10 reasons why you didn't win

[joejohn44]

I got beat by my sister. twice....and rather badly, too.

[Stu Ford]

Stoped to check on my buddy when he barrelrolled on the backstretch at dayton

[joejohn44]

Stoped to check on my buddy when he barrelrolled on the backstretch at dayton

[trident]

Made a fuel of myself

Wakefield, forget which year. DSH. Thought I'd run my best Mk55 D stock motor on my very fast B&H Mod boat. Found a smoking setup... before the final, I'm checking everything. Gave the two little 3/8" screws on the carb caps a tweak, to be sure they're tight. Everything is good to go.

Got a decent start on outside, and I'm passing everybody, Caught and passed leader Maloof on the outside up the front straight on second lap and motored off into lead. Perfect conditions and I'm driving away from the field at the Nationals...

Motor coughed and died. Fuel in the back of the boat. That pressure cap on one carb 'cookie cuttered' the gasket! Tank is empty. For lack of a 25 cent gasket. I had spares, but Hey, they looked good.

I didn't look good on a tow rope, having thrown away the race.

Dumb.

Jerry

[rumleyfips]

Went to a surveyed 1 2/3 race near Montreal. Not many boats showed up so I ran a borrowed boat in ASH. We were running a bunch of classes and were busy. When I got out , the steering wheel wouldn't turn left: nobody checked.

I figured I would run down to the first turn on the outside and pull in. But: the boat was fast so I got up over the inside sponson and made it turn. I didn't win but I got a third with no steering.

John

[joejohn44]

one time I was running an inboard and my throttle stuck wide open while milling...I reached back and pulled the throttle closed...thought it was fixed...until the first turn...oh boy!!! I toggled the ignition switch and it allowed me to slow down enough to make the turn...did it every turn and by the last lap, I was getting pretty good at it...until the final corner..when I toggled the switch I sheared the prop shaft. I watched in horror as my best prop jumped up on the deck and spun its way the length of the boat and dropped off the front between the pickles....crap.

[Dave M]

True

This message is for Dave M.. A 2-bladed prop in first place is better
than a 3 in the bush.. LOL.. Sorry,, I hope you find the humor in this..

Thankfully the prop survived ! Did do a number on the gearcase though. I can't remember who was in turn boat, but they picked up the rest of the bush and brought it to shore for me to keep as a reminder. LOL !!

[raceboat61-S]

Springfield Lake, July 2010(I think?) I was running my Sorensen with the 25XS against a bunch of Yamato. I got a great start and held a good lead on the field for the whole race until the straightaway to the flag. I was in the back of the boat feeling pretty smug when a puff of wind and a little bitty wave lifted the nose when I was about 20 yards from the finish line. Boat reared up, came down crooked and hooked right into the starting line inside buoy! Obviously, I had to finish the lap to have struck the buoy...shoulda' won, right? Nope, rule book says if you dislodge or destroy a buoy you are DQ'd. Jack Brewster, was the referee. He and I still laugh about it. Mike Raceboat 61-S

[Brian10s]

Years ago when I was young and stupid (as opposed to old and stupid), I did the following to not win:

86 or so - Took a roll up runabout in KG Mod out at Zanesville OH(on the river - very narrow) to make the 3rd boat. It ran great down the straights, but I spun out every turn (all 6 times). But managed to stay in the boat and keep the motor running. And that was the end of my rollup runabout career.

90 or so - put a 25 Merc Mod motor on the back of an A Hydro. Dad said it would never work and I was going to go swimming. I did not go swimming but only made 1 lap - everytime I squeezed the throttle, the whole boat jumped out the water and hooked. I was told it looked like I was riding a bronco instead of a race boat.


03 or so - put a 102 Mod motor on the back of my C Stock boat at Sharptown, MD. Once again my Dad said it might not be the best idea. Ran great in a straight line on glass water. A fish jumped in the first turn and I barrel rolled. But it was blazing fast for 1 straightaway.

Comman thread in all of these - sometimes a racer forgets his brain at home when he is packing.

[master oil racing]

Several come to mind right away, but I don't know what order they should be, so just random. Probably the first one is the most ridiculous funny one.

1. When Konig first introduced the 4 cylinder rotary valve Konigs, my Dad Baldy bought a D for me and a C for Clayton Elmer. We did not use the standard Konig coils. Jack Chance mounted some compact coils on the boss of the block where the serial number is stamped. He mounted coils on both motors before restamping the class on the block as required. Somehow he got mixed up and stamped Clayton's C with D stamp and vice versa with my D. We broke the motors in at our first event with them, and had no test time. After the races Baldy told Jack "Don't touch Clayton's motor, but Wayne's is a dog, you need to go through it".

At the Neches River Festival in Beaumont one year there had been a big flood upriver and a lot of debris was coming down. It was a heat of C runabout and I was racing against the likes of Clayton Elmer, Bruce Nicholson, P.G. Stepleton, Charlie Bailey, Artie Lund and a couple more hotshot Texas runabout drivers. Everyone jumped the gun but me. All I had to do was finish. As I went down the back straight, all the drivers made it past a 16 foot 2 X 12 that had been floating longways down the river. Just before I got to it, the board turned sideways and I had no place to go. I hit it dead center and the impact pulled the thrust mount bolts through the transom and I hung on for dear life as the motor kicked up and revved. With no steering the DeSilva turned right and hit the river embankment. Luckily for two reasons I wasn't hurt. I was only going about fifty because of water conditions when I hit the board and that slowed me down. And the river was up about two or three feet so that when I hit the embankment, the ground level was only about six inches higher and I rolled across the bow and about ten feet up into the forest without hitting a tree.

3. I pulled out of the pits in B hydro looking back for the water to start shooting out of the can on our B Konig. No water, no water....no water. I went as far as I could until I decided I better shut off the motor before I fry it. After being towed back to the pits we took the red rubber hose going from the top of the head into the exhaust can and discovered a mud dauber had laid a single egg up inside it. That was when we switched over to clear plastic tubing.

4. It was the start of the first heat of A hydro World Championships at Alexandria, Louisiana. Tim Butts was unable to get his high ported Konig on a plane during elimination heats, and as defending champion, I was already in. Tim loaned me his boat, and it was the first A/B Aerowing I ever drove. I got squeezed out at the starting line and spray from boats on either side caused the Aerowing to climb to the sky. Unbelievably, it came back down, and I got solid on the throttle before the sponsons slapped back down, then I took off. On lap two I went into the first turn hot, passing Bob Murphy, but the outside sponson hit a hole and dug. I spilled out over the deck, but I kept a death grip on the steering wheel. The boat started to spin, but when I fell out, it also straighted the wheel. I slapped the back of the water with my Gentex and it caused me to rebound up in the air and stretched out my right arm's length, I found the cockpit to be directly below me. I landed back in the boat, took off again and ended up finishing second. However, when my boat started to spin, it was less than a boat length in front of Bob and so I was tossed out for violation of the overlap rule. I was in and out of the boat so fast, no one saw it, but it wouldn't have made any difference because of the rule. When I got back to the pits I told my Dad "I fell out of the boat". He said "What do you mean you fell out? You're right here". I said come take a look. We walked over to the right side, I grabbed the steering wheel, then laid my arm in the "U" slot that my arm made in the thin wood on the cowling that was cut when I flopped out.

5. 1977 Western Divisionals at Fort Worth. I was out of position when the one minute gun fired in D hydro so I took a long trip out into the boonies to scrub off time. I normally started on the inside, but this time I chose the outside. Swinging wide about a hundred yards down toward the course from me was Tom Berry. I had already straightened out and was boring down over 100. It was now time for Tom to get straight but he was still swinging wide. He never looked over his shoulder. It was too late for me to turn left, so I had gotten off the throttle and easing to the right as much as I thought I could get away with. Had Tom started his turn a couple of seconds earlier, we would not have touched, but he didn't and my left sponson went across his bow pulling my turn fin up. We were only going about seventy five or eighty then, but it was quite a surprise to Tom. The angle I would have had to take to clear to the left of Tom would have put me in an angle crossing into some of the other starters, but it all worked out that nobody got hurt. So after making a late start, I tried a couple of times to push the fin back down, but I couldn't. Since I was in the back of the pack and the water was excellent for racing I decided to stay out there and take the corners outside of everyone else. After the first lap, I kindof got the hang of sliding my Aerowing around the turns. It wasn't a complete broadside, but the tail did skid out, and I found it controlled fairly easily. It was a four lap mile and a quarter course. By the last lap I had moved into second, and Steve Jones was in the lead. He kept swinging wide in the turns and I was always taking the outside. By the time we got to the final turn, we were both way ahead of the field and Steve seemed like almost a football field from the pins. This time I ducked inside, and I had better acceleration than Steve. What I had'nt experienced was the effect of crossing the wake. With no fin, my only controll was the lower unit. My sponsons sucessfully crossed both wakes, but when the prop was lifted by the outside wake, it lost enough grip that without the fin to stabilize the boat, my Butts swapped ends. Like Dave M in the earlier post that ran into the bush, my boat swapped ends and I was going as fast backwards as I was forward. I was slung over the cowling by centrifugal force. I went straight backwards for about fifty or sixty feet then the transom came down and caught the water. I was thrown out and the bow handle hammered my leg, putting a dent in it and a very deep bruise that lasted over a month.

[DtwSailor]

Stories

Love the stories guys, keep them coming!

[krazy karl]

Master Oil Racing had me laughing out loud. I read a couple of them to my wife and she said I let you race because of what?
kk

[Hydroglobe17J]

1. I was scared...........
2. I was mad at my girlfriend.
3. I didn't see the turn pin.
4. I didn't feel like racing today went for a ride.
5. I don't like racing Steve French....lol just kidding Steve Buddy!

[burl11]

I thought Maybe I was the Only One

My dad has a problem remembering to open the vent on his 102 gas cap. It happened like 5 times in one season.

Glad to hear others have done this. I forgot to check the vent on Y-80 in the 20 finals at Wakefield 2011.

Good thread, helps keep everything in perspective...

[raceboat61-S]

I was leading a 6 boat field of BMod Runabout at Springfield Lake (Ohio) just as I got to the finish line the boat slapped a wake from across the course, came up in the air and whacked the finish line buoy. Damaged? Dislodged? Who knows, but Jack Brewster DQ'd me for my stupid mistake. I argued that I must have finished the race or it would have been impossible to touch the buoy at all. Jack correctly reminded me that it doesn't matter when you hit the buoy even if it's on the way back to the pits!! Mike Raceboat 61-S