Memorial boat race in Finnland 2016

Joined
Jan 18, 2016
Location
Finland
Boat
Shakespeare Sportsman
#1
Hello!

We participated in MSSA 2016 (Memorial boat race) in lake Saimaa. The route went from Lappeenranta to Puumala and back, 140 km.
There were four classes, historic, "slow", fast and very fast. Departure time between classes was 15 minutes. Historic was our class and we participated with Chrysler Charger driven by my son and Shakespeare driven by me. My youngest son was my co-driver. We did not have any plotter.
There were 12 boats + 2 post - enrolled boats in our group. Plan was to be first monohull in Puumala including all boats. (Thats because of history class time advantage)
We felt that we mainly drive against little and popular racing monohull Argos. Everything went as planned when we drove to Puumala. Bihulls were far too fast, but we did have no difficulties to Shake Argos from our tail. As the matter of fact, we were lonely. (See video) In Puumala we took fuel and pay it when first other two monohulls came (Baja Hammer and Wellcraft Nova (fast class).
Return trip did not went as we planned. After start cats passed us. Then we noticed one of sprys stopped suddenly. One of cats spinned off at speed of 140 km/t. Pilot and copilot were scrambling water and boat was started to sink. There were three boats helping them when we arrived. Water surface was full of plywood, shoes and other stuff. Co pilot was ok, but pilot was not. My friend succeeded to lift pilot up to his Argo cat. But he was unable to drive with injured pilot. So we desided to move him to my boat. It was hard. He was bloody, because he had plastic in his face and his arm was broken. When we started with extra load, I noticed we had lost electrics! No trim! Driving was hard in waves because trim was jammed strongly positive.
During that mess, all the other boat had passed us, so there was no other boat at hand. In first (and only) channel we stopped. It was obvious that with injured man with broken hand, we were unable to continue. So we decided to call emergency. (We were far away from any road) But just then organizers big boat arrived. Couple of minutes later, came SAR (Fast rescue boat).
I was really pissed off with those big boats who did not stop. A lot of small boats did.
So we started huntig with taste of blood in our mouth... It was not merry journeying any more. We really took everything out from Mariner and Shake. We passed all slow class boat and most of fast class boats including three Yamarin 600 with Yammie 200-225, even one Marshan 19 and Phantom 21. In harbour we heard that cat pilot is ok in hospital and with good ride we felt really happy.
Ps. It was third time spin off for that cat during its 35 years long career.
We forget push play button when started. So video starts after first speed limit. (You can see other monohulls far behind)
 

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