Photo courtesy of speedonthewater.com
The first day of the Offshore at the Ozarks is in the books. Though starting with a great lead, M•CON experienced a broken camshaft in its port engine, bringing an early ending to day 1. Continue reading below to find out more about the race.
Book-ended between Offshore Powerboat Association events—one in the books and another three weeks from now—in Morehead City, N.C., the first day of the organization’s Offshore At The Ozarks-Cat Edition on the Lake of the Ozarks in Central Missouri proved two well-worn offshore racing maxims. First, slippery fast and uncommonly skilled are a tough combination to beat. Second, you can’t win if you don’t finish.
In the first race of the day, two of four Supercat-class teams—M-Con and Gone Again—took the green flag. SV Offshore briefly made it to the milling circle on the five-mile course but had to head back to the Camden on the Lake Resort docks with a steering issue. Also experiencing steering system problems, as well as a crash-box issue, Dependable Marine never left the docks.
That left M-Con, a Skater Powerboats 438 catamaran manned by owner/throttle-jockey Tyler Miller and driver Myrick Coil against replacement throttleman Billy Moore and driver Christian McCauley in Gone Again, and Skater 388 cat owned by Kenny Mungle. (As reported earlier today on speedonthewater.com, Mungle opted out of the cockpit with chronic back pain.)
Miller and Coil jumped to an early lead, which they quickly extended into a substantial lead over Moore and McCauley in the eight-lap contest. But with a few laps remaining, M-Con pulled to the center of course—a victim of a broken camshaft in its port engine. That left Gone Again as the only remaining Supercat, and the team went on to take the checkered flag.
“We are going to limp across the start line in the second race (for starting points),” Miller said. “Then we’ll pull engine and work through the night. Hopefully, we’ll be ready for tomorrow.”
[…]
With a hard-stop time of 4 p.m. on the event permit, delays earlier in the day forced the event organizers to shorten the second Supercat-class race to five laps. The M-Con, Gone Again and SV Offshore teams took the green flag for the contest, while Dependable Marine remained in the pits to continue to chase down its mechanical issues. (Throttleman Mark Kowalski said he expects the team’s 38-foot Skater to be ready for tomorrow’s race.)
Good to his word, M-Con’s Miller started the race on one engine—the objective being accumulating starting points.
“We somehow got it on plane with one engine to get it across the start-finish line to get the points,” Miller said, then laughed. “We got up to 51.8 mph.
“In three or four hours, we should have it ready to test with the spare engine installed,” he added.
— Click here to read complete and original article from speedonthewater.com —
Original article posted on speedonthewater.com
