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Ovalfest 5
8th December 2013-12-09
Thunder Valley, BOP. By Tui.

Friday morning of the event deadline for entries, it looked like we might be about to cancel this event. As per the rest of the year, the entries then flooded in at the last minute to actually give us a total of about 14 ! So not a large event still but better than anticipated.
We suffered the bad weather build up in the week preceding the event, where the venue was flooded, and it was a matter of hoping the level would recede enough to reveal the markers buoys again !
A site visit the day before confirmed that while the lake was still well overfull, it had dropped enough for us to run the event.
We kicked off about half an hour late ( as you do !) and worked our way through the mixed heats, we were running depending on class, either 2 or 3 heats of the class, then moving to the next class, this gave all bit of a break in between to fix things up as necessary, or in Bens case to do yet another motor swap ! He was swapping out motors between the Open Gas and T1 races like a crazy fella !
A lot of the racing was quite close with some very good starts with all boats tightly grouped, at one stage a little too close where Brians mono gathered in a roostertail and blew sky high, flying into the wire start line and cart wheeling down the front straight, minor panic ensued as the rest bore down on the start / finish again, only to be warned at the last moment the start wire had been pulled down to water level, that could have made quite a mess, but all stopped in time, with the start line repaired the heat was restarted.
A nice BBQ lunch and a few cold drinks in the sweltering heat went down well.
A big thanks to Peter B with a freshly repaired knee for sitting in the “Thunder box” running IRMS and ably helped by Warren B most of the day certainly took some pressure off me, many thanks guys.
IRMS aint that hard after all aye !
The 2 Cat Scrap races were more of a Cat Crash derby, with only 2 boats finishing one heat and one in the other, having said that the first few laps of each heat was crazy hectic and great to watch !
A big thanks to all those that came along to support the event, and to the BOP crew who have worked tirelessly to develop the venue to where it is…expect even more for 2014 !
We rounded out the day with prize giving, results as follows:

Open Electric

1 P Anderson - 1900
2 P Botha - 1300

T1 Thunderboat

1 M McGovern - 1625
2 B Clarke - 1538
3 S Trott - 1169
4 D Baker - 950
5 J Turvey - 694
6 T Christiansen - 623
7 B Riddiford - 121

Open Petrol

1 B Clarke - 1369
2 M McGovern - 1350
3 M Kemps - 1325
4 D Baker - 1100
5 S Trott - 919
6 P Botha - 746
7 J Turvey - 425
8 B Hely - 400
9 B Riddiford - 350
10 T Christiansen - dnf

Cat Scrap

1 J Turvey - 800
2 M McGovern - 300