It seems to me that...Races Are Too Long
The truth is, boat racing isn't growing. In fact the numbers are going down, down and down.
What are the reasons that YOU see? What do you think might help?
My wife and I have been remoldeling a 1927 house since September. The neighbors came in and on a vacant lot built a house in three months. The old house had everything wrong with it. What we should have done is "SCRAPED" the old house and built a new one, but we didn't.
I see a parallel to the OLD HOUSE/NEW HOUSE and BOAT RACING AND CHANGE.....
I went to a boat race and worked the flags for FLIGHT ONE...I worked from 10 to 1:30, that was 1/4 of the race...After a 7 and a half hour race day.....(My kids called me and told me to come home for Father's Day)....It wasn't hard to head for home, but not because my kids called me.
I think STEP ONE: If you have a two day race, each day only gets HALF POINTS.
We are going to Chowchilla.....we have a new boat, four new engines, several new props....we have had NO TEST TIME....As Chad has just finished school...and where do you test a CAPSULED BOAT??????? So, we'll go to Chowchilla and race ALL DAY with half#$sed set ups, we'll be luck if we don't wreck the boat......Only to come back on Sunday and do the same thing....
Seems to me, I'd rather go to Chowchilla and test all day, Saturday.....at a leisure pace and be ready to race Sunday.....If the CLUB NEEDS MONEY, and I know they do....Charge a FLAT FEE for the weekend.
Figure the cost of the race, divide by the numbers of drivers, add 20 percent for the clud and charge EVER DRIVER and EQUAL AMOUNT or EVERY FAMILY...
Step three: (Step two was FLAT FEES)....Combine classes to have 12 boats in every start.
Step Four: Throw the clock away! RUN MODIFIED lEmANS STARTS. SlOWER CLASSES RUN MORE LAPS ON SHORTER COURSE...
Step Five: Pass an APBA RULE, that any race that runs longer than 5 hours, NO POINTS WILL BE AWARDED.......
There are so many good points here, so why are we not doing them?? Then you ask who?
Everyone here so far is very sensitive to what works and what doesn't work. This marine motor sport is now failing at an accellerated rate due to "introversion" within the sport itself, where it is eating itself for the gain or fewer and fewer still.
When I was a little kid, my parents like thousands of others went to the weekend boat races because it was a happening spectator sport. It sounded good, felt good, looked great and the sponsors and racers representatives made it that way, "through their spokesman" and through the execution of the events in very professional form with a big community involvment that parralleled the racers and the sponsors because they tied themselves into doing that good job because they had a honest committment to do so, all the way around! Long winded?? I had to be!
I think we all know why outboard manufacturers AKA Merc and OMC supported racing with engines and parts, was because it gave their products and their performances name recognition that translated into the bottom line and they believed that through racing, racing was testing their products that also helped with sales and that bottom line. We all got into this because it is a affordable motorsport for many and it above all was a spectator sport that fueled our competitive nature even more. For us there was no money it, save for expenses at times and the odd trophy and we never got into it for the most part for money but the glory in putting on a good competitive show that everyone enjoyed where the spin off effects were really up to those making it all so public and all so worth while to get to the bottom line.
Sure it can be and is to some a family thing but that is not the dominant reason most do, its all the rest that make it a SPECTATOR SPORT, FIRST & FOREMOST NO DIFFERENT THAN NASCAR IN TERMS OF ECONOMIES OF SCALE!!!!!!
The other remarkable thing I find in racing is the un-canny ability racers have to elect and have people represent them and their sports NOT IN THE BEST INTERESTS OF THE SPORT BUT THEIR OWN! These self centered people that racers elect with their own private agendas that do not have the best interests in the sport in mind ceaselessly have destroyed our sport. That is our fault as racers and no one else's. You don't elect some one to enhance their status through the politics of elevated position or their connection or history with some outboard manufacturer. You elect them to do the job of furthering with out eqivocation, the betterment the sport of power boat racing. If their agenda is anything else, better have a way of getting rid of them quick because the damage these types of people will wreck the sport for decades because those bad things are way easier to remember than any good anyone else does anywhere else!
If I sound like I have some axe to grind, score to settle, point to make for some reason, I sure do! I see my sport being wrecked by what I term as stupid, self centered idiots who have no business being elected to represent us where there is nothing running off but their big mouths and what they have to say is a fraud upon our sport for their own short term personal gain!
I may be from Canada that has some American roots by birth and by service to both countries where our sports take place or in many ways used to take place, but I am not going to stand by and watch our sport be decimated by charlatans with big mouths with medeocrity and fraud in mind dealing my chosen motor sport into the dirt. I can sure tell people why our sport has virtually died out in the Midwestern (N.D,S.D,Minn. & Man.) USA and here in Western Canada starting at the Ontario border going immediate west and the USA immediately south from here. These so called elected officers of our motorsport were in the majority self centered frauds! They defrauded sponsors, defrauded spectators, defrauded the events, defrauded other racers, defrauded the events status amongst events, lined their pockets at the expense of their own members and the clubs involved and did other clandestine and shamefull things that took years to uncover that made us here ashamned we ever got involved with such dishonesty and such low live medeocrity! The horrendous stain they made out of something good for everyone that year poisoned in the situation of racing anywhere as being "not in the pubic interest" because the public was being taken to the cleaners by elected officer of racers! Our racing community as a whole is being blamned wholey for the acts of the few and we in the racing community keep electing these turkeys because they got big mouths but few brains behind them those blathering lips!
I would sooner have some non-descript, grey flannel suited, mild mannered, moralistic low key slow talking bureacrat paid to represent us at the policy level to everyonse than some of the charlatans I see elected to important positions in our clubs and sanctioning bodies for all the wrong reasons, and, as a result of our clubs wanting to be properly represented at the policy levels of our sanctioning bodies with some level headness and in the best interests of furthering our sport. What we have now are hardly representative of the best interests of our sport! Our Sport Being The Kep Operative Words!
If it sounds like "I care", you bet I do!! What is happening now, is our own collective faults and I think it is going to get worse before we bottom out and stay there a while before we are going to see it turn around, but we are not there yet.
I have a dozen drivers in my area, with mulitples of equipment in different outboard classes that are not racing anymore because idiots and in this case none of the local drivers including me, destroyed the sport in the eyes of the sponsors, locations, the public, local governments and real good sponsors and all it took was one crowning glory incident! Seven years later we get through hard work "a second chance" and many of those same people poisoned that effort too, in order to cover their tracks with consistency the first fraudulent mess they made! "Dishonesty" and "other personal political agendas" has done more to kill our sport than you can imagine and without honesty, integrity and hard work to regain our spectator sport, we are going no where! Soon.
So when are we going to do the right thing for the sport in the sport's best interests?? Or are we going to cannibalize our sport through our own weakness until it dies out?? This is a wakeup call! Who is listening???