Quote Originally Posted by gn7 View Post
The enduro is the hardest by far, and we have never done well in it compared to other classes, but well enough within the GNs too lock up the championships and that's was the main goal in two of them. Being in the points lead going into the enduro forces you to run it differently than you would if in 2nd. Circle boat racing, and GNs in particular is a chess game and that took 3-4 seasons to figure out.
Winning Burely the last 3 years we have gone 2010, 11 and 12 is big for any team. That place is tuff, and its hands down one of the best places we race. Traveling 2400 miles round trip and spending a week doing it, and coming home with the trophy and points beats losing there anytime. Burley is like the hinge point of the season. You need to come out of Burley with the points lead, or its a uphill battle. Biggest disappointment is having never won Long Beach, but we are working on that. Only place we have never won,
Most memorable aside from one race at Burley, the same year, with very similar results was a race that Shooter video'd at Puddingstone in April. This was the race that we served notice that you better bring your A game to Burley in June. At Burley we lapped the entire field twice in 20 laps, in this vid he only laps them once in 10. This was the race where I knew I had the motor program worked out and the boat worked out, and now we could go racing, finally.

I owe Shooter a THANK YOU for getting this on video. Its not cheap for Jerry to do this kind of stuff, and there is virtually no return on his time, and money. If Jerry had not shot this video, this would only be a memory, as would all the races he has video'd. Nobody shoots a boat race like Jerry does. He is the best at what he does because he understands the races. The vid concentrates a lot on my boat, but that's because Jerry was using two cameras, one on the lead boat, one on all the others, but he never edited the two together, and this is the raw footage from the lead boat camera.
Jerry shot a similar video the following year, but Bill held back and stayed on the same lap because we no longer needed to test the boat or engine like we did in this vid. This was an severe acid test of the whole deal, boat, motor and Bill.

This race is a restart of the race the 29 boat flipped in.


This the is the 1st lap of the race prior to the one above.
The first 2 boat you see are gn7 and Robbie Devine(the current leader in SS PS and K for 2013) in GN47 and the boat that flips is Danny Bells GN 29 with Mike Johnson driving. You have no idea how close Mike came to drowning in this flip. His life jacket got hung up in the boat rigging and he was going down with the boat. Luckily he kept his head and freed the jacket. If you watch the 2nd vid you see Mike is lose of the boat, but then the boat scoops him back up, It happens all the time, more times than you can imagine. its weird!!!!, Second to the last frame he is still in the boat under water, then you see him in the last frames when the rescue arrives. But before rescue gets there, Mike is under water and they have no clue where he is.



Enjoy reading your post gnu two thumbs up over here