Having just attended the St. Clair race for about the 6th year, as well as about three times at Key West, New York, Metro Beach in MI and a few other venues, here are my observations.
While St Clair is one of the best venues it is till hard to see much of the race, this year they seemed to move the course even further from the shore line. I had binoculars and watched from the St Clair Inn, sadly the don't have speakers set up there so you can't hear the announcer so your really don't know what is going on. Even though I know many of the boats and have seen them up close, when they were racing there were times because of speed and distance that I could not figure out who all the boats were, it was just to hard to read the names and numbers and that was even with binoculars. Also we thought we had a good handle of who was in what class, yet it still was confusing, we often thought a boat was in last place and then would find out they were first in their class. Makes it hard if you are the type that like to cheer a boat on. I think most people find it confusing to watch a race where you have multiple races being run at the same time, this not something you get in boat racing. I also don't like races where they tell you how fast you can go and if you go faster by one mile for one second you get disqualified, can't there be some other fair way then setting speed limits, I thought a race was who ran the fastest, not who gets in a better turn position or doesn't break. If I did not have an interest in offshore boats as a hobby, attend poker runs, meet racers and friends through these web sites I really can not imagine just attending the race because I like watching the boats go around the course. If you ask me if I like going to the boat races I would say yes but it is because of the whole package, the party atmosphere, meeting up with friends in the dry pits, meeting people face to face that you know from the web sites, being outside on a sunny day and enjoying a beverage while watching the race.
:seeya:
