Rother Valley 9th-10th August 2003

Rother Valley is near Sheffield and forms part of park land with a number of lakes joined together, some are reserved for Bird watching others for sailing and "our" lake for powered water sports. The weather on Saturday was very hot with little wind. On the Sunday a little more wind but fine weather for most of the day.

Rother is mainly water. I was looking forward to seeing how the new lift engine performed on a water course. Sadly the thrust engine played up all weekend...... a very frustrating time that lead to no racing to speak of. Given that I wasn't in the races it seems that commentary is best forgone this time round and I will display photo's from the weekend instead.

The craft is in need of a total overhaul. The engine into its third season without being touched has simply given up. A full rebuild of both the engine and craft are needed. It seems likely that this work will not be done for the next race meeting so I fear that my racing for this season may be over.... we will see what the next few weeks bring.

	Nice photo of Dan Newton clipping a buoy. Dan and Conrad swapped craft a number of times during the weekend. At one point Conrad had numbers 2 and 12 on his craft. Items on the top of the duct are for on board video camera. Dan may not finish the rest of the season as he is bound for Russia !! He is taking up a position as service engineer for hovercrafts used by oil companies.
The Pintail craft produced some very close racing. No.2 has a two cylinder Rotax, all the others triples. Conrad offered to swap our 809 for a brand new 2 cylinder.... hmmm is that the final answer on the Rotax engine debate.
	Conrad had a busy weekend competing in Opens, F1 and 503 Won most of them too !
Dan Turnbull was not put off by a high speed roll on the lake. The craft seemed to suffer little, simply drying it out and fine tuning the blades got him back on the pace.
	This could have been very nasty... Luke's lift engine failed with his craft drifting into the racing line... I wouldn't fancy being bracketed by three F1's at full chat... Conrad driving Dan Newton's craft (yellow duct) went round the back of Luke, both Dan's wriggled round in front!
Denise ready with the radio if things were to go pear shaped..... needed to be.... this shot was taken seconds before the one above !! The shot below was a few seconds later when Conrad had got a flyer round Luke and managed to get inside Dan T The picture over to the right shows pretty much the same picture angle on another lap and another change of place. The racing was like that!

Video clips of the weekend are on the video page