Lydd 1997

The course is in the shadow of a nuclear power station but is on an isolated stretch of coastline of the English Channel. The immediate area has more sheep per square mile than anywhere else in the World. The course is adjacent to a Kart race track and it was interesting to compare the uptight attitude of the Karters with laid back hovercrafters. The Karts were out practising at 7am on Sunday whilst it seemed that not one hovercrafter had stirred from his tent. Must have been the 3am party at the French visitors camp.

Practice :- For me, the practise session saw the left hand piston doing its usual trick of melting after 45 seconds of full power. Very frustrating and meant that the first race was off the menu. In fact it did the same trick on Sunday too after Dad renewed the piston, so no points for the weekend, along with Luke who was out of the country.

Race 1

Woody in persuit of Stephen before the engine frame failed. In the background is Mark Coles sand dune - see race 3. This race was interesting in every respect (for me as a spectator) it all seemed to begin as I had guessed with Stephen first and Woody trying to stay with him but from there everything went haywire.

Firstly Bridgewaters craft stopped just on the water by the second transition, I rushed to pull him to the bank and away from the racing line.From there I watched after instructing Simon the driver to bail some of the water out with his shoe (which was already wet) to make life easier on Ewan the owner and mechanic of the craft, because a wet engine isn't the nicest jobs to fix. Mark Coles then came around that same corner and took three catch netting posts out which were later hit again by another driver.

Then Woodys engine frame broke in 4 places and he stopped in the second or third lap on some gravel to let the teams mechanics (Team Slap) have a look and see whether they thought he should carry on which he did. The next lap Woody stopped not wanting to do any more damage to the craft and revs were down so he had a severe power loss and decided to call it quits for that race.

Race 2

The pictures below are of Stephen being helped out of the reeds by a marshall after he spun out finding the craft very difficult to handle as the steering system had failed. The second shot was taken about a minute later when he was doing 40mph across the lake heading for a small gap in the tree lined bank - still with no steering control over the craft - a USA reader E-mailed me some time ago saying that UK hovercrafters were wimps, I don't think so. Stephen using his body weight got the craft round to the chequered flag and overtook somebody on the way!!

With Woody in the paddock having the engine frame welded, Mark Coles won the race.

Race 3

Stephen Scotney was to win this race with Woody some distace behind in second position so the problems were not with this pair but with Mark Coles and Bridgewater..

Because of the strong breeze across the lake Bridgewater were ploughing in and Mark Coles was finding it difficult to negotiate the first transition onto land, sliding wide on the entrance to the corner and mounting the sand dune from various angles and heights. The final lap seemed to be the one where his line was OK but unfortunately he overcorrected for the cross wind and was too tight to the corner and carried straight on into the catch netting.

There was close racing with Mark managed to stay in front of Simon Oakley but at one point Simon managed to get close enough to clout Mark when he made a minor error again at the famous sand dune corner, this time he went a little wide and Simon overtook him on the inside but Mark regained the time lost and managed to re-overtake and he stayed there for the rest of the race.

Race 4 written by Simon Oakley

This race was particularly exciting because nearly everyone crashed out at some point. So the lights were red then green and we were off, Stephen Scotney was away first and then Mark Coles and then me (Simon Oakley) third but after the first hairpin one of Stephen's earth wires fell off so we all moved up one place and we were on the water and Mark Coles ploughed in and then couldn't get over the hump so I was in lead. But when we were on land Brigewater Team over took me but once we returned to the water (a high point for my craft) he ploughed in and smashed the planing surface off his craft so I returned to the lead.

On the following lap the race was red flagged because Brigewater team (picture below) had sunk rapidly and the driver was in the water on the racing line. We were then re-gridded and a restart for the remaining few laps.

Results for the weekend were

Championship after 24 races over 6 events, First Stephen, Second Woody, Third Luke, Fourth Simon, Fifth Bridgewater A, then me, Edward.