The Ocean Grand Prix has now confirmed its first three venues, and I am very pleased that Malta will be the first race of the season because this will be my fourth year racing in Malta—we have a strong Maltese fan base—and Lucas Oil has a local distributor there.

As an offshore racing hub and former British colony, Malta is great venue for me not to mention that there are plenty of English-style pubs around. However, the real reason I’m looking forward to the event (and this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows me) is Malta’s reputation for big water!

From the air, Malta may look like a giant sand castle floating next to the water, but because it lies in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea just south of Sicily, the seas churn around it like a big washing machine. The last two years have been relatively calm but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this year Malta will live up to its rough-and-tumble reputation. Check out the conditions in the 2008 movie at 1:36:

Malta 2008
Malta 2009
Malta 2010
(click links above to watch videos)

Another thing I am excited about is Lucas Oil has been ramping up its offering of marine products and our 2010 boat is on the new labels. Click here to check out the company’s products.

Here’s a quick look at the 2011 OPG schedule:

•    Malta Grand Prix of the Sea, Valletta, June 10-12
•    Turkey Grand Prix of the Sea, Istanbul, July 8-10
•    Netherlands Grand Prix, Den Helder (Holland), Aug. 5-7
•    Sicily Grand Prix, Syracusa (Italy), Sept. 2-4
•    Tentative race, Location TBA, Sept. 16-18
•    Spanish Grand Prix, Barcelona, Oct. 7-9

For more information, check out www.oceangrandprix.com.

Cheers!

Last month was a big month all around for me, including focused meetings with our 2011 race team, attending the Miami International Boat Show and unfolding the marketing plans from our worldwide racing organization.

We recently returned from the Miami International Boat Show where I was joined by my partner and race driver, Michael Silfverberg, who flew in from Stockholm, and also by Tret Robertson and our crew chief, John Cosker. The Miami show is always great because I hook up with old friends and boating acquaintances and get to check out the latest equipment.

On the opening day, I was standing in front of the Yellow Fin booth, and I thought I recognized a face walking by me. I couldn’t put my finger on where I knew him from, or what his name was, but I called out to hail him anyway. He looked at me somewhat bewildered, clearly not recognizing me! It suddenly came to me “Bud Light” ... that was the name of his team from the OPT (Offshore Professional Tour) series in the early ’90s.

His name is Bobby Matos and he had managed the Bud Light Skater, which was driven by Augie Busch and throttled by Jeff Soffer. It was fun to catch up with Bobby and learn what he had been up to and share what we had been doing. I also got to hang out for a while with Marc Garnet, next to his team’s incredible Mystic, Miss GEICO. It was cool to spend time with old friends Rick Bowling of Jelly Belly Racing and also Larry Smith, the founder of Scarab.

The new news I am keen to share is the latest update from our new race organization, Ocean Grand Prix (OGP). After winning the UIM Endurance contract from UIM, the new organization is saying all the right things and making all the right promises.

One of the positive aspects of a new organization is the new ideas that are tried to differentiate themselves from prior promoters. OGP is adapting a chapter from the Red Bull Air race format by having enormous floating billboards that will identify the track on the water. From the power point I received, it looks like they have 30-foot-high corner marks and 30-foot-long sausages that line the inside perimeter of the track.

The promoter has a lot of experience organizing races formerly with Powerboat P1 and Grand Prix of the Sea, and also with streamlining all the customs and logistical headaches of moving all the equipment from country to country and continent to continent.

OGP also has presented to the teams that they plan to handle many of the transportation issues. For us, we have partnered with Peters & May to ship our new race boat across the Atlantic. These guys are great and have deftly moved all the hydroplanes to and from the Middle East a couple of times now, so I’m confident we have the right team there.

I’m often asked, “How do we get more U.S. teams into the world circuit?” I’m very prepared to help in advice and cooperation, so if anyone is interested let me know!

Happy New Year!

It was a lot of fun ringing in 2011 at 4 p.m. in San Diego on GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) with my local friends, one of whom included Simon Powell, winner of the 50th anniversary Cowes-Torquay-Cowes race in August 2010. Simon lives in San Diego and he trains our Navy Seals to jump out of planes when he’s not endurance racing with Fabio Buzzi.

Since Simon is heavily involved in boat racing, we started trading “war” stories. This New Year’s Day has me looking back and thinking about one of the biggest challenges I accepted, and it also has me looking forward at the exciting 2011 announcements with my new race partner Michael Silfverberg from Stockholm, Sweden.

Looking Back – Biggest Challenge

My New Year’s Eve conversation with Simon included my adventures during the 2004 Nuestros Rios Son Navegables—a grueling, eight-day, 1,100-plus-mile rally through Venezuela, Columbia and the Amazon Plains.

In early 2004, I was approached by CITGO, who had been my sponsor throughout the ’90s, to represent them in the 31st anniversary race in Venezuela. To prepare for the race, we determined the 33-foot Eliminator would be a good fit and Eliminator owner Bob Leach was keen to work together. Bob recommended we recruit Ilmor to supply the V-10 engines along with guru Ian Hawkins, which all worked out great. Bret Seber helped put the rig together and Nick Pavlichek volunteered to be crew chief. And Team CITGO Eliminator was born! In addition to our team, CITGO launched a second team—CITGO Triton—which was organized and driven by Mike Seebold in a Seebold tunnel boat.

ESPN had cameramen on us the whole week and they did a fantastic job of producing a television show called “The Mighty Orinoco.” The rally was like nothing else I had experienced in 30-plus years of racing. It was full of surprises, challenges and friendships with the wonderful people we met in Venezuela in stark contrast to what we sometimes hear in the media from their government.

We have recently uploaded The Mighty Orinoco (five parts) and the two team movies to my YouTube channel.

Looking Forward – 2011 Announcements

Since my last blog, the UIM (Union Internationale Motonautique) has announced that the UIM Endurance contract was awarded to a new investor; thereby terminating any lingering strings to the series previously known as Powerboat P1. Click here to read more.

The new investor is Malta-based International Sea Racing company, and Ruben Caruana is running the promotion side of the race business. I have known Ruben for several years now as he has been a promoter of P1 races as well as races in last year’s Grand Prix of the Sea series. His plan moving forward is to combine our races with concerts from major recording stars to create a weekend filled with activities.

The 2011 calendar and venues will be published in mid-January after Ruben has had meetings with the teams. What I’m able to pass on now is the assurance that the extensive world-wide TV coverage will be continued and even enhanced. It is wonderful to have a new investor committed to promoting offshore racing who will be showcasing our sport in several hundred million homes around the planet, including major markets outside of Europe such as China, India, Australia, Brazil and Russia.

I am pleased to announce that we have Lucas Oil aboard as our title sponsor for another year—now 11 years running. Additionally, I’m partnering with Michael Silfverberg in a new business venture so I’m now honored to call Michael my business partner as well as my friend. He and I have already been planning our race strategy for 2011 … more on those plans later.

I’ll finish by wishing everyone all the very best for a great 2011.

While growing up in England, I always read Powerboat magazine from cover to cover, and when I moved to California in 1984, I was privileged to compete against Bob Nordskog, the founder and publisher of the magazine. Bob was then the president of Pacific Offshore Power Boat Racing Association (POPBRA) and he was an intense competitor who thoroughly enjoyed racing; therefore, I consider becoming a contributor to Powerboat a real honor. I’ve raced both catamarans and mono-hulls, and consider V-hulls more challenging to race and, in general, more universal for pleasure boating.

My guiding theme will be to share my point of view as I experience the challenges of worldwide powerboat racing, search for the ultimate ocean mono-hull and explain how our team returns value to our sponsors.

In 2010, our team competed worldwide with our Canadian-built boat, a Vector V-40. In a span of eight months, we tested in Florida, displayed at the Miami International Boat Show, tested again in Belgium prior to the first race in the Ukraine on the Black Sea, followed by Grand Prix races in Malta, and the Italian cities of Sardinia, Napoli and Sicily. To close out the season in November, we were back in Florida and competing in the Production 2 class of the Key West World Championships where we finished first (relegated to fourth by a speed penalty), second and first again in the Sunday double-points race to finish second overall in points behind the No. 11 Hawaiian Tropic Skater.

I love Key West—it is a special race. I’ve raced there for 20 years and this year was a prime indicator of how international our sport of powerboat racing has become. The 30th annual event attracted active racers from the UK, Belgium, Italy and as far away as the Ukraine, all of whom came to watch arguably the most famous boat race in the world. But as strong as the Key West races were with more than 50 entries, there still perpetuates one of the curses of U.S. races of having way too many classes—there were 14 total.

One of the topics I’ll be exploring in detail in future blogs is the simple power-to-weight formula pioneered by UIM Endurance, which provides parity between any combination of boat hulls and engine manufacturers. In 2010, this power-to-weight formula was dramatically enhanced by the introduction of the torque sensor device from ABB that measures (in real-time) the torque and the rpm, which is used to calculate the horsepower each engine is transmitting. Go ahead and override the chip, but you better have the correct weight for the horsepower your engines actually produce because the Race Technologies software is logging your data and reveals the actual horsepower outputted to the scrutineers immediately after the race.

These torque sensors are a milestone in motorsports for several reasons. Not only do they eliminate the need for costly preseason dyno tests, they eliminate any arguments about a team upgrading their ECMs to run more power than their weight. An added benefit of this technology is that on the Lucas Oil SOC boat we have a display that shows the calculated horsepower during our testing and this information has added a new element in determining our race setups. I would be interested in hearing feedback on this technology if you have any.