SATURDAY'S POWER RACES

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 528, 4 December 1928, Page 14

SATURDAY'S POWER RACES

CRUISER RACING MORIBUND The New Zealand Power-Boat Association’s harbour races on Saturday for cruising launches and outboards w«<re little short of farcical. Of the host of cruisers on the Waitemata only four considered it worth while to contest the event for the “My Girl" Cup. It is a condition of this race that the boats be steered by a woman, and instead of this being an incentive to the scores of young women who cruise with their fathers and brothers to try their hands at running a boat round a measured course, the idea seems to have frightened them. As far as the outboards were concerned the proceedings were at once a comedy and an annoying failure, with perhaps the exception of the last race, u handicap event. .Everything seemed to go wrong. Break-downs were very frequent, the events were very late in starting, competitors did not know the course, and only average speeds were registered. This last was duo in the main to a nasty jobble, which made conditions anything but safe and pleasant for those driving the boats. There was some uncertainty on the wharf among the racing officials, and at times arrangements bordered on the rafferty. Had a megaphone been employed in directing competitors the right course might have been followed in the second race. In future it might be well to devise a more substantial means of displaying starting numbers than by holding the figures aloft by hand. Saturday's lean field of launches only lends colour to the opinion expressed in this column on several occasions that racing is definitely on the down-grade. It is abundantly clear that, with the unequalled cruising grounds hard by, aquatic men do not want harbour races. There is little satisfaction to be gained in throwing away a glorious Saturday afternoon by trundling round a course for which the only compensation is the possibility of being presented on prizenight with an E.P.N.S. tea-set, or getting back the can of oil expended in running into third place. Asked their views a number of prominent launchmen were agreed that the day of the harbour race was done. Several confessed no interest whatever in racing. Others would welcome regular cruising races to one of the many beckoning resorts. we going to feel about in the harbour? No. sir. We see enough of the city during the working-day. Reverting to the outboards one is forced to the conclusion that the only way the public will get its metaphorical money’s worth out of these undependable and refractory saucers is for clubs which sponser the racing to “whoop-up” large fields of, say, 15 or 20 so that when half break down there will still be a race instead of an unreliability trial, in which some lone stranger skips home, leaving a train of mourners “anchored” varied intervals round the course.