Rocky Fork Lake, Hillsboro, Ohio – August 28-30, 2009


Right after Celina (The Governor’s Cup) and just before Wheeling, (which I can’t attend, due to clash of dates with CER Silverstone) came Rocky Fork Lake at Hillsboro, which I hadn’t been to before.

This time I drove there in the Dodge Ram so that I could pick up “L’eau Reves” and bring her home to Florida, as our next race will be in Louisiana in October.

About 900 miles of driving saw me stopping off at my old business partner’s horse farm in Versailles, Kentucky, where I spent a very pleasant twenty-four hours learning a lot about horse racing. Just like car and boat racing, it has it’s own specialist world, most of which seems to be based in Kentucky in this country.

Early on Saturday morning (5 a.m.), I set off and reached Rocky Fork before Kevin Klosterman, who was towing the hydro down from Celina. Rocky Fork is in a beautiful setting, a park with a huge lake and a big course, probably over a mile, around an island. Yellow buoys marked shallow parts of the lake “best to stay away from!” as the host remarked at the driver’s briefing.

Kevin arrived with the boat, which (as always) looked beautiful, and he had done a great job of looking after it and preparing it, except that we still had an oil leak the size of “Oh my Gawd!” size. To keep the engine’s sump up to the level took three quarts of oil over the weekend but I can at least claim that we have the cleanest oil of any Chevy engine that raced there that weekend.

As Kevin’s boat was not ready (still getting the engine repaired), I had him drive her as well as me. Kevin taped on mini video cameras to the hull and tells me the pics are excellent. I shall be posting them on this site as soon as I receive them.

On the last run on Saturday, Kevin climbed in and set off but didn’t reappear; the boat had run out of gas. She sure is thirsty. So on Sunday morning, Kevin drove her first and then I climbed (slipped!) into the cockpit after him and had a great time racing with the other boats. Despite the fact that we only do “practice laps” in vintage, everyone involved gets their foot in it and goes as fast as possible. I managed to hold on to finish the five laps just ahead, first time yet!

Special thanks to Aaron and Davey, the pit crew (pictured), who were just great.

I’m really enjoying vintage hydroplanes. They are fast, exciting, rough (knock you around more than any racecar I’ve ever driven), in fact they’re a blast. On top of that, maintenance is confined to the engine and prop drive (no brakes, suspension, tires and wheels) and the atmosphere in the paddock I can only relate to about 1978 in vintage car racing.

I highly recommend it!