Another visit to Ohio. This time to south-central with the State of Kentucky overlooking the race site with an impressive mountain and cliff adjacent to the river. We arrived in the hotel lobby to find my boat on the cover of the program. I like this place already.

This is an unusual race site with its biggest advantage being the pit area is a paved ramp that stretches the length of the course. Unfortunately, not all could fit, but it sure made the launching time minimal.

Again, we had at least 45 minutes of testing. I learned throughout the testing, and it was fantastic.

Seeking a few bolts, I find them at a top contender’s trailer. I discover he has the starting order of all the heats on a white board, and he circles his # and the number of the top contenders. My number isn’t circled. They assure me I’ll be circled soon enough. I really hope so.

In a complicated, but pretty fair format, I started in the 3rd group of a record 22 boats in an APR race. Mired in the back of the pack, simply improving a position or two was acceptable as the race was shortened due to time constraints.

The hotel has a pool, which my team enjoys whenever they are available. On Saturday we had a lot of fun with Mike and Justin from Tennessee who found our web site on the Internet, and have attended a few APR races this season. I practice my Tennessee accent. Justin thinks I’m nuts. He says his family has 4 rusted pick-up trucks on his property. He only attends school about 4 days a week, then goes boating. We try to avoid getting hit with a pop can some kids are playing with in the pool. Whatever happened to beach balls?

The preparation of a spare lower unit on Saturday would prove instrumental in Sunday’s heat 2. After completing the hot lap, something unusual was happening behind me that was odd. Geez it sounds rough. Eventually I had only neutral. That was my first damaged gear case in 10 events. I was towed to the trailer.

Then, my crew went to work. Unlike Peoria, we now thought we’d miss this heat. In Peoria we knew we’d miss heat 2. So we decided to change the gear case. The race started without me, but there was a 3-boat crash on the first lap. Two boats required towing. This afforded us time to get into the heat. I was just trying to make heat 3 which would immediately follow heat 2. And, we did actually make heat 2 but were relegated to the rear of the dock. Two other boats joined the alignment after me. I dropped about 8 starting positions because of the gear case. It was a race where I picked up a few positions, but was fairly uneventful.

Heat 3 was my chance. I started second and it would be a wild race. Entering corner one 4th, Sam Miller spun in front of me. It left series points’ leader Tyler Kratochwill in the lead, followed by Carol Reno, David Choate and myself. Then Tyler spun and needed to circle round the buoys. Our positions remained static after that, but it was good to see calm water. Finishing third, it was my best APR finish in front of a full field.

I qualified 9th for the Final but started 7th. Two boats withdrew. In the race I was about 8th after the first corner. Soon after there was a red flag as it was thought a boat had become upside down. Everyone was still upright, and it’s good to know APR erred on the side of caution.

I regained my battle with Howie Nichols. I just can’t get by him. I will. I tried until the boat almost stalled when it swallowed some of Howie’s spray. That cost me ground to him and in the recovery, Andy Felton was ready to capture the position. Felton then drove smoothly for the next few laps and held me off without difficulty.

It was the first time in an APR Final I had gone backwards from my starting position, still in the Top 10, however. This is still acceptable to this team as we’re gradually improving against a lot of veterans.

We will see what Aurora brings, but first it will be off to the lone Canadian event in Sudbury where we can race both the Formula Three and Formula Vee boat.