My first smell of avgas and sound of a race engine was not long after I was born.
Dad had always wanted a race boat and he began to build his very first at the same time as I was being built, 1978.
A race boat isn't like a car where you buy one and drive off, a race boat is something you build and design from a bare hull.
You can obviously buy a complete boat from someone who has done all the work but as most of it is custom and hand built, its extremely hard to find something for sale that is built the way you would have done it.
Dad's first hull was a skicraft interceptor and was metallic green. He got a big block Chev to go into it and called it Shamrock.
The boat was fairly un-modified as far as the engine and was a good introduction to ski racing. Shamrock was raced in 1979 and 1980.
In 1982 dad sold Shamrock and purchased a 292 straight six Chev truck engine and started designing his next boat.
He bought an Alpha one Mercruiser stern drive in 1983 and ordered a 19ft Connelly Craft in 1984 and put it all together that year to race in the 6 cylinder inboard class.
They called it Saggers.
Mum started observing in the boat with dad driving and the first few races were tough with the engine blowing up a few times due to the bad harmonics in the straight six.
In the end they got most of the internals of the engine custom made and the boat started to get on the pace.
The old truck engine wasn't a high revving engine but it had heaps of torque. It used to take a long time to get on the plane and wind up and almost every race they did they were last into the first turn. It took much longer than the other boats to get going but when it did it used to fly.
Mum and dad raced Saggers between 1985 and 1987 and had quite a lot of success with it in the six cylinder class as well as the 5 and 6 litre classes above it. I was about 8 years old when they sold the boat and still have a few memories of it with dad working to all hours in the shed with his mates on it and sitting on the edge of rivers and lakes watching mum and dad race past.
Around six months after the boat was sold, dad took my brother and I out to the go kart track at Mildura which meant that was the end of water sports for a few years.
We raced karts almost every weekend until I was 13 years old. By then we all needed a break from it.
Rick and I both raced motor cross for about half a season but due to all of the bones being broken it was decided we should stop racing bikes. Although Rick and I never really got hurt it was all of the other kids being injured but even so it was time to quit.
While we were still racing karts dad had built a 19ft Connelly with a 220 hp Mercury outboard which was our social ski boat.
It was also called Saggers but was in different colours. It ended up being our family ski boat for 16 years and only got sold last year in 2006.
After having a break from karts and giving away motor cross we needed some competition in our lives.
We had the Connelly outboard sitting there which was the perfect boat for the sub junior class so why not go and race it we thought. I had always enjoyed skiing and wanted to go faster.
I skied behind the boat for a few seasons and mainly did the river races like the Southern 80 Robinvale 80 and our local Mildura 100.
At that point ski racing was all I thought about, you couldn't get a better adrenalin rush at 13, 14 years of age than doing 80+mph on a ski whipping past trees and snags up the river.
The machinery was also part of the addiction to the sport as around that time the big block engine'd boats were going from superchargers to twin turbos and there were a lot of top class boats in the bigger classes.
We had some success with top three finishes most of the time and some wins but to get to the point where we would be dominant we needed to upgrade the boat.
The outboard would do around 82 mph with myself and another young skier on the back and for our last few races we only saw 100% throttle from start to finish and we really needed to be able to reach the 90mph mark.
With those speeds mum and dad were starting to get fairly concerned as a lot of skiers were starting to get hurt and I wasn't going all that much slower than those guys.
So for the second time our family was to give ski racing away.
After a few months with no competition again we started to have long talks at the dinner table on what to do and all agreed we should get back into road racing which was probably a good idea.
Another 13 years had passed us by since our second retirement from ski racing, UNTIL 12 MONTHS AGO!
Mum and Dad have dedicated the last 20 years to giving both Rick and I the best chance to succeed in our chosen careers and sports, which luckily turned out to be the same thing.
I thought it was time to give them something back to say thankyou.
With the passenger ride car program that Rick and I have been running for the last few years we had to set up our own workshop in Melbourne.
Over the years I have worked on all of my own gear from go karts to Formula Ford and Formula Holden as well as the dirt bikes and stuff and really enjoy working in the shed on different projects.
I wanted the freedom to walk in the door of the workshop and forget about the outside world and be able to get on a welder or mill or lathe and put my focus into making nice things.
What a perfect setup to build a new race boat for dad!
Dad and I had a quick chat about the idea and didn't have to deliberate long on the idea of getting back into ski racing.
We ordered a 21ft Superclass hull which is very similar to the old Connelly hulls that dad used to race.
Not long after we ordered the hull we did a deal on one of the HRT Supercar engines to put in it.
It was very easy to design and build the boat as most of the components and technology we have learnt about in Supercars were implemented straight into the boat.
It has full Motec injection like the race car and a Motec dash with data logging which a lot of the good race boats have started to use.
I designed and ordered all of the parts for the exhaust system off Burns Stainless in America through Quantum industries in QLD
Burns have some really nice stuff and supply a lot of the Nascar teams.
The fuel system is a bit different than in the race car so I used Magna fuel pumps and regs, also from Quantum. I used magna fuel because it's also a proven product in the states but mainly because it's the coolest looking fuel pump and reg available which is important in a boat.
It was a massive job to undertake and the build took about 12 months from start to finish.
We called it Mojo.
All of the design and fabrication was done by us in our own workshop, so the day we pushed it out the door into the car park and fired it up for the first time was extremely special.
I only wish I had kept a time card on the project for interests sake, I'm pretty sure my wife Kristy had a fair idea on how many hours I spent on it.
It did remind dad and I of the old days working on the boat together especially when my 2 year old son Mason came down to the workshop to help out, just like I did when I was his age.
Mojo didn't go too badly on its first outing but damaged a piston on the second test day due to a mapping problem.
We had to pull the engine out and rebuild it so we thought we should stroke it from a 5 litre to a 6 litre while it was apart as the bigger engine would be better suited to the hull and the competition in the 6 litre class is one of the best in the sport.
We have done a few races and a bit of testing with the boat now and its been going ok, with our two skiers on we can sit on 95mph which sounds fast but in 6 litre inboard you need to be doing 100mph + to win.
The 6 litre Chev in the boat at the moment was dynoed at HRT and made 692 hp at 7500 rpm.
Unfortunately with the gear ratio in the stern drive it will only rev to 6500 rpm where it has a lot less power. So for it to be doing 95 with the skiers isn't too bad.
At the moment we are in the process of getting some new gears made for the stern drive to get us in the right rev range so it should have more top end as well as getting the skiers up quicker.
It has been a great release for dad and I and the family to get back into ski racing. We want to win of course but we have a fun, no pressure approach to the sport which is the opposite to what we are used to in our day to day jobs which makes it enjoyable for all of us.
Also most of the test driving and development is done by me and I really enjoy that. Without skiers and with the boat trimmed right it will do 105mph and driving it up the river like that with the Chev screaming just behind your right elbow is a great buzz.
At the time of writing, June 07, I am currently building a new engine for the boat. A ski race boat depends on lots of hp up top to get good speed out of it and a supercar engine is designed to have good midrange and be very driveable to be quick on the track.
We have purchased a set of Chevrolet SB2.2 Nascar heads and have a purpose built package to go with it with a big bore short stroke block.
The target RPM will be 7800 and with the bigger ports and cam we are looking for about 750+ hp so hopefully that along with the different gear ratios should get us on the pace.
Stay tuned for more!
