The last thing Bobby said in your interview
"Bobby: Well, I think they’re less prone to do what happened in my crash. But now they’re running way too fast and the race courses are laid out in a way that winning is too dependent on corner speed."
My thoughts:
Pleasure boats are now seeing speeds in the 170s-190s. Race boats seem compelled to see greater speeds than ever before, and acceleration that we could not comprehend in the 'old days of racing'.
The courses have gotten shorter and shorter. When I first began to watch offshore racing, they would leave the beach in Point Pleasant, NJ, go out across the ocean to Long Island, and back, and a few hours later you were lucky to see a few race boats, finish the event. When I began to race, we ran 4-7 laps (depending on class) on a 20 mile course, with almost 10 mile straight aways. Ten years latter we were running 20-30 laps on a 4 mile course, with almost 2 mile straight aways. Twenty years latter (today), speeds and acceleration have continued to rise, and the 'fast' corner (turning the boat) at extremely high speeds, along with the need to accelerate quickly, and hold the speed until the last possible second, just before the turn, seems to have made something that was already dangerous, ever more dangerous.
I do not know what the answer is, but I do know that we have become all too complacent, around something so potentially deadly. I feel that a professional race crash engineering analysis company, needs to be hired. They need to be given access to the boats involved in the recent wrecks, they need to be given access to any and all available photos and videos of the wrecks, they need to be given the medial histories of those involved leading up to the event, the need to be given the full coroners reports, and they need to be given the safety policies, procedures, implementations.
As a long time boat racer, I welcome an accident investigation as I suggested above.
uke:
