Hot Lemon and Mike Deacon

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#045

A Harmsworth Series Diary
Diary extracts provided by Dave Deacon in Hot Lemon

Page 01/03
SOLID BRONZE TROPHY
The magnificent solid bronze Harmsworth trophy, first presented in 1903 by Sir Alfred Harmsworth the proprietor of the Daily Mail, was intended to encourage the development of the motorboat and has become the power boating equivalent of the America's Cup. The inaugural race was held in Cork over an 8.5 mile course and speeds were around 12 knots or so, a far cry from the 80 knots of some

present competitors; engines have also improved from the 24hp used then – to the 2000hp used by The Earl of Normanton in Premier Crew.

Poole was selected as the venue for the first Heat and the date would lead nicely onto the Cowes Classic the following weekend; owing to adverse conditions on Saturday the National races were postponed to Sunday so we spent Saturday afternoon checking and re-checking the boat and fuel load in ...

Page 02/03

.. preparation for 112nm of hard racing.

Saturday evening became more surreal as it went on, culminating in Paul Lemmer organising a group outing to Asda. I was glad that Andy Macateer crashed out in my room, had his mobile not rung at 7.30am, the chances of my waking up would have been fairly marginal to say the least!

At 11am we made our way out to the start and milled gently around.

Time crept by and we were quite relaxed until we heard radio reports of "two metre seas" at the Needles turn mark. All of a sudden we saw the yellow flag go up and the very quick start boat Formula 1 turned to run towards the start line at the end of Bournemouth Pier. This was one of the fastest starts we had ever taken ...

Page 03/03

... part in, I think the idea was to make it easier for the larger boats to have a good clean start and we were already approaching 50knots when the green flag went up!

Although we had a very good start, it didn't take more than a few boat lengths for Wettpunkt.com to come past, followed by Eraser 2 with Buzzi Bullet in hot pursuit!

The Complete Diary

You can read more about Dave's exciting and amusing rollercoaster of a series, simply by downloading the complete diary transcripts below.

Harmsworth - Heat 1.pdf ( 97.9kb )
Harmsworth - Heat 2.pdf ( 72.4kb )
Harmsworth - Heat 3 & 4.pdf ( 69.8kb )