In association with Melbourne’s Hornet Property Services, rounds two and three of the Championship will be aired ‘free-to-air’ on 7mate and ‘on-demand’ on 7plus, with four, one-hour programs highlighting the excitement and passion surrounding the sport.

“As the category continues to gain traction it became clear that we needed to return to television in an effort to build more excitement around the sport,” Antony De Fina, the Australian OffShore Powerboat Club’s Commodore explained. “We have a schedule of really strong events in big population centres coming across the next few months, but the key to broadening our reach is to go to a wider audience, and that means television.

“The Seven Network has a strong motorsport background with 7mate the home of many leading categories including Supercars, Drag Racing, Circuit Boats, Off Road and others, it’s a destination that people go to, to watch the best the sport has to offer, so the perfect platform for us to start rebuilding our profile.”

Production of the programs will be delivered by Melbourne’s 321Ignition Media who have been responsible for the production of television for the popular National Drivers’ Championship for Circuit Boats and additionally, V8 Superboats. Their team were at Lake Macquarie to take in the opening round of the season, collating content that will be used in the forthcoming programs.

Aside from national distribution through the Seven Network, programs will also be distributed through 321Ignition Media to networks all over the world, more than 600-million homes having access to content, reaching all corners of the globe.

“The Lake Macquarie round and their annual ‘Fast and Loud Festival’ was a fantastic way to open the new season,” De Fina admitted. “It kicks off what promises to be an exciting year ahead, and with Hornet Property Services supporting the next two rounds  in Victoria, we’re expecting strong fields and some outstanding on action on the water.”
2024 Offshore Superboat Championships – calendar
R1. Lake Macquarie, NSW – 19-20 October, 2024
R2. Wyndham Harbour, Victoria – 22-23 February, 2025
R3. Geelong Harbour, Victoria – 15-16 March, 2025
Further dates and locations released soon.

For more information on the Australian Offshore Superboat Championships, visit us at;
www.superboat.com.au
www.facebook.com/OffshoreSuperboats
www.facebook.com/ausopc

About Hornet Property Services
Located in Melbourne’s south-east, Hornet Property Services was born from the market’s demand for a better standard of tradesman. Servicing all of Melbourne, the business is defined by reliability and an extremely high level of customer service with competitive pricing. Simply put, they are your one stop shop for plumbing, electrical and property maintenance for both residential and commercial properties.

For more information, please visit https://hornetpropertyservices.com.au

Thousands of people lined the shores of Lake Macquarie last weekend as the Fast & Loud Festival roared into life. Lake Macquarie Mayor Kay Fraser said the city had never before hosted such an intense program of events and activities over two consecutive weekends.

This is a celebration of all things fast and loud on land, on the water and in the sky. We’ve created a program that makes the most of waterfront locations on both sides of the lake, and we’ve included things this year that will appeal to all ages.

Saturday afternoon saw Race One for the Supercat Extreme class and straight away the Dynamic Racing team of Andy Smith and Hayden Wyld were in trouble.

We had an electrical failure on the first lap and lost all dash gauges, so we stopped rather than risk it.

Also struggling were Simon Isherwood and Mat Humphrey in the ex-Notareal Cougar, Pitman Trucks. With no chance of testing due to the excessive rain over the last couple of months in NSW the boat had only been run on the trailer. When they left the dock to run the sighting lap things seem to be ok but unfortunately as they dropped the throttles the port Stirling engine did not respond.

When Isherwood spoke to PRW he said

As we made our way around the first lap, we were discussing our plan and then Team Dynamic dropped out, so we decided to continue with one engine running strong and the other unresponsive to throttle, it did clear and start to make power and then drop off again continuously.

After just five of the twelve laps they were heading back to the pits where they discovered a broken the water transfer hose that ran between the header and tail pipe spraying water into our flame arrestor. This had also resulted in the engine hydraulic locking as well as running one header dry.

Isherwood also confirmed that it’s their intention to rebuild both engines in their off season and then try and get some testing in to help dial in the boat and extract some better flat-water performance out of her.

Isherwood continued

The good news is all our systems within the boat like trike and steering are all working perfectly, plus the boat is a crowd favourite as well as providing Mat and I with a thrilling ride. We have plenty to prove, and yes, the old Cougar will be back ready to roar next season.

Also booking a place in the 2023 Offshore Superboat Championship will be Maritimo Racing. After the weekend Barry-Cotter told PRW that they plan to run the entire 2023 season and that it had been fantastic weekend for the team.

It was great to be racing back at Lake Macquarie once again and it is always wonderful to see so many people line the foreshore and come out in their boats. The boat was setup perfectly for the conditions and ran flawlessly.

Dynamic Racing did get back out on Sunday after the team had worked into the night but finished a minute down on Barry-Cotter and Willaton in both of Sunday’s races.

All images by Reg Blunt at embphotographics

Fortunately, the crew of Saracen, Antony De Fina and Matt Kelly both emerged ok from their upturned hull.

Once ashore De Fina said

Not the way we wanted to finish the weekend at Hervey Bay! Certainly, a bit of force involved. Thanks to Tom Barry-Cotter and Stephen Kelly who were there quickly and helped us out. A few bruises and a bit sore but we will regroup and see if we can get her going for round four at Lake Macquarie.

De Fina and Kelly are no strangers to ‘high siding’ their Saracen hull as the pair almost capsized during the final race of the 2018 season on the shores of Hervey Bay. As the race had been underway for seventeen minutes the officials felt that gave them enough time to call it a race and the points were awarded accordingly.

AMT Racing now move to the top of the Supercat Outboard class as well as topping the AUS 1 category.

Taking maximum points in the Supercat Extreme class were Maritimo Racing.

When PRW spoke to Barry-Cotter he replied

Maritimo Racing were incredibly happy to be back competing in the Offshore Superboat Championships. The boat felt great, and although we had a small field this weekend, it was great to use the weekend’s races for a strong test session before next weekend’s round at Lake Macquarie, where we will see some more competition. It was an action-packed weekend. Glad to see Antony and Matt were ok after Sunday’s accident.

Round Four of the 2022 Offshore Superboat Championships is at Lake Macquarie, New South Wales. The weekend is part of the Fast & Loud Festival and will consist of five Offshore Championship races.

All images including the roll over sequence by Reg Blunt.

As the competitors gathered in the Steam Packet Garden pit area, overlooking the Geelong foreshore, just to the southwest of Melbourne, Saturday’s calm water conditions meant that it was going to be a catamaran benefit day and so it turned out.

In the Supercat Outboards class AMT took an early lead but it didn’t last long as Antony De Fina and Matt Kelly in Saracen soon got past them and held the lead to take maximum points in the opening race. Meanwhile TCR Offshore suffered mechanical issues but still managed to cross the line in third place, but it would be the last time we would see them out on the water.

Andrew Taylor from AMT Racing said

Today we had a few sparkplug issues and a coil failure which cost us the victory, but we will get that sorted overnight.

Jason Kelly and Jesse King took advantage of the smooth conditions to take victory in the Sport 85 class in the twenty-four-foot Skater The Colonel ahead of the Cootacraft monohull Special Edition driven by Mark Percherzewski.

Mark Sutherland from Team Gigglin said that a fair bit of practice in the off-season, making sure they had their boat set up correctly was the key to them taking an opening day victory in the Sport 65 class. They managed to get past and then just hold off the local Geelong crew of Team Risky with their driver Mark Swain saying that they were learning more about the boat race by race and were looking to find more speed coming out of the turn marks.

Sunday would see another race for the Sport 65 class and two more races, one thirty minutes in length followed by a twenty minute one after the lunch break for the Supercat Outboards and Sport 85 competitors.

Winning the ‘John & Barbara Gilbert Memorial Trophy’ and collecting maximum championship points in the Sport 65 class were the father and son crew of Team Gigglin with Mark Sutherland who praised his son as they crossed the finishing line.

My son Liam has done an excellent job looking out and telling me where everyone else is on the course. It has been a wonderful team effort in the boat, plus the ‘young bull’ has spent the weekend trying to keep the ‘old bull’ calm.

In the Sport 85 class The Colonel looked to be on course for three straight victories in Geelong after they crossed the finish line in first place on Sunday morning, but the crew had noticed a mechanical issue as they pulled off the course.

Jason Kelly said

We came across an issue on the last lap, but we still managed to get the Skater across the line, unfortunately though we couldn’t fix the problem before the third race. We both decided to give it a crack, but we only got two laps in before we had to stop. It’s nothing major and will be fixed before the next round.

With the Colonel classified as third in the last race, it meant overall victory went to Mark Percherzewski and Amy Preston in their Cootacraft monohull Special Edition.

Percherzewski said

The weather here this weekend didn’t suit any monohull, so the American Skater gave us a bit of a challenging time. Hopefully at the next round in Hervey Bay there will be some chop for us.

Mechanical issues once again deprived another team from taking a clean sweep of race victories and that was Team Saracen. Coming into the final race they were holding off Team AMT Racing when a fuel injector failed just after seven minutes into the twenty-minute race. It wasn’t long before AMT had past them and began to pull out a sizable lead. In the end Andy Taylor and Paul Fowlds crossed the line a minute ahead of Saracen.

At the prize presentation, where the team collected the ‘Robert Weir Memorial Trophy’ Taylor confirmed that the water conditions were slightly different which gave them better performance on the straights.

The boat performed a little bit better on the Sunday but it’s still not as good as we want it though. Let’s hope we can find that little bit extra before we head to southern Queensland.

The teams will now have a five week break before descending upon the Urangan Boat Harbour on Queensland’s Fraser Coast with several of them hoping to have seen the last of smooth water for the foreseeable future.

All images are reproduced here courtesy of Colin Rosewarne Photography.