Alan Ewens has been heading up the PR this weekend for the UIM at the Salle des Etoiles, Sporting Monte-Carlo. He took the opportunity to reminisce with Chris Davies who is photographing the Awards Giving Gala for Powerboat Racing World.

25 years ago they were both involved with the Dubai based Victory Team, Ewens, (who back then was the team’s PR and Media guru), reminded Chris Davies about the time he suggested that tying himself to the deck of one of the team’s raceboats might result in some great photographs!

Davies recounts the story:

We were in Guernsey for the 1993 Gold Cup week and I needed a different angle from those shot from a helicopter.
I ran it past Alan, who then spoke to Felix Serrales and Saeed Al Tayer in Victory 43.
They couldn’t believe that a crazy English photographer would tie himself to their boat to get a shot but would happily oblige.

This was over ten years before the first ever GoPro camera was introduced, so the only way to get the shot was from the deck of their raceboat when they took it out to practice. Jim Poole, their Chief Mechanic asked if I wanted a diver’s knife to cut myself free just in case!

Three years later Motor Boat & Yachting’s John Walker asked Davies if he would recreate the image for an article he was writing about Victory’s dominance in offshore racing – Which he duly did.

This time I wanted to see Serrales and Al Tayer, so I tied myself on as close to the canopies as I could.
To this day I’m still convinced I could hear Serrales’s laughter above the howl of the V12 Lamborghini.

25 years later Davies will be photographing the Victory Team in action once more when they enter a 2 boat team into this season’s UIM F2 World Championship. 

He’ll be far too old to be tied to the front of an F2 circuit cat!