THIS week’s column is not directly related to fishing; sort of a little bit it is indirectly related due to some restrictions that will be placed on Blowering Dam September 23 and 24, but before I enlighten you as to what will be happening, a little bit of history ...
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Once upon a time in a waterway only a short distance from Tumut, there was a frog who wanted to become a prince or a princess or both because he, she or it couldn’t make up his, her or its mind as to what gender he, she or it wanted to be when a prince or a princess or both gave he, she or it a kiss. Kids fairytale books will never be the same again, it will take four hours just to read one, nah only tricking, just trying to lighten up the mood, anyway the history ...
Ken Warby (born May 9, 1939) is an Australian motorboat racer, who currently holds the water speed record of 317.58m/h (511.10km/h), set on Blowering Dam on October 8, 1978.
Yes kiddies, 511.10km/h, little bit quick for trolling, even a Tassie devil, but it looks like it will be happening again when his son, David, is going to try and break that record.
This is not going to happen this month, but David is going to do some water testing soon.
When Ken broke the world water speed record he used a jet motor that was pushing 1587 pound thrust, to equate this to horsepower is too difficult as pound thrust is a unit of force whilst horsepower is a measure of energy.
I received the following fro NSW RMS during the week: Blowering Reservoir over this weekend that the waterway is open to all boating activities; however there will be periods of time when boating activities will be required to cease and boaters will be required to remain at shore whilst the speed trials are taking place.
The Warby Watersports team hope to complete four high speed trial runs each day, starting about 10am, weather permitting. The purpose of these trials is not to break the existing record but to get to know the capabilities of their new boat Spirit of Australia by steadily increasing the trial speeds and assessing the boat’s performance. During the Spirit of Australia’s initial trials on the Manning River at Taree, the boat reach 160km comfortably, The Warby team haven’t indicated how fast their hoping to go but with all things going well we should see speeds significantly higher than Taree.
The course line starts close to the Log Bridge boat ramp and finishes adjacent to Yachting Point Reserve; the Warby Watersports team will be based at The Pines Reserve and the Spirit of Australia can be viewed there.
NSW Maritime will also have an educational display offering friendly advice on all your boating activities. If the weather and mechanical God’s play the game over the weekend, these high speed trials should be quite spectacular.
Please note that 30 minutes prior to a high speed trial run NSW Maritime Officers will be instructing all boats on the waterway to proceed to shore until the trial is over and clearance to return is given.
So even though David may not get up to top speed as the above paragraph says, if conditions are right and the boat gods are looking at the Warby’s favorably, who knows what may happen. So venture on up to Blowering on September 23 and 24 – you may just see history in the making and having been in boats at 100km-plus – when you multiply that by five - he had better tie his hat on.