Imagine going zero to 80 mph in the span of 80 feet. Now imagine doing it in a 14-foot-long boat, outfitted with a V8 motor capable of supplying more than 500 horsepower.
Add a few donut turns and figure-eights around grass-covered islands in a 14-foot-wide canal filled with 3 feet of water and you’ve got the basic idea of sprint boat racing.
A meeting at Aberdeen City Hall on Wednesday night left much of the city council talking positively about the prospect of bringing a venue for such a sport to the city. A vote on the issue is expected for next week’s city council meeting, officials said.
The focus of the meeting was the Grays Harbor Aberdeen Sprintboat Park, or GHASP — a track proposed to take up space on the city-owned plot of South Aberdeen land known as the Bishop Athletic Complex.
‘We could do this here’
The idea came to Ward 5 Councilman Alan Richrod after hearing about the sport from a family friend and finding videos of races online.
“I decided, jeez, we could do this here,” Richrod said after the presentation, adding that race boats used to run up and down the Chehalis River years ago. “This is a sea-faring community; we’re tied to the water and everything.”
Richrod presented the idea to local construction businessman Tim Quigg, who also serves as a volunteer for the Aberdeen Revitalization Movement. Within a matter of seconds, Richrod said, Quigg was on board.
Supporters of the idea now amount to at least 569 people based on likes at the GHASP Facebook page.
Among the supporters are Karen Rowe, Janet Bess and Deb Blecha of the United Abergals — a group that has organized events like Aberdeen’s Founder’s Day Parade, Oktoberfest and a number of street dances but has since become a licensed LLC. The three now serve as the entity overseeing the project, and intend to lease the land from the city.
All three women came to the Wednesday meeting donning GHASP-branded shirts.
The group met with Richrod about six months ago, Rowe said.
“We were like, ‘OK, we can do this, this is so feasible,’” she added.
The sport
Sprint-boat racing, Rowe said, began in 1981 in New Zealand. After spreading to Australia and the U.S., it remains largely popular in the Pacific Northwest, with both sanctioning organizations based in Washington: Port Angeles’s American Sprint Boat Racing, a for-profit corporation, co-owned by driver Dan Morrison; and the United States Sprint Boat Association, based in Washougal, headed by President Rick Harris.
Both Morrison and Harris attended Wednesday’s meeting, bringing along drivers from teams from as far away as British Columbia.
Much like a rally race, drivers, with the help of a passenger as navigator, race through the track one-at-a-time, each vying for the best time. The route for the track isn’t revealed until the night before the first race.
Races, Morrison and Harris said at the meeting, draw thousands of people, who end up making a weekend vacation out of an event, often camping nearby.
The concept
No master plan exists for the track, Richrod said at the meeting, adding that that would be the next step following approval from the city council.
The current concept for the track itself includes a 510-foot-by-410-foot track that would take up nearly half an acre of land about 400 feet west of Charlie Creek, which would also supply water for the canals. Standard measurements for the canal, Richrod said, are 14 feet wide and 30 to 36 inches deep.
Richrod added that he’s received verbal approval from state Department of Ecology officials. Official paperwork, he added, was facilitated by the city’s community development department.
For safety, two fences will surround the track: A catch fence, situated 70 feet from the water, made of stranded-steel cable, will catch out-of-control boats. Ten feet further from the water, another 6-foot-tall fence will keep spectators out of reach from boats that end up in the fence.
Though a space on the grounds now allows for about 30 parking spaces, racing events, Richrod said, typically draw around 3,000 people. A space, he added, would need to be bladed for a parking area.
With race events lasting an entire weekend, Richrod and Rowe also touted the idea of an RV campground. Richrod later said the campground would come with the master plan led by the city.
The grounds, Richrod and Rowe proposed, would be owned by the city, but leased to United Abergals, who would then facilitate the events and insurance. Insurance, Rowe said, would come with membership into both sanctioning organizations, as well as additional policies. Though Rowe couldn’t provide an exact figure for liability coverage, she said it was well into the millions.
The funding goal is set at about $100,000, Rowe said, to go to digging the track, blading the lot, putting up the fences, supplying electrical generators for the track’s PA system, and two EMTs and an ambulance on site.
The money itself, Rowe added, would come from sponsorships and merchandising. She added that companies have already offered money toward building the track, but United Abergals has been unable to accept funding. Establishing the LLC, she said, was a step in the right direction.
Minimal concerns
Safety was addressed early in the presentation, with Richrod playing a video of a sprint boats careening from the water and into the crowd during a race in Tangent, Ore., in 2013. Richrod said the Tangent case is the worst the sport has seen, and was a result of an improperly installed fence.
Ward 2 Councilman Doug Paling voiced concerns about the population of geese that frequent the area. The talks of geese didn’t last long, with many deciding that the geese, many of which are native to the area, would simply find another place to congregate during the racing season in the summer.
Council members also brought up the noise from the motors, which Richrod said wouldn’t carry far from the track. A berm around the facility, he said, would send the noise upward.
Largely positive response
Before the meeting was over, some council members left no question as to how they would vote at next Wednesday’s meeting.
“I’m a big proponent for doing something for the people that live here,” said Kathi Hoder, councilwoman for Ward 4. “In my eyes, I can’t see why the hell we wouldn’t do it.”
As a sanctioning organization president, Harris said Aberdeen had been mentioned in certain sprint boat circles as an obvious place for a track. Southwest Washington, he said, hasn’t seen much of the sport’s expansion.
“We haven’t really broke out into that area,” he said, adding that growth in the sport has shown up in Eastern Oregon and Washington, as well as Idaho. “Anytime we can say we’ve broached a new area, we’re bringing this to somebody else … is phenomenal.”
Morrison, who also co-owns the nearest track in Port Angeles, said Aberdeen could be the next big place for the sport.
“There’s always a lot of excitement when we get a new track,” he said. “Aberdeen has as good a chance as Port Angeles, in my opinion, to draw big crowds.”
Mayor Bill Simpson, after the meeting, also said the attraction could be the draw the city’s needed after a slow economic period.
“I’m excited about this coming to our community,” he said. “It’ll bring a lot of people here, and that’s what we want — people to stop and visit our community and see how wonderful it really is.”
Kyle Mittan, 360-537-3932, kmittan@thedailyworld.com. Twitter: @KyleMittan
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