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San Diego CA – The U13 Graham Trucking entry, driven by J Michael Kelly from Puyallup WA, made the trip down the west coast to challenge for the SAN DIEGO BAYFAIR powered by the UNION TRIBUNE cup this weekend.

Before highlighting the weekend of racing, let’s take a look back over what has to be considered not a stellar year for the U13 team.

Evansville, IN – Racing in the final of the Freedom Festival the U13 entry was running smoothly. This was after a minor repair to the hull earlier that day had been performed, as the boat would not respond to the shut down procedure and Mike had to make a hard left turn so as not to slam head on into the retaining wall. Unfortunately he did scrape the right sponson on the wall and that had to be repaired. Running hard up the back chute in the final heat the propeller let go, causing major damage to the rear of the boat.

“When a propeller blade breaks away at 10,000 rpm with 2,000 horsepower pushing it against the mass of water, things go crazy.” J. Michael Kelly said. “The entire boat shook violently until I hit the emergency shutdown fuel switches.” Luckily, the long shaft, gear box and engine all escaped without damage. The structural components at the stern, the transom, shaft brackets and pretty much everything in that immediate vicinity took the bulk of the damage. It was decided that the boat would have to skip Madison and travel to Detroit to begin immediate repairs.

Madison, IN – With the extensive damage to the boat in Evansville, the team skipped the annual Indiana Governors Cup. “We hated to have to skip the race, but there was no way we could have made it to Madison,” stated owner Dave Bartush. The team left Evansville and headed straight to the shop in Detroit to repair the boat.

Detroit, MI – The 100^th running of the American Power Boat Association’s Gold Cup is the premier event on the ABRA circuit. With repairs to the boat finished just in time to be able to compete in the race, the Graham Trucking team pulled the green and yellow boat into the pits late Friday afternoon. The hydroplane looked better than ever, however the Detroit Yacht Club presents the Spirit of Detroit team was not able to get onto the water that afternoon. Early Saturday morning the boat was lowered into the water and J Mike took the mighty 13 through a shakedown cruise. Everything looked a okay!

Sunday however was to be another story. After one heat of racing the wind started to pick up, ABRA officials decided to put a 10 minute hold on racing to check and see what the weather was going to do. Mother Nature had different plans for the Sunday event as ten minutes lead to another and another. After that, the rest of the afternoon was a wait and see game with the wind taking first place. This meant that the year’s event was a blow out and next year will be considered the 100^th running.

Tri-Cities, WA – If it were not for bad luck the U13 might not have had any luck at all. Gremlins had been chasing the U13 all year long with a propeller issue in Evansville, and now at the start of the provisional the boat made a loud shuddering sound and stopped dead in the water, the cause, yet another thrown prop. All the team could do was to stare in disbelief as the hydroplane was towed back to the docks.

Seattle, WA – After yet another week of repairs, this time not as extensive as the Evansville mishap, the team made it to Seattle, west coast homeport for the team. The team is coming off another week of repairs as the boat suffered damage at Tri Cities last weekend. “It wasn’t quite as much work this time to do the repairs, but it was still a lot; especially since the crew is still tired from the earlier repair. I asked Cal Phipps to stay here for the week and he really helped us a lot. He helped with the Evansville repairs and that’s why we let him take the boat out for three laps in Tri-Cities. He did 151 mph and looked very comfortable in the boat. Our onboard camera shows him with a big smile.” Stated U13 owner Dave Bartush.

As the propeller turns, or maybe not? “So there’s a brand new prop at the bottom of the lake that probably has a heat on it,” Kelly said. “On the plus side, we didn’t bust up the boat, but we did lose $15,000.” That’s a quote driver J Michael Kelly made to the media after returning to the dock with once again another propeller broken. Luckily this time the shaft broke and the prop fell to the bottom of Lake Washington.

As reported last year, many in the media have been making very positive comments about the 29 year old U13 driver. “J Michael Kelly has more shear ability than any of the drivers out on the course” as commented Chip Hanauer on the KIRO TV 7 broadcast Sunday afternoon. That basically sums up what many in the media thinks about the young man from Puyallup, Washington.

Racing at Seafair is likening to racing in front of the home crowd, as many of the teams do call Seattle home. Two third place finishes and a second in the prelims was still not enough to get into the winner take all final, so J Michael had to run in the provisional and as luck, if you want to call it that, would have it a malfunctioning hatch caused the boat to be sidelined yet again.

San Diego – Racing on Mission bay in sunny southern California the U13 qualified at a respectable 155.755mph. Finishing fourth in heat 1A and third in heat 2B followed by a third in heat 3B the Dave Bartush owned hydroplane fought mightily against the likes of the U5 formulaboats.co, the U6 Oh Boy! Oberto and the U37 Beacon Plumbing all day long.

In heat 2B mechanical problems again plagued the yellow and green hydroplane. “The V-brace bracket broke which caused us to lose the wing,” said Kelly. “I knew something was wrong when it started to get hard to drive and I could see one of my vertical wings in my mirror. Without the wing, the nose tends to dip, and I had to use a different wing strategy to keep the nose and my speed up.”

This ends the racing season for the U13. Look back from time to time for updates throughout the winter season to keep up with Spirit of Detroit!

One last thing, the U13 team wants to congratulate the U6 Oh Boy! Oberto on winning the National High Points Championship. Look out next year we will be gunnin for ya!

After starting the 2008 ABRA Unlimited Hydroplane season with major boat damage suffered in Evansville due to a thrown prop blade, and enduring exactly the same fate in the Lamb Weston Columbia Cup in Kennewick, the U-13 Graham Trucking/Spirit of Detroit team thought things couldn’t get much worse in Seattle for the 2008 Chevrolet Cup at Seafair. With only one prop that was newly purchased to replace the one destroyed in Evansville (having just two heats total time on it), and no spares to help fine-tune the green and yellow hydroplane, the unthinkable happened yet again in a Friday test, when after running only two laps, the propeller shaft sheared as J. Michael Kelly exited turn one, tossing the team’s only remaining race-ready “wheel” into the murky depths of Lake Washington.

With the boat’s on-board computer out of commission at the time, the GPS data that would normally have been collected (and would have pinpointed the spot on the water where the break occurred) was unavailable.. With few options left to verify the location of the U-13 when the shaft broke, the team had only one way to find the $11,000 propeller – studying the video from two on-board cameras that recorded the run from the cockpit and tail of the boat. The ChaseCam system provided broadcast quality video from two different angles the team could examine, but speeds at that point of the lap neared 150mph, leaving a huge potential area to search if there was to be any hope in recovering this most important piece of the hydroplane.

On race day, before any boats took to the water, U-13 Electronics/Camera specialist Walt Ottenad and Seafair Dive Boss Kathy Sears motored to the general vicinity on the lake where the shaft left the boat, comparing the view from the video with the view on the lake, finally settling on the most likely spot and logging GPS coordinates for a future attempt at recovery. After the event was over, numerous calls to dive shops and dive schools were made to arrange the recovery effort, but all were very reluctant to even try the attempt. In the end, the right man for job turned out to be the one that had the most intimate knowledge of the event and the course.

Enter Alan Buchanan, a member of the Seafair dive team, and one of the divers responsible for setup and removal of the markers and buoys that make up the Seafair racecourse and Log Boom. A long-time diver and volunteer at Seafair, Buchanan had plenty of practice finding lost hydroplane parts in Lake Washington, having previously spent two years searching for a ‘Miss Budweiser’ propeller, finally finding it hundreds of yards from the initial search area. With years of diving experience in the lake, he was the most logical choice to lead the search, provided he would accept the challenge.

Dave Bartush, the owner of the Spirit of Detroit, contacted Buchanan with a plea for help in finding the lost prop, and added an almost impossible demand: “find it before we leave for the San Diego Bayfair race on Sept. 20th”. In accepting the request, Alan’s plan of attack was to make a methodical search of the bottom of Lake Washington starting at the coordinates provided by the team and working a search pattern in the direction of travel of the hydro. Complicating the search was the fact that the lake bottom at that location was over 115 feet deep and visibility was notoriously bad – usually no more than six to ten feet. Adding the condition of the bottom – mud up to 18 inches thick, the lack of current to clear any silt generated by the divers, and bone-chillingly cold water, this was a trial akin to finding a very small needle in a very large, watery, cold and dark haystack!

The search started on Saturday, August 30 with Buchanan and dive partners Andrew Fiack and Rob Holman diving into the lake to find conditions even worse than they expected. Dropping to the bottom, visibility proved to be less than four feet, meaning that to make any coordinated search, the divers had to stay literally within arm’s length of each other so as not to get lost and stay more than six feet off the bottom so as not to raise any silt that might take weeks to clear! A ten minute first dive yielded no results, and a second dive came up empty as well. The third and last dive only added to the frustration as Buchanan’s drysuit sprung a leak, filling it with 40 degree water and ending the dive. The day was a total bust, as the area that was able to be searched was only a small fraction of the total that needed to be scoured if there was to be any hope of finding the prop.

The following weekend’s second attempt got off to a somewhat better start. The search method was modified slightly to incorporate three divers on a line stretched 20 feet from a central anchor, and the search area was moved further northeast to a region that featured a shale/clay bottom with very little mud. The first dive of the day ended with the same results – extremely poor visibility, bone-chilling cold and no prop. After a rest on the surface to decompress and plan the second dive, Buchanan and team dropped the second marker and descended to the bottom at 99 feet, where, in an incredible stroke of luck, within 3 feet of the drop, sat the prop and shaft from the U-13, looking like a deadly flower sticking out of the bottom! The entire assembly had traveled approximately 60-80 feet from where it parted the hydro, and with the prop still turning at almost 10,000 rpm when the shaft snapped, carried enough momentum and force to act like a huge lawn dart and embed itself into the bottom. Even more amazing, the brand new prop had not been touched in the whole episode and looked none the worse for wear!

Like the proverbial Sword in the Stone, the broken propeller shaft had been thrust almost a foot into the bottom, and even with all three divers struggling to pull it free, it refused to budge. Without enough lift in their recovery equipment to attempt to pull it straight out, and due to the danger involved in trying to pull the razor sharp prop out by hand, the divers were left to wiggling it back and forth to try and loosen the grip the lake bottom held on the shaft. Finally, after almost 15 minutes of effort, it was freed and 180 lbs. of lift brought the assembly to the surface. Closer inspection of the prop revealed only one extremely minor nick and three small scratches to one blade. The propeller shaft told the story of its demise: a minute nick started a fracture that led to the total failure of the 2” solid steel shaft, a break so clean it looked as though it had been cut in half with a laser! While the shaft was a total loss, the propeller was almost pristine and will be able to run again with only very minor touch-up. After hearing of the successful recovery, Dave Bartush called Alan to congratulate him on the find.

The entire U-13 crew wants to extend a huge “THANK YOU” to Alan Buchanan, Rob Holman and Andrew Fiack for their determination, expertise and sense of adventure. What could have taken many years of searching was accomplished in two weekends, giving the Graham Trucking/Spirit of Detroit their best propeller back for the season finale in San Diego. It will become the primary propeller used in the Mission Bay event. Thanks also go to Seafair Dive Boss Kathy Sears for her help in pinpointing the search area. We also would like to thank Randy Chase, maker of the ChaseCam Onboard Video System, San Diego, CA. Without his outstanding hardware the recovery of the prop would not have been possible. The U-13 team welcomes him as our guest at Bayfair in San Diego.

Friday Seafair

“So there’s a brand new prop at the bottom of the lake that probably has a heat on it,” Kelly said. “On the plus side, we didn’t bust up the boat, but we did lose $15,000.” That’s a quote driver J Michael Kelly made to the media after returning to the dock with once again another propeller broken. Luckily this time the shaft broke and the prop fell to the bottom of Lake Washington.

The U13 Miss Graham Trucking is in Seattle for the running of the Chevrolet Cup at Seafair. Seattle is the home of many of the hydroplane teams on the American Boat Racing Association’s 2008 tour. During qualifying Kelly recorded a time of 143.363mph on the 2 mile course.

The team is coming off another week of repairs as the boat suffered damage at Tri Cities last weekend. “It wasn’t quite as much work this time to do the repairs, but it was still a lot; especially since the crew is still tired from the earlier repair. I asked Cal Phipps to stay here for the week and he really helped us a lot. He helped with the Evansville repairs and that’s why we let him take the boat out for three laps in Tri-Cities. He did 151 mph and looked very comfortable in the boat. Our onboard camera shows him with a big smile.”

Saturday Seafair

A light breeze and flat water welcomed the drivers and teams for the first set of final qualification heats. The U-6 Oh Boy! Oberto driven by Steve David and Jeff Bernard in the U-5 Formulaboats.com the U-3 Hoss Mortgage Investors Too J. Michael Kelly in the U13 Graham Trucking and Kip Brown in U-17 Our Gang Racing all answered the call for the heat. The U3 was in third place when a rod blew through the engine causing a bright orange flash and forced the boat to coast to a stop at the apex of turn two. J. Michael Kelly and Kip Brown used the failure of the U-3 to their advantage, moving the U-13 Graham Trucking and U-17 Our Gang Racing hulls into third and fourth place.
Driver J Michael Kelly commented after the heat, “The boat was pulling to the left. We didn’t have any time to test with this propeller, so my timing was off at the start. I’m happy with 225 points. It’s a good start for the weekend and the boat is in good shape.”   The U-13 Graham Trucking was able to complete two laps without breaking or losing a propeller. They are now down to using an old propeller that was tried once last year, and hadn’t used at all this year. “It’s not our best,” said owner Dave Bartush. “But we have to go with what we’ve got.”

Sunday Seafair

“J Michael Kelly has more shear ability than any of the drivers out on the course” a comment made by Chip Hanauer on the KIRO TV 7 broadcast Sunday afternoon. That sums up what many in the media thinks about the 29 year old driver from Puyallup, Washington. Racing at Seafair is likening to racing in front of the home crowd, as many of the teams do call Seattle home.

Racing in heat 2B along with Dave Villwock, defending national High Points Champion from last year, Jean Theoret, driving the U37 Beacon Plumbing, Jimmy Shane in the U7 formulaboats.com and Kip Brown in the U17 Our Gang Racing this proved to be a very fast heat. Brown jumped the gun as he came across the line too early and the rest of the field was chasing him into the first corner. But coming out it would be a duel between the 1 and the 37 as JMK in the 13 was giving chase close behind. Coming in third and without any damage was the strategy of the Graham Trucking entry.

The U-37 Miss Beacon Plumbing and the U-13 Graham Trucking did a slow lap side by side during the milling period to claim lanes one and two for the start of Heat 3A. From the inside, Jean Theoret in the U-37 crossed the line first and was never challenged for the lead throughout the heat and won by one-fourth of a lap. The U-13 driver J. Michael Kelly finished second gaining the points needed to try and make the final. The U-7 Formulaboats.com and driver Jimmy Shane finished third.  The U-50 Albert Lee was chasing the U-7 in turn one of lap two until the engine popped and the hot end blew giving the blue and yellow boat a “Did Not Finish” result. The “controversial” final heat had the U13 Graham Trucking entry sidelined driver J. Michael Kelly unable to finish the race due to a malfunctioning hatch.

The last race on the 2008 ABRA series will be in San Diego, California at the Bayfair on Mission Bay, September 19-21.