A loud ZOOOOM shook the building where I stood in Lowell a week ago. Sounded like a jet airliner taking off from Dexter Lake.
“That’s the boats,” a friend confided to this newcomer.
“Wow,” I thought. “Those babies must be equipped with jet engines.”
Turns out that members of the Columbia Drag Boat Association were holding their July competition on a 1,000-foot-long course that the hydroplane boats covered in a few seconds while racing two abreast in front of a Pengra Road park crowd.
I wondered, who would be adventuresome and brave enough to spend thousands of dollars and travel all over the West Coast while wagering life and limb for prize money and a winner’s trophy?
Peter “Pete” Collett helped his son, Craig, win the $1,200 “shoot-out” prize money in the 5.3-second class. Craig, 26, who pilots the boat, lives in Eugene and is learning to fly. Airplanes, that is. Pete, 59, who tunes the engine, lives in Veneta
Racing boats has been a family avocation for three generations. Pete’s father introduced his three sons to the sport. Twenty years ago Pete began crewing for a brother and now squeezes in racing boats while running Pete’s Ag Repair Shop.
I called Pete and learned how the hundred or so folks associated with the boat association drum up all that noise on Dexter Lake two or three times a year.
Pete first built a 9-second hydro boat. Nine seconds is the race duration. The pilot is equipped with an air capsule for use if catapulted into the air and sinks into the water. The boat dances, only touching water in a few places. Works well, Pete said, unless things go awry as they did for him at Dexter Lake in 2001.
“I went straight up in the air. The parachute used to slow the boat down slammed my boat down.”
“So, why race?”
“It’s an adrenaline rush,” he replied.
Forty-nine boats entered the Dexter race last weekend in various categories ranging from 6 to 9 seconds. The boats in Craig and Pete’s category were equipped with 2,000-hoursepower engines that can power a boat to 180 mph in seconds. The category in which Craig competed made six passes on the 1,000-foot course in an attempt to post a time nearest 5.3 seconds. The local father-son team qualified Saturday with a time of 5.301.
“Craig was driving,” Pete said. “My job was to tune the engine.”
The key to winning is not leaving the starting time too quickly, Pete said. It’s a matter of coordinating your take-off with lights flashing on what is called the Christmas tree.
You start a race 125 feet behind a line.
“The trick is to cross the starting light when the light goes green,” Pete said. “You must be wide open when the light goes on.”
Craig won the shoot-out prize when his competitor traveled through the Christmas tree on red. In other words, the competitor started too soon. The winning time: 5.34 seconds.
If you are interested in racing on Dexter Lake with people like Craig and Pete, be prepared to invest $60,000 to $70,000 in a boat. “Ours has everything on it,” Pete said. “That is everything but the name of a sponsor on its side.” You could, of course, drop down a few categories and begin racing for $5,000 to $10,000.
Pete estimates that the association has about 45 racing members and about that many who find other ways to enjoy the comradery of competing in a half dozen races a year.
“We’re family,” he says. “We’ll be back at Dexter Lake for the Northwest National competition on Sept.18-19.”
Meanwhile, Craig has received his airplane pilot’s license and is working on his instrument rating.
Don’t be surprised if someday Craig shakes a few buildings in Lowell while piloting an airplane as well as a boat.
Longtime Oregon journalist Dean Rea, widely known for his years as a University of Oregon journalism educator and editor at The Register-Guard in Eugene, serves as a founding board member, correspondent and columnist for The Herald.
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