Team Tarka

We just got back from a BBQ with the Cedarville team – Thanks guys! Had a friendly game of football soccer, and unfortunately we lost…

Lets hope our boys beat USA at the World Cup tomorrow!

Today was a very good day. We not only managed second overall in the qualifying, but second in the first sprint heat giving us second place overall at the end of the second day of the competition! Not bad at all!

We are running both endurance heats tomorrow, so the rest of us are fighting over the hammock for some sleep!

Well we passed the rest of the qualifying events, we got the FASTEST slalom time! We also tried out the new monster prop for the sprint and the torque it produced almost rolled the boat so Ted killed the throttle half way down the run and we still managed the second fastest time!

Its been a very long double length day here in Arkansas. We are all knackered and I apologise as this post might not make that much sense!

We managed to re-build the boat by about 6am (The boat arrived about 11:30pm yesterday) and got to the lake. We set up the boat for sprint for the technical inspections and passes with flying colours. We then rebuilt the boat for the endurance set up and did the manoeuvring qualifying.

We then rebuilt the boat again for the endurance and were just about to go and do the sprint qualifying when we discovered that the battery isolation switch had welded itself into the on position – not ideal! Reuben dismantled it and discovered what had happened whilst Peter, Rory and Jake set of on a wild goose chase to try and find a replacement switch.

It was a fruitless search as no-one in Fayetteville stocks switches capable of passing 600 amps of continuous current!

Luckily Reuben thinks he should be able to fix the switch and we should, provided we have no further bad luck, be able to finish our qualifying runs tomorrow.

I will get some photos of today uploaded tomorrow, but now it is time for sleep…

So finally some good news. The boat is on a truck, heading for Fayetteville and we should be able to prep the boat tonight! Our Phil Collins CD has kindly agreed to provide some music for our all nighter! Time for a quick nap before an epic night’s work begins…

We spent most of the day buying bits for tomorrow and getting sun burnt whilst we constructed a launching trolley. In the afternoon, as a form of retaliation to the customs cock up, we did some espionage over at Arkansas University. We had a good look round at the Arkansas boats and their obscene number of motors and batteries. I think we counted at least 50 batteries and 12 electric motors. Their monohull has a rather strange lump on the bottom of it which can’t help their resistance in either the sprint or the endurance – we shall see in a couple of days!

It appears that some of the other teams are playing dirty and have tipped off American customs that we might win the competition and have stolen our boat. It was meant to be in Fayetteville yesterday (Monday) but we wont be seeing the boat until tomorrow evening at the earliest (Wednesday). Apparently, the boat was held up in Heathrow as UK customs wanted to check the boat, and so arrived late to the US, but is missing some vital paperwork which Peter has been trying to sort out all day.

Massive pain in the backside, but fingers crossed we can pull a long night tomorrow and get the boat ready for scrutinising on Thursday.

We’ve made it safely. They even let us through American immigration, despite our best efforts.

Here is a photo of Tom and Rory enjoying some time out in between flights at Chicago airport.

Today we are going to find the boat and unpack and test! Bring it on America, bring it on!

The boat arrived in Memphis and after a slight glitch has made it through customs! It should now be on its way to Fayetteville where we will join her on Monday! Woop woop!

Well it looks like Tarka II is enjoying some time out in Luxembourg for a couple of days before making her way to Memphis via Chicago. Not bad, since she left Heathrow last week. She should be in Memphis tomorrow night. Safe Journey!