Powerboat Racing and Me

Powerboats and Me By Graham Bloomfield

Roy asked me to write about my history of watching powerboat racing at the Bristol50 celebration. An appropriate occasion because my introduction to powerboat racing was in the very harbour where that celebration took place.

I am a born and bred Bristolian and I now live on the northern fringe of the City. My childhood interests were Aircraft, my father was an Aircraft Engineer and his enthusiasm for aviation rubbed off on me. I was going to be a pilot, I was going to fly medical supplies across the Australian bush or fly millionaires all over the world in private jets. By 2022 I should have been hauling those same supplies and millionaires around the Milky Way Galaxy at warp 9.

I had no interest in boats, I never even learnt to swim. That was until the late 1980’s when I was working in Central Bristol. The local paper published a guide to the Powerboat Grand Prix and I realised that there was a practice on Friday afternoon. I took the afternoon off and as I left the office at lunch time and walked through the City Centre, I could hear the howl of the boats reflecting off the buildings. People who had no idea what was going on stopped and stared towards the docks. I walked down from the Centre past all the boats that had been moved into the area in front of the Industrial Museum. I got to the pits and realised they were fenced off. This is where one of my father’s most valuable lessons kicked in “If you don’t ask, you don’t get”. I put my head through the door of the caravan and asked if I could borrow a pass for half an hour to take some photos in the pits. I was shocked when the answer was yes.

I was like a kid in a toy shop, walking around all the boats in various states of maintenance, standing by the crane while the boats were lifted in and out of the dock, watching them disappear under Princes Street Bridge, my camera capturing precious memories all the time. True to my word I took the pass back to the office and walked across the bridge and down Whapping Wharf past the cranes, behind the grandstands still being built.

I stopped many times on my walk, taking pictures all the time, within reason, this was the age of film! I found a favourite spot on the exit from the basin turn where I could sit on the slope with my feet close to the water, shooting boats accelerating out of the turn. This was a favourite spot for all the subsequent Bristol GPs. On the

Saturday I walked the whole course again, although barriers had gone up in some places. On Sunday I sat in the grandstand watching the races.

This was my experience for the next three years, including my Friday pit walk, until the Bristol races ended.

Me and my wife, Ruth, later went to the F1 Grand Prix in Cardiff, not quite the event that Bristol was but good viewing around the dock.

A few years later me and Ruth were driving through the Cotswolds one day and stopped at the Old Rangoon, and realised there was a Powerboat meeting on. We had lunch in the garden then drove around the lake and watched the boats racing. We saw an advert for other meetings so attended a few meetings there. Then the racing stopped….

From a Powerboat point of view we lost track of what was happening. I got freelance photography work shooting Formula 1 cars, ASCAR racing at Rockingham, aviation events etc.

In the late noughties I saw an advert for a Powerboat meeting at Kingsbury Water Park. We drove into the park, not really knowing where we were going, we drove past the pits and parked in a small field overlooking the lake. We walked back towards the pits and met Marion Palfreyman and Jeni Jelf sat outside a camper van by the lake. That was one of those meetings that changes your life. We talked about our history with Powerboats and they told us about the national championships. We also met Martin Powell who invited us to the next meeting at Stewartby.

We found a “beach” by Stewartby lake giving a spectacular view of the pits turn. The first time we saw an F2 boat fly past, splashing us with spray, making that familiar howl, I was transported back to Bristol in the 80’s.

We have made many friends in the Powerboat family and are always made to feel very welcome. We have spent so many happy days by the lakes at Stewartby and Kingsbury, we went to a few internationals in Nottingham, a couple of meets in Cardiff Bay.

We have made friends in the Offshore and Thundercat championships as well.

I’m proud to say that our photos have been shared all over the world across many platforms and media.

The highlight of all our Powerboat experiences was the 2018 F1 Grand Prix in London. We managed to get media passes so we could get closer to the action, meet up with our friends from the National scene and make some new friends from the International circus. We had a wonderful weekend. We had always planned to go to Portugal but it hasn’t happened yet so having an F1 GP in our own country was a real treat.

Nobody knows the future of Powerboat racing or our future but we look forward to new experiences. Perhaps we will get to a Portugal GP one day……..

Graham and Ruth at the Bristol 50 event

No one said it was going to be easy! I guess not. But no one said it would be this hard, either. I should write a book –‘The Trials and Tribulations of trying to preserve the history of circuit powerboat racing’.

Someone asked me last week, ‘was there any research to suggest that there was a ‘public interest’ in preserving the history of circuit powerboat racing.’ From the feedback I get, there is, but how much of an interest is hard to quantify. Fast On Water’s Mission Statement states,

‘To create, for the public good, a definitive collection of circuit powerboats, engines, memorabilia and archive and to display these in a dynamic and interactive museum setting that will inspire and educate.’ Next year will see ten years since we officially set out on our journey, with the long-term aim of setting up a museum. The Covid lockdowns certainly didn’t help us in moving forward. Our collection continues to grow in size, making storage an ongoing problem, which, if anyone can help with, please let us know –fastonwater@live.co.uk The latest edition to our collection is the loan of Robin Stoddard’s Burgess F3, in which Ken McCrorie won the world championship in 1998 and Robin came second in the world championships in 2000.

As you will see from the following article, the Bristol 50 event was a great success. What the organising of the event did show up, was the attitude of Bristol City Council towards what we are doing. To them, it’s as if the 19 years of the powerboat races never happened. If they are mentioned anywhere in articles on the history of Bristol Docks, it’s usually a short paragraph or sometimes only a sentence, or sometimes not mentioned at all. One of the few people on the Council who could see the benefits the races brought to the city, is the elected Lord Mayor, Marvin Rees. From what I hear, he was in the minority on the Council. Never fear, we will keep at it, with a rethink on the location.

We thank all those of you, who continue to support us and welcome anyone new who would like to become a member or get involved in our aim to inspire and educate through the history of circuit powerboat racing.