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Boat racing by the Marine Racing Club of Illinois, pictured, will be in Danville this weekend for the Thunder on the Vermilion boat races.
A Marine Racing Club boat race is pictured in action.
Boat races are returning to Danville this weekend.
Boat racing by the Marine Racing Club of Illinois, pictured, will be in Danville this weekend for the Thunder on the Vermilion boat races.
A Marine Racing Club boat race is pictured in action.
Boat races are returning to Danville this weekend.
DANVILLE — Boat racing isn’t quite like other motor sports.
Michael Mackey, secretary and treasurer for the Marine Racing Club of Illinois, compared the sport to hydroplaning and driving a vehicle, when it then skids, on a wet surface.
“It’s like a forklift on ice,” he also said as another comparison. “It’s predictably unpredictable. The racecourse changes moment by moment, with the water, current, wave and wind.”
With the racer kneeling down in a small boat and traveling at about 60 miles per hour, Mackey said things happen pretty quickly.
“It’s pretty exciting,” he said about the adrenaline rush. “It’s like nothing else; no other motor sport.”
Thunder on the Vermilion boat races return to Lake Vermilion this weekend.
The Gao Grotto, 2400 Denmark Road, is partnering with the Marine Racing Club of Chicago for this year’s event.
Three years ago, the power boat races returned after a decades-long absence. The Gao Grotto partnered with the Indiana Outboard Association in 2019.
Organizer Buddy Freed, with the Gao Grotto, said they couldn’t find a date to have a race with that group this year, so they reached out to a couple other clubs.
Freed thanked the community for its support, for the printed program and making the boat races a reality. He also thanked Aqua Illinois, Vermilion County Conservation District and Vermilion County Sheriff’s Department.
The boat races are a fundraiser for the Gao Grotto, with funding going toward building improvements.
Freed and the Marine Racing Club are excited about this year’s event.
“We’re really looking forward to coming down and putting on a great show,” Mackey said.
Mackey said they did a site study of Lake Vermilion in the spring and met Freed and others here.
He said they were welcomed by a “great bunch” of people, and the club saw that the lake was “just outstanding.”
They found a date that worked, and they’re hoping to draw about 20-30 trailers, and possibly have 50 entries or more in this weekend’s boat races.
Mackey, of Dekalb, races with his oldest son, and his son’s fiancée.
The club will start setting up for the races on Friday. They’ll get the racecourse set up with marker buoys, start clock and judges’ stand. They also will test the course with practice races on Friday.
The event starts at 10 a.m. on both Saturday and Sunday. Races are expected to start closer to 10:30 a.m. or 11 a.m. and run to about 4 p.m. or 5 p.m.
Free admission and parking are provided by the Gao Grotto.
Food and drinks will be available to purchase. Music will be by Captain’s 3 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Friday; Booe & Bobz from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday; and Mike Russell (Hoosier Daddy) from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday.
Mackey said they’re looking forward to having a crowd of spectators, which they normally don’t have.
“We don’t have a huge base. This is grassroots racing,” he said.
Racers can be in the junior league, from 9 years old to 16 years old, and older. One club member is pushing 70 years old, and another from Oshkosh, Wis., is about 80 years old.
“It’s a very broad age range of drivers that we have,” Mackey said.
Mackey said he started this “circus” of boat racing in 1982 when he was 14 years old. He took a break, but remained active in photographing races, and came back to racing again in 2008. At some point, all three of his children have raced, too.
Some racers travel throughout the country chasing points for the national championships, while others just stay local.
The Danville race is for points, no trophy or cash prizes.
“It’s for fun and bragging rights,” Mackey added.
They can have as many as 12 racers at a time. They need four to make a race.
“It looks like it’s going to be a great race,” he said.
They hope it turns into an annual event in Danville.
According to the Marine Racing Club: there are two basic styles of outboard powerboat racing race boat — the hydroplane and the runabout. The hydroplane is a three-point hull consisting of the aft bottom and two forward sponsors. Air is trapped under the hydroplane, and the boat literally skims over the surface of the water on a cushion of air.
By contrast, the runabout has a single point of contact with the water as it slices through. Since there is more surface area actually touching the water, runabouts are slightly slower than their hydroplane counterparts.
Both boat designs deftly carve the left-hand corners where arc and apex play the major roles as to who emerges from a corner fastest. Turn too hard, and the boat will hook and pop you out of the cockpit like a cork from a champagne bottle. Turn too wide, and you give up valuable inside lane position to your competition. Races can be won and lost in the turns, and making that perfect corner is an art form that requires practice, skill, and even a little luck. In the club’s Racing School, the club lays out the theory of making such a perfect corner.
More information about the club can be found on its Facebook page and website.
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