Emotion as mother ties-up after offshore race

BLOCKED VIEW: Second placegetter Outboard Pro roars past spectators at Perfume Point during Saturday's Napier offshore powerboat race. PHOTO/PAUL TAYLOR

Napier's annual offshore power boat race had an emotional celebration when race organisation stalwart Colleen Carson was congratulated and thanked for her efforts be race-winning driver Warren Lewis.

It came at the prizegiving night at the Napier Sailing Club, a few hours after Lewis and his Fairview team scored an expected win in the race, which Mrs Carson had said would be her last after being involved in the organisation for all 28 years since helping save the event in 1990.

"In my time in the sport there has been no family there's been no family as well represented as the Carson family," he told a gathering full of family teams involved with the boats which raced the two half-hour race segments on a triangular course in the Westshore-Ahuriri basin.

"Clearly, Colleen and her family set the standards for what we all aspire to in the sport," he said.

Colleen Carson and husband Ken, often referred to as "chief cook and bottlewasher", have headed a full family involvement in the sport, in which sons Tony and Wayne in 1993 won the New Zealand Offshore Powerboat Association's national drivers championship, of which the Napier race is a part, this year as the third of seven rounds.

Each was also in other champion boats, and the tradition has been carried-on by Colleen and Ken Carson's grandchildren — Tony's daughters Charlotte and Lily, and Wayne's family of Max, Jamie and Shara.

There was some drama for the family on Saturday in the new two-race format, which ended with Charlotte and Lily each winning in their Sports 200 class, in the 19ft Sonic monohull Red Steel, each with father Tony also in the boat.

In the first race, the boat broached, throwing Tony Carson from his seat, on to his daughter and ultimately pinning him between the seats.

Charlotte Carson was unable to race the second leg, leaving Lilly to join their father in the boat and complete a unique family double for the day.

With a shortage of craft on the water this season, and only 13 starters across the 100-mile and 60-mile classes of the Red Steel Napier Offshore race, Lewis and co-driver John Shand had little challenge other than the conditions, which ranged from off the flatter seas in the lanes immediately off the Westshore and Ahuriri beachfronts to a significant swell across the arc from off the Port of Napier to the northern point.

There were just four in the 100-mile class. with second place going to Outward Pro, driven by Hayden Spiers, of Whangarei.

His wife, Delia, made her first appearance of the season as co-driver Mike Gerbic in 60-mile winner Espresso Engineers. She broke when she and her husband crashed in the Napier race in 2013.

Mrs Carson recalled the peaks of the sport, when entries were more than double those of Saturday's event, just quietly hoping a new committee would form in Napier to take the race to the levels she believes it should be reaching.

There were those who could not see that happening without Mrs Carson being involved, just quietly.