FAST TIMES
SETTING RECORDS WITH AMF & KEN WARBY – The World’s Water Speed Record Holder – for 27 Years!
Race producers are hard to come by, so when someone new steps up to the plate, they need to be supported. AMF Offshore Racing’s owner John Haggin has an interest in expanding the awareness of turbine-powered boats that led him to promote a Kilo run event in mid April.
To do this, he lobbied APBA to make a new classification for Turbine Powered Yachts, both Vees and Cats. John’s interest and reason for sponsoring this event was to set a new APBA Speed Record with his own turbine powered Outerlimits. He originally intended to shoot for speed of 160 with a pair of Lycoming 703 turbines but opted at the last minute to stay with the proven T53’s to set the record at a mark that future challengers might view as obtainable. he plans to do it again next year and push the bar up the scale a few notches.
Crescent City Florida was chosen as the sight for this inaugural event. Crescent City is a tiny little on e traffic light town located in Florida. it’s about 100 miles north of Orlando and resides between two beautiful lakes. Lake Stella, a crystal clear fresh water lake about a mile long to the West and a larger Crescent lake to the East. Crescent lake is twelve miles long and connects to the St Johns River, which allows for ocean access.
AMF Racing could not have pulled off this APBA Special Event Kilo Run without the full support of Fast Boats Inc. of Central Florida, the local APBA club. This APBA Special Event was open to all smaller APBA classes and the new Performance Yacht Class. The only boats not invited were boats that would be legal to run in any of the SBI/APBA Offshore classes, as they’ll have their own kilo run later this summer.
It was interesting to learn how APBA sets up their timing equipment. once the course is professionally surveyed and markers are placed on shore, they set up what appears to be telescopes at both ends of the 5/8-mile course. These powerful telescopes can see the survey markers and are able to sense the race boats breaking the beam. No human intervention, with accuracy worthy of record book status.
This must have been just about the biggest thing to come to this quaint little municipality in a hundred years. this is a small town USA, where the town bar is adjacent to the Police Station and the most notable event in the town’s history happened when an Amtrack train derailed several years ago. The train was probably longer than the town! Crescent City is waiting fro Orlando’s suburban sprawl to extend and bring the town into the twentieth century. During this three day event, everyone commented at the beauty of this undeveloped area of central Florida.
DOWN UNDER: When I arrived Wednesday afternoon, everyone was sitting around and swapping racing stories over a beer. The guy next to me had a heavy Australian accent that sounded somewhat familiar. Under the dark glasses and black hat was none other than the most Extreme Boater of all time, ken Warby the Water Speed Record Holder. God I love having a tape recorder on me when I need it.
Setting the World Water Speed Record has been Ken’s life passion. his mind was made up from the time he was eight years old and glued a CO2 cartridge to a model boat and blew id across a neighbor’s pool. Thirty years later he claimed ownership of the record and lived to tell the story.
“Ken’s current World’s Record of 317.6 mph was set back in 1978 and stands today, even though people have lost their lives trying to surpass it.”