I worked this weekend for the gentleman who got me started in event production; Jim Russell. He is doing very few events of his own these days, being 65 years old and concentrating mostly on smaller projects. But each year, he puts together a long distance jet ski race called the Mark Hahn Memorial. It's a 300 mile race that's dedicated to the memory of a jet ski racer (Hahn) who died of a heart attack during a race four years ago.
My job at this event is to assist with the timing and scoring. That entails sitting on a boat that is anchored out from the shoreline, with a clipboard and watch, keeping track of all the jet skis and their laps they've completed. Since it's a 300mile race, the laps are 10 miles long and each racer must do 30 laps.
That means every lap is VERY important. Every jet ski must be accounted for, otherwise you're jipping them of 10 whole miles. Ouch.
The average speed of these jet skis is 60-65 miles per hour. So if a jet ski crashed into our timing boat for any reason, it would be a real disaster. This was something we actually discussed, after the race had begun and we'd figured out how fast they were running. And of course after having a few close calls with some jet skis that seemed to be turning a little close to us, we determined that we'd get hurt pretty badly should something actually happen.
With two laps to go, the jet skis seemed to be making a mad dash to pass one another. They were all of a sudden very close together so we had to pay close attention to keep our numbers straight.
I had to stand up with my score board because the waves created by the passing jet skis was rocking the boat and making it impossible to write legibly in the little squares I had on my paperwork. I stood toward the front of the boat, to get a good look at the jet skiers as they approached so I could make sure they made it around every single buoy marker that they were supposed to.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a whole lot of black and yellow coming at me very quickly. It was one of the jet skis, coming full speed and out of control.
I flinched because I knew it was coming. Sure enough, "BAM!" It sounded like someone had taken a sledge hammer to a huge loud piece of metal. He hit straight on, creating such a lurch for our boat that everything got knocked out of my hands.
I ran over to the edge of the boat, expecting to see an unconscious jet skier floating face down in the water. Thankfully, he was okay. I'm assuming he jumped clear once he realized he wasn't going to get his jet ski turned in time. Then I turned around. There were loud jet skis all around us, still racing of course, and the boat was moving all over the place from both the crash and the other jet skis.
The front of the boat was peeled back a good two feet from the impact. And on the floor was Monica, who was running the scoring computer. The impact sent her flying backwards and she hit her head; she was out cold face down on the floor.
I didn't want to move her, so I picked up the radio and called to the shore for help.
I informed the race director that we needed medics, that the racer appeared to be okay but Monica was unconscious. I struggled to reach the flags we had on board; green for the start, white for the last lap, checkered for the finish, and red for an emergency where the race needed to stop. I waved the red flag and informed the race director that we could not score therefore I was stopping the race.
He didn't know the mess that we were dealing with out there, so he was telling me to keep the race going and to continue scoring. I didn't argue. I found my clipboard, found a pen, and started logging the jet skis as they went by. All the while I held the white flag in the air because we were now in our final lap, and I talked on the radio, affirming that we needed medics.
FINALLY they sent medics out to us on a boat. Monica stayed unconscious for several minutes, but by the time the medics got there she was starting to come around. They loaded her onto a backboard and took her to the ambulance. While that was going on, the race was finishing and I was scoring it.
What a mess. When I finally got to the race director on shore, I wanted to kill him. He admitted to me that once he found out the huge problems we had out there, that I was right in making the decision to wave the red flag. We looked at my scoring sheets and determined that the end of the race was where the scoring was interrupted by the accident.
What followed was several hours of verifying numbers manually, since our computer and computer operator were knocked out in the accident. What a pain!!
All in a day's work...
