By Brad LaBrie Peninsula Daily News
PORT ANGELES — Paul Gahr Jr. isn’t sleeping well this week.
That’s because the Sequim concrete boom pump operator will be driving a super-fast sprint boat in Saturday’s races at Extreme Sports Park in Port Angeles.
“I’m having sleepless nights,” Gahr said Wednesday.
“I don’t sleep well up to a week before a race. It’s pretty intense racing and I have a ton of stuff going through my head, making it hard to shut down for the night.”
He’s been spending the week checking, rechecking and then rechecking his boat, Live Wire.
You can never be too careful when you’re driving a 680-horsepower boat that is only 13 feet, 6 inches long and going 70 to 75 mph on a water course with sharp turns, figure eights and small circles that goes around small islands.
Some drivers end up on the islands when they miscalculate a curve.
Gahr again will be driving with his 17-year-old daughter, Taylor, beside him as the racing team’s navigator.
This is the second year that Taylor Gahr, a Sequim High School senior, is navigating for Live Wire.
She’s following in the footsteps of her older brother, Josh, who navigated for his father for two years before starting college in Beaverton, Ore.
“She is amazing,” Gahr said about his daughter. “She is rock-steady in the boat for me.”
As the navigator, Taylor Gahr directs her father along the correct course route.
Each boat has a different route on the course, and that route is not given out until the night before the race.
For this week’s race at Extreme Sports Park, the Gahrs will receive their route Friday night.
Taylor Gahr, an honor-roll student with a 3.9 GPA, will study and memorize the route, and then will have just a few seconds to motion to her father which way to go at each turn on the course Saturday, right, left or straight ahead.
Because of the noise of the boat, Taylor has to communicate with her father by a series of hand signals.
“You have to set your mind to it,” Taylor Gahr said in an article written about her earlier this year.
“You have to learn the track — memorize it. I personally have to go further into it.
“I talk to myself in my head. Figure eights, circles, than add little details, [such as] two channels after that island.”
Live Wire, green and purple with No. 2 on it, always is one of the top boats in the A-400 classification during races in Port Angeles.
Paul and Josh Gahr captured the National Finals championship in 2011, the first year Extreme Sports Park was open, while Paul and Taylor Gahr won one of two races in Port Angeles last year.
The Live Wire racing team claimed sixth place overall in 2012 after missing the first race of the season, and it comes to Port Angeles ranked fifth out of 11 boats in the 2013 standings.
Paul and Josh Gahr also claimed second overall in the 2010 season.
Paul Gahr is excited to be racing in Port Angeles this week.
“I’m looking forward to racing in front of my own hometown crowd, and to seeing my [out of town] family and friends,” he said.
“I can’t wait. We have been talking about it all year.”
Josh Gahr, though, will be missing the family festivities.
“Josh is working this weekend and won’t be able to come up,” Paul Gahr said.
But there still will be plenty of the Gahr family around.
Gahr’s father, 83-year-old Paul Gahr Sr., is a member of the Live Wire crew, along with Gahr’s wife, Tina Gahr.
“She is a huge part [of the racing team] behind the scenes,” Paul Gahr said about his wife.
Gahr also likes to race in Port Angeles because the course is set up more for the drivers than the boats.
“It’s a technical course with a lot of tight turns,” Gahr said.
Some courses, like the Albany, Ore., track that the Gahrs raced at last month, are built more for boat speed than driver expertise.
“We never do well at Albany, which has long straight-aways,” Gahr said.
“Some boats are faster than ours.”
Paul Gahr and his crew have worked on Live Wire, though, to make it faster.
“We went 3 to 4 seconds faster at Albany,” Gahr said.
“I’m looking forward to see how we do Saturday.”
Extreme Sports Park, 2917 W. Edgewood Drive, also will be hosting the national championship finals Sept. 7.
