PORT ANGELES — Sequim natives Dillon Brown Cummings and Teri Cummings didn’t let a motor of about 200 horsepower less than the rest of Saturday’s field of high-powered racers spoil their fun.
“He’s been killing it,” Teri Cummings said of her 21-year-old stepson, Paul Brown Cummings, who has been driving sprint boats since he was 16.
The Cummingses’ boat was just one of about two dozen sprint boats that filled the pit areas of Extreme Sports Park off Edgewood Drive west of the Port Angeles city limit on Saturday.
Thousands of race fans packed the stands of the Extreme Sports Park on a sunny Saturday afternoon for the third year the park has hosted the American Sprint Boat Racing Series.
High-powered boats ranging between 13 feet and 15 feet long plied the shallow waters of the multi-turn track, the roar of the engines filling the air as water sprayed from the boats’ motors.
Event spokesman Doc Reiss estimated about 7,500 people attended, slightly down from last year.
The park will host the rip-roaring sprint boats again Sept. 9 for the American Sprint Boat Racing Series national championships.
As of Saturday afternoon, Teri Cummings said she and her stepson, racing in No. 99 Jeepers Creepers for Sequim-based team TNT Racing, were in third in their supermodified class.
Reiss said the Cummingses ultimately came in fourth.
Winners in three classes
Driver Dennis Hughes of Spokane and navigator Matia Haskey of Aberdeen came in first among supermodifieds, racing for Overkill Racing in boat number 69.
Driver Doug Hendrickson and navigator Nichole Muller came in first in the A-400 class racing for Port-Angeles-based Wicked Racing, while driver Jerimy Brewer and Pressley Lollar of Tacoma, racing for Rum Runner Racing, came in first place in the superboat class, the most powerful of the three classes.
Teri Cummings, the navigator sitting next to her stepson as he whipped around as many as 13 turns at the Extreme Sports Park track, said her boat has been at a unique disadvantage the past few race events.
It blew a motor after crashing at a race in St. John about two months ago.
Since then, Jeepers Creepers has been running with a 450-horsepower engine borrowed from the pickup truck of a TNT Racing crew member, Cummings said.
The borrowed motor is about 200 horsepower shy of the boat’s usual motor, Cummings said, so her stepson has had to take every turn with the engine’s throttle opened wide to make up for the disadvantage in power.
“It’s up to his skill [as a driver],” Cummings said.
“That’s what has gotten us this far.”
Pedal to the metal
Dillon Brown Cummings said the hardest part about racing with the borrowed motor is keeping his foot pinned on the gas pedal through the track’s turns.
“It’s really hard wrapping your mind around that,” he said.
Each two-person boat driving team is given a specific route to take through the sport park’s 13 turns, a route not revealed until the night before the race.
“There’s no practicing,” said Sequim native Paul Gahr Jr., racing with his daughter, Taylor Gahr, in No. 2 Live Wire, also part of TNT Racing.
In an interview given while sitting in their A-400 class boat, the Gahrs said they’ve taken every spare moment they have before a run on the track to practice their assigned route.
Taylor Gahr, 18, like all sprint boat navigators, tells her father which turn to take with quick flicks of her wrist pointing either straight, left or right.
She’s done it for two years. Paul Gahr said she’s been doing a great job.
“When I turned the correct age, I came into it,” Taylor Gahr said, who took over for her brother, Josh, when he went off to college.
In Saturday’s final results, Reiss said the Gahrs came in third in the A-400 class.
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Reporter Jeremy Schwartz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jschwartz@peninsuladailynews.com.
