Sunday, October 14, 2012

One Hundred Four Miles Per Hour!

I am getting all kinds of free rides lately, it seems. Today my friend Ken came over from Connecticut with his forty-foot offshore powerboat. I should give you a bit of history. For years he designed next generation turbine engines for aircraft, and he is a "motorhead" and a crackerjack mechanic and engineer. He has owned boats since he was a kid. Back in 1976 he brought a Boston Whaler over here to Long Island, and took a bunch of us into New York Harbor for OpSail. Anyhow, today he came with his son and took me out for a ride in Long Island Sound. His lets his son do most of the driving - he's content to be the co-pilot. The water was relatively calm today, so his son gradually increased the speed from 40 miles an hour, until we were clocking along at ONE HUNDRED FOUR MILES PER HOUR! Wow! Yikes! Surprisingly it was a fairly gentle ride - nothing like I would have expected from a high-powered ocean racing machine. It was VERY cool to be going that fast.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pretty fancy boat! Not sure if I would want to be going 104 mph.
Nice that Ken could come to LI for you.
Joan

Carol said...

I know the owner and the boat very well, great people and great boat.... 104mph, thats awesome... Hoping I'll go this coming week :)

Chuck said...

You get to have all the fun!