ITALY (San Benedetto del Tronto)

Saturday 10th May (Result: Retired)

Italy heralded the start of a new years’ competition for Ocean Dragon Racing who over the winter have partnered with the Chinese Global satellite TV Channel, Phoenix Chinese News and Entertainment or PCNE for short, (broadcasting to over a 100 million viewers), consequently the boat is to be called Phoenix 8. The number eight has always been adopted by our team because in Asia the word for the number eight sounds like “prosper” or “wealth.” We have also maintained our sponsorship with the Sun Lik Chinese Beer brewed by Shepherd Neame in Kent. Over the winter we have done major work on the engines and as the dyno tests at Cosworth showed, there was minimal wear and tear on components and this is surely from the superior quality of the Q8Oils we always use. We have also fitted Arneson Drives that went in smoothly and with perfect integration.

Steve and Scotty set off for the long trip down to Italy and picked the right tunnel to cross the Alps with minimal bureaucracy and paperwork (learnt the hard way last year!) Unfortunately the Tom Tom was not quite so clever and and as soon as they left the motorway and headed for the marina in town they were directed through the town centre where they got stuck in narrow streets, luckily they were saved by a local polizia on his trusty scooter, he proceeded to lead them directly to the pits by instructing irate locals out of the way with a mix of gesticulations and language! Many thanks to the local polizia of San Benedetto for helping us out of a tight situation.

Race 1 was an endurance course of 75.4 nm over 9 laps plus the start lap, Phoenix 8 was running really well and climbing up the field in the capable care of our Greek driver from last year Andreas Chalkiopoulos with Martin at the throttles. Unfortunately on lap 6 we blew a water pressure hose and were forced to retire from the race with water coming on board, we were successfully recovered and able to fix the damage.

Later that day we met a reporter from the Government Chinese Newspaper based in Rome, Lei Zhong and he got together with Jason Cheng (Director Phoenix CNE Europe) and Marc (Director PCNE France.) We all went to a local Peking restaurant and met the local Chinese Association for Eastern Italy who had specially arranged their meeting to coincide with the visit of the ODR team and Phoenix 8 . We had a beautiful meal and much competitive toasting or “ganbei” by all, the host holds a glass with both hands , looks you directly in the eyes and invites you to “drain your glass” at the same time! Later the team attended a party with Olly and Andrea, hosted by another of our sponsors the brewery Shepherd Neame who had a Sun Lik Beer party with P1.

Tip: Don’t use the Mont Blanc Tunnel if you’re towing a large boat!

 

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