FRIDAY, MAY 17, 2013 - Well, we made it to Rouen yesterday afternoon.  After an overnight flight from Washington to Paris we made the final leg by car to Rouen.  It is my first trip to France and boy do they do things at a different pace over here.  Granted, a self-proclaimed hillbilly like myself does operate a little more relaxed than probably the average American does, but the pace here is fast and furious.

My first experience in the rental car is being aware of motorcycles and scooters.  There are more of them here than cars and they don't appear to have to obey any traffic laws.  They drive in-between the lanes of traffic just inches from your side mirrors and when you are stopped at an intersection they just zip right up past you to the front of the line.  I'm not talking one or two.  There are dozens at every traffic stop.

We drove around Rouen for more than an hour trying to find our hotel.  The streets are barely marked and the hotel is in the middle of a block in an old building you wouldn't suspect was a hotel.  Once inside it was very nice, but the entrance is in what American's would call an alley.  Here, the small single lane stone street is a walkway for pedestrians and a freeway with apprently no rules for vehicles.

Most of the cars are nothing I have ever even heard of and none are bigger than the smallest of compact cars we would offer in West Virginia.  We parked in the Grande Garage at the hotel for "big" cars.  Once in the space you have to suck it in to even get out of the car as there is about 12 inches on each side of space between you and next car.  I would hated to have chosen the compact garage.

Well, we toured with city - on foot mind you - last night and looked over the race course.  Today, as we are six hours ahead of those of you in America's eastern time zone, we will be off to the paddock to check out the boat and register for tonight's public ceremony and driver's events.  More photos to be posted this evening - late afternoon for those of you in the U.S.

Rouen is a beautiful city.  Many of the buildings are 500 years old and it is filled with massive churches and catherals dating back to the 1400s.  It is one of France's oldest cities and the site of the death of Joan of Arc nearly 600 years ago, the place of her death just a couple hundred feet from our hotel window.  The storefronts remind me of the old movie about Ebenezer Scrooge as each business has it shingle mounted over the door and the wooden and stone buildings look to be several hundred years old.  An awesome site to see.  A bustling 21st Century city set in a 16th Century backdrop.

Dana Tomes

TUESDAY, MAY 14, 2013 - Many months of preparation and the moment has finally arrived.  We are off to France to compete in the 24 Hours of Rouen endurance race this coming weekend.  We will drive from Paris to Rouen, arriving at the race site around noon on Thursday to check in and begin preparing the boat.  Being a first-timer at the race I will have to participate in a five-lap supervised practice Friday morning before the teams are registered and introduced to the public Friday evening.  There is a two-hour driver meeting that lasts until 10:30 Friday night.  We then have open practice Saturday morning before preparing for the race start Saturday afternoon.

If you want to follow this year's events at Rouen I will attempt to post photos via Twitter at www.twitter.com/herdracing and www.facebook.com/herdracing each evening.  I will be the only racer from North America participating this year so I will do my best to represent my little part of the world as best as possible.

Back in the race shop, our portable radios were dropped off at the two-way communication store today to get programmed.  Being that myself and Jerry Guinn will be racing at the same time we are having our radios set up for both of us to operate on the same radios, just different frequencies.

And our ATV went to the paint shop tonight to get a some touchups to match our race boat.  We don't have room in our new hauler to take along our Polaris Ranger like we did in our tractor trailer hauler the past few years, but there does appear to be enough room to fit in a small ATV that we can use to tow the boat around the race sites.  We traded for a used Yamaha, but it needs a facelift before going racing so Luke Meade will try to work some paint magic while we are in Rouen to get the ATV ready for Knoxville.

And lastly, Jerry Guinn's Seebold SST-120 is off to Louisville, KY tomorrow to get rigged and the power added.  The boat has been painted, buffed, lettered and now will be rigged and readied for a weekend of practice before Jerry heads off to Knoxville.

Hopefully, I'll get a chance to blog from France later this week and early next week.  Stay tuned for photos and updates beginning Thursday night.

Dana Tomes

SATURDAY, MAY 11, 2013 - Our Lamb Formula 2 boat is going under the knife this week.  The boat was dropped off at Gordon Downard's boat shop in Portsmouth, OH on Wednesday where he is finishing up the floatation airbag installation.  I hope to pick it up as soon as we return from France and get the paint touched up before our trip to Knoxville for the season opener.

Back at the race shop, our preparations for 2013 are full steam ahead.  Our 2013 driver postcard was finished up this week and sent to our friends at Fidelity Printing.  It will be tweaked to perfection before being printed off and returned to us before the end of the month.

The task of loading the boat hauler has also continued.  This week we got most of our parts stocked in the cabinets.  Hopefully we have thought of everything and luckily we have lots of storage space.  We have nearly every spare part you can image now from powerpacks to stators to triggers to plug wires to head gaskets to air jets.  We may not have every part we might need but we have learned the past few years that there was a whole passel of parts we were lacking.  Our testing session in Dayton last weekend let me see we still have a lot of stuff to purchase.  We hope to have that list satisfied before heading to Knoxville later this month.

Speaking of Knoxville, the APR Superleague Gazette which covers the specifics of the race has been posted for viewing.  You can view the document online at http://www.aprsuperleague.com/gazette.html.  I haven't been to the Knoxville race site before but by reading the Gazette I understand it may be an adventure.  Anywhere that requires that the race boats be put into the water with cranes and the cold pit area also serves as a four-lane highway has to provide some excitement.  I just hope that downtown Knoxville in no way resembles the overcrowding issues we suffer through each July 4th in Pittsburgh.

Lastly, we leave for Rouen, France in just four days and will be racing on the River Sienne in exactly one week from today.  Our flight from Charleston to DC leaves mid-day on Wednesday.  We are scheduled to arrive in Paris early Thursday morning and will drive two hours to Rouen where I will meet up with the Shark Team and get acquainted with our boat.  We will be on the water testing on Friday before being introduced to the public during a press conference on Friday evening.  The race is set to begin at 3 p.m. local time on Saturday and will end at 9 p.m. local time on Monday.  Racing is scheduled for six hours on Saturday, 12 hours on Sunday and six hours on Monday.

Lots is still left to be done before we leave this coming week and lots remains to be done as soon as we get back as there is only a nine day window from when we return from abroad to kicking off our U.S. season in Tennessee!

Dana Tomes

MONDAY, MAY 06, 2013 - Well, we're back from Dayton, OH where we finally got our boat wet for the first time this year.  We spent the weekend at Eastwood Lake breaking in our primary engine package and rigging and tuning on our Lamb race hull.  Everything went very well and we will be able to go to Knoxville, TN for the season opener in four weeks with a competitive and nicely rigged boat.

Many thanks are due to David McCormick and Jerry Guinn.  Both put in a full weekend from early mornings to late nights working non-stop on the boat.  The wealth of knowledge these two brought to the table was amazing.  If there are two more knowledgable people in the Mercury motor business then I have yet to meet them.  David and Jerry were able accomplish more with our boat in two days than I could have hoped to have accomplished in two months on my own.  We also were joined by race brothers David and Paul Salmon who helped us launch, fuel, clean and prepare the boats.  A big "thank you" goes out to all four!  Sunday was the first time in my four years of racing that I have felt like the boat I was driving was performing the way it was built to perform.  A pretty neat feeling!

The next stop for the race boat is back to Gordon Downard's shop in Portsmouth, OH on Wednesday where he will finish the airbag installation project.  Gordon will keep the boat while I go to Rouen, France to race next week and will hopefully have it ready for me when I get back home a week later.  When finished it should be one of just a handful of race boats in the U.S. which feature a floatation rescue system, manufactured by Seebold Sports.

A quick trip back to the paint booth to do some touch-ups around the airbag installation area and then the boat will be prepped for our trip to Knoxville on May 30.  Time is flying, but thanks to some great people we have seemed to catch up quite a bit the past couple weeks!

Dana Tomes

FRIDAY, MAY 03, 2013 - All of the preparation that has gone into the past seven months will be put on the table tomorrow morning when Herd Racing will be one of several racing teams that will take to Eastwood Lake in Dayton, OH to shake down it's 2013 race hull.

Jerry Guinn and myself arrived in Dayton mid-afternoon today and continued rigging our Lamb SST-120 race boat before reporting to Wright State University to participate in capsule training.  My capsule training certificate was actually good until October of this year, but the race events in Europe we will be participating in this sumer require capsule training to have been completed during the same calendar year in which you race.  Our training was done in October 2011 and expires in October 2013.  But, after tonight's training we are good until October 2014 now and able to comply with the UIM mandate of same-year capsule training for our World Endurance Series races.

David McCormick of Nameoki Village Marine arrived this evening.  The three of us will tackle the remaining issues on the boat tomorrow morning when teams begin testing at Eastwood Lake.  My hopes are to get the boat ready for the water by noon and get the motor broke in and a few sessions on the water tomorrow.  That will leave Sunday for propeller testing and setup adjustments.  Just having a little seat time in the boat before our season debut in Knoxville, TN, in four weeks is going to be a plus.  Any time on the water this weekend and getting the boat set up right will be a big relief for my mind.

I owe a huge "thanks" to Jerry and Dave for giving up their weekends to help us get better!  These two have a wealth of knowledge in regards to boat racing and I am very thankful they have agreed to help Herd Racing's program.

A couple sponsors will be stopping by the lake tomorrow to see the boat and chat a while.  I am sure we'll post some photos tomorrow evening of our first day of testing.  2013's race season is upon us!  It will be exciting to strap in a boat for the first time in more than a half year in just a few hours.

Dana Tomes

MONDAY, APRIL 29, 2013 - Our upcoming weekend of testing in Dayton, OH is shaping up to be a busy one.  We have scheduled some final rigging on our boat on Friday afternoon after arriving at Eastwood Lake in Dayton, before heading to the pool at Wright State University to undergo capsule training.

Saturday's agenda will include breaking in two powerheads and getting a few laps on the water, before hitting the water hard all day Sunday to fine tune our hull and pick out our best propellers.  Throw in a meeting with Elmer Shaeffer of E.A. Schaeffer Oil Company on Saturday afternoon and a visit by the ownership team at FastAppz on Saturday morning and we have a full weekend of activities in front of us.

But, there's still a bunch to do prior to packing up for our weekend testing trip.  Need to stop by Huntington SCUBA to fill up our air bottles and drop by Oliver Fuels to fill up our non-ethanol fuel cans with some boat racing fuel sometime this week.  Wouldn't you know I have four 12-hour work days at the office staring at me as well.

Luckily, fellow racer Jerry Guinn and engine builder David McCormick will be meeting up with me in Dayton to put the final touches on our boat before we back it in the water.  I couldn't ask for more knowledge than those two helping us jumpstart our program this year.  Both have more time working on, building and selling Mercury outboard motors than I could ever hope to match.

We should have all of our uniform designs finished up in the next day or two and will post those to the website for everyone to see.  Lots happening as we approach our first weekend on the water in 2013.

Dana Tomes

FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013 - It's hard to believe that the long winter is over and in just a week from today we will be at Eastwood Lake in Dayton, OH to begin the 2013 race season.  We are scheduled to arrive in Dayton mid day next Friday to finish setup on the engine and begin breaking in our two primary powerheads.  Jerry Guinn will be joining us from Portsmouth, OH, along with David McCormick from the St. Louis area who will head up our engine program in 2013.  I will be updating my capsule training at Wright State University Friday evening before getting our new Lamb race boat on the water for the first time next Saturday and Sunday for two days of testing.

The boat is getting it's new paint job baked on tonight at Luke Meade's body shop just down the street.  I stopped by the see the boat today and he was finishing up the rear cowling.  The rest of the boat is in paint covered with clear.   With a coat of wax it will shine like a mirror I am sure.

The boat comes back to the race shop tomorrow where it will be buffed, waxed and the decals added this coming week, along with our engine, air system and computer systems.  It should be ready to load up in the hauler a week from today and head off for some pre-season testing.

In other news, our crew t-shirts arrived today and our driver suit (which can you see a sample of in the photo above) was shipped off to the embroidery shop today.  It will get a whole slew of logos on the front and a handful more, along with our boat number, on the back.  It should have it back by about May 10th, just in time to pack it up for our trip on May 15 to Rouen, France.  Our air mask has been serviced at Tiger Performance Products and is on it's way back via UPS.  Only our team hats and official team uniform shirts remain in the production stages.

The hauler is almost loaded and the pieces are falling together.  One week to test time!  Hoping to get a few photos of the boat up on the website this week.

Dana Tomes

SUNDAY, APRIL 21, 2013 - A good bit to report since our last post early last week.  For starters, APR Superleague has announced the past couple of days that the Aurora, IN race which has been an August staple on the league schedule for the past 13 years will cease this year, at least for one year.  The race is being moved upstream to Rising Sun, IN, a closer suburb of Cincinnati.  Rising Sun, a small river city which previously hosted boat racing events, is reported to have a very nice riverfront park as you can see in the photo above.  The dates will remin the same as they always have for the Aurora event so the only change expected is the location.  I am looking forward to adding a new venue to the schedule.  With Knoxville and Rising Sun on the 2013 schedule we will have a third of our race sites being places we have never visited.  Hopefully things work out some day that we can return to Aurora, but new is also good in my book.

In other news, our primary Formula 2 hull is in the paint shop where it undergoing some body repairs and getting a fresh new paint job to match our backup boat which was painted earlier this year.  The boat came home from Gordon Downard's shop on Wednesday and went straight to the body shop where Luke Meade and his guys jumped on it immediately after arrival.  It is scheduled for paint by the middle of this week and should be back in our shop by the weekend.  The airbag installation at Gordon's isn't complete due to us running out of time.  After we get the boat painted and rigged we will test it two weeks from now in Dayton, OH.  After Dayton we will make any changes needed for the Knoxville season opener and then deliver the boat back to Gordon for the airbag system to be completed while we are in France during the second week in May.  That will hopefully allow everything to be ready for Knoxville on schedule, and allow us a testing weekend in Dayton, although not in the order that we had originally planned.  Either way, being ready by the end of May is important and delaying the airbag completion until May is the only way we can accomplish that.

And, we debuted our Formula 2 backup boat to the public Thursday evening in New Martinsville, WV.  The boat and hauler attended the Wetzel County Chamber of Commerce's Business After Hours event at the Magnolia Yacht Club on behalf of APR Superleague in an attempt to help draw business support for the New Martinsville Records Challenge which is scheduled for the last weekend in September.  The event last fall was a good time and the city and local leaders are attempting to put together a second event this fall.  The response at the Thursday evening social were positive and it appears the event is well on it's way to reality for a second year in a row!

Dana Tomes