Dave Warby will return to Blowering Dam, Tumut on August 3-4 where he will resume his world water speed record trials. There will be no record attempt, just testing the boat at higher speeds.
TRYING to break a world record was never going to easy for Dave Warby and his Spirit of Australia II team, and their recent outings in November 2023 and May 2024 proved just how minor incidents can affect their plans.
Testing in November 2023,, Dave Warby said they encountered windy conditions so they could not push to the speeds they would have liked, but still reached 260 miles per hour (418kmh). Then on Sunday’s first run they hit a duck at 220 mile per hour (354kmh) which was sucked into the jet engine, literally finishing their weekend instantly.
“I feel like we have the handling of the boat under control now, and it’s the first weekend we have not touched anything to do with the handling of the boat. We got a bit of wind, but the boats really handling well now and it feels the best its felt,” said Dave.
“Sunday was looking really good but on my first run out, just accelerating down the course we hit a duck at 220 mile an hour. The duck hit head on the nose of the boat and then went through the engine.”
“I think we probably got away pretty lucky. There's nothing that we can see that's bent or damaged. It's really just cleaning the whole engine out internally, we’ve got to do a compressor wash on it, that's going to be the time-consuming part.”
Dave said he had been discussing with Air Force crew who have been assisting with the boat on any implications to the engine.
“We're getting the turbine blades x-rayed just to make sure there's no damage. Just to be double sure, because if a blade let's go at high RPM it'll make a mess.”
Dave mentioned they have received a shipment of engine spare parts in case they find damage during the x-rays. “We've got our second engine as well now, so that's online now.” The second engine will make the trip to Tumut when they go for the record as a backup if anything went wrong.
The boat was back on Blowering Dam in mid-May for more testing. The team was hoping for clean water and favourable weather conditions to ramp up their speed. But mother nature threw a spanner in the works, and conditions were again not so favourable with winds up to 39kmh making the water too rough. They book the water with authorities up to ten weeks in advance, so have to rely on favourable weather conditions.
Boat speed has never been in doubt, they just needed to fine tune the handling which they have done.
“Just getting good weather and getting a good run. I think that's really where we're at with it now. We sorted this underlying problem out, the boats much easier to drive now, you don't have to manhandle the boat down the course. You can just drive now.”
“Now it’s just a matter of creeping up from 260 to 300 (mph) and then we will be where we to want to be.”
On August 3 and 4, Dave will return to Blowering Dam with his crew for more trial runs.
In October 1978 Ken Warby, Dave’s father set the World Water Speed Record of 317.6 miles per hour (511.12kmh) at Tumut’s Blowering Dam. The record still stands today.