POWERBOATS: Lucky escape for powerboaters

The scriptwriters of the slasher film series, Friday the 13th, could easily have adopted Saturday's scene as the perfect ending to one of their endless sequels. Baddie Jason turns around in a boat bobbing in the lake, but he's just not quick enough to avoid another vessel skimming above his head, leaving behind a bloody carnage. Cut! Cut! Cut!
It wasn't Hollywood. The protagonists in Saturday's live drama off the Westshore Beach, in Napier, were Jason Garrity and Hayden Ericksen, who were competing in round seven of the Cougar Marine Inex Metals Ltd New Zealand Offshore Powerboat Race.
Navigator Garrity, of Havelock North, and driver Ericksen, of Napier, were at the helm of their 5.7m Sonic Honda 150 four-stroke vessel, Mike Pero Mortgages, when they momentarily saw, almost in slow motion, their lives flash before their eyes.
It's a scene they are not likely to forget in a hurry. "All I saw in a split second was the hull of a boat and on it was written C44," a shaken Garrity told SportToday while resting at home.
The other boat was Outlaw, with Auckland brothers Derek Walden and Lindsay Walden at the helm, whose 8.5m vessel skimmed over the Bay pair's heads before ploughing into the nose of the smaller boat.
The Walden brothers, racing in the Sports Classic Class, were unseen because Mike Pero, in the Formula Honda Class, had "broached" before nosediving into the water after hitting a big wave.
"After it broached it hit wickedly to the right, breaking our steering wheel and the hydraulic wheel at the back too," said Ericksen, who "smashed both his knees" and wasn't able to walk much until yesterday.
The 21-year-old marine engineer, who works for his father, Mark, at Ericksen Honda Bayview, said one knee was caught under the dashboard while the other took a bashing when Outlaw rammed them.
"She was quite a big one [Outlaw] and it looked like she was going to take our heads off, so we just closed our eyes."
With the smaller boat in a sitting-duck position, a stunned Garrity could only watch as a cursing and hollering Ericksen attempted to turn the impotent steering wheel. "We were sore because we had been chucked about but when the boat hit us soon after it was huge. We got spun around and it hit the back part of the other boat," the 15-year-old Havelock North High School pupil explained.
Relieved to have escaped with just a sore foot, Garrity got up to find the nose of their $50,000 boat chomped off. Ericksen managed to stand up briefly only to discover the rear hydraulics had been rendered useless before flopping back into his seat.
Other boats stopped to check if the pair were okay and a helicopter hovered above, but Garrity gave them the thumbs up before the start boat towed them away with the help of others.
Standing on the rocky shore, about 100m away near the lighthouse, was Garrity's father, Grant, at tenterhooks after seeing the pair not moving.
"They had hit a big wave and nose-dived. I saw Outlaw coming and thought 'Turn away! Turn away!' They were sitting still and doing nothing and then I saw one of them moving," said Grant, who normally drives with his son but four weeks ago hurt both his collarbones in round six of racing at Tauranga.
"Outlaw tried to avoid them but smashed them in the nose. The nose is still embedded in the front of the other boat," he said, claiming they had no chance of repairing their boat before the final round in Auckland in a fortnight. Ericksen said one of the Walden brothers told them after the race that they had never seen people so petrified in a boat before.
"They [Outlaw pair] carried on before they realised their boat was sinking because it had a hole in the back too," Ericksen said.
Mike Pero, which was third in the Formula Honda Class, did not even make it to the start line while Outlaw had to settle for "did not finish". * Results - Page 16.