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While the entry level cost for offshore powerboat racing runs to six figures and often goes to seven, getting into its "little brother" in Thundercats could cost as little as $10,000.
It's the same attraction for those who race, adrenaline pumped by speed, except that in the smaller
inflatables there is no aircraft-style driver's seat, no seat belts, no cockpit to save you from smacking the water.
The Thundercat season roars into life with a Le Mans-style sprint down the sand at Takapuna beach at 10.30am tomorrow, with 30 boats expected to contest the open sea run to Mangawhai.
In calm conditions it might take the best racers just over one hour to make the trip, hitting top speeds of 90km/h.
But it will not be calm. Strong easterly winds have kicked up a sloppy surf that will bash the drivers all the way and make the mid-trip change of fuel bladders a tricky business.
The Mangawhai run is the first of three endurance races, the other two are across Cook Strait and the King of the Cape from Rangunu Harbour on the east around Cape Reinga to Ahipara on the west.
Four surfcross races fill out the national series calendar, beginning at Whangamata in January and moving to Mt Maunganui, Lyall Bay in Wellington then to Piha in Auckland.
Thundercat racing came out of South Africa in the 1980s and arrived here in 1996. The name is from the thunder of the motors and the twin-hull rubber pontoon catamaran design.
The boats are a uniform design, length minimum 3.8m and maximum 4.1m, width 1.7m, weight 75kg. The motors are all Yamaha or Tohatsu 50hp outboards, with minimal work allowed on them and a motor-sealing process to prevent cheating. Propellers can be changed and sometimes are mid-race in the Cape event, alterations to blade cupping and thickness bringing flat-out speed on the east coast and surf-handling capability on the west.
The sport continues to expand, with the two Wellington events to be contested for the third time this year.
The move to the capital led to the birth of a new race club there in February. Spectacular wave-jumping at Lyall Bay in the past two years also helped.
Tony Vercauteren has been competing for nine years and likes the tight and close racing that gives everyone a chance to win, especially in the surf where "you have to beat the course as well as the opposition", picking the right line to take crucial. He thought they'd done well in the first leg of a Cook Strait race but arrived at the South Island to find three other boats had beaten him.
He and top racer Steve Frogley also like involving their families in the beach-oriented sport. "Two guys can get into it fairly cheaply, $20,000 for a top race boat and maybe $5000 for a season's racing," Vercauteren said.
