Round the Island pushed back to September 5

 “Gentlemen, don’t start your engines”.

Sunday’s Round the Island Powerboat Race has been dry-docked for the second time this month due to stormy weather.

Sunday’s event has been postponed until September 5 with the hopes Mother Nature will be a bit more cooperative.

Earlier this month Tropical Storm Colin made the seas too rough for the powerboaters to compete and Hurricane Danielle has done the same for the popular sporting event.

Bermuda Powerboat commodore Brian Smith said: “After getting word from Harbour Radio, this weekend is not looking good for racing.”

Smith said there is good news sprinkled amongst the bad as the first postponement allowed for the number of entries to increase from 30 to 32 and he’s hopeful this latest delay will see that total bumped to 34.

He said one of the new boats is in E Class and the other will be racing a bat boat in the FB Class.

“A lot of people are kind of grumbling, but they don’t understand what it takes to put this together. There are many entities involved in putting this on – Harbour Radio, Marine and Ports, Marine Police, and Government.

“We also have 44 crash boats,” Smith said.

Rookies

“We have a lot of rookies this year so it makes it very interesting. The drivers are restless but we have to look at the safety aspect of it. This isn’t just about safety for the drivers but also for the public.

“I’m all about the safety. If we can have a safe race, then that means we can have more. For the amount of money guys spend on equipment, I’m not going to let them just go out there and mess up everything they have just because I feel a race should go off.”

Smith admitted being commodore is a very difficult job, but “we have to make hard decisions, which sometimes the members don’t like them, but at the end of the day we have to protect them from themselves”.