Spaceships Thundercat

SPACESHIPS THUNDERCAT

A thundercat is a type of racing IRB - think surf life savings boat on steroids! The national series is raced at North Island beaches over summer and is shown on tv on Sky Sports.

Neil has raced for the last four years but this is his second year with a boat of his own and as the full-time driver. Taxi (Brett Hudson) is his co-pilot. Expect some big air – and hopefully some good results.

Spaceships is pleased to sponsor Neil and Taxi in the national series and wish them the best of luck for the upcoming series!

Thundercat Video

Check out this video of Spaceships from last year, the crew had a TV camera taped to the front of the boat which got more action then was expected! Neil does his bit to illustrate the sport's number one rule, 'Hold on!!'

www.adventurefilms.co.nz/thundercats.html - Footage courtesy of Adventure Films.

UPDATES

April 24 2009

Well not such a great day in Piha - despite traditionally harsh conditions.  There was such a big storm overnight that there were trees all over the road on our way out to the race.  Engine still not sorted (or is that me that wasn't sorted) but managed to run mid-field all day with no major breakages to Spaceships, myself or Taxi.  Our next and final race of the season was the big one - a race the length of 90 Mile Beach and back at the top of New Zealand.  Our hopes were high as we had had some major mechanic and tuning time and believed that we had sorted our problems (faulty carbs for some reason).  The run up the beach (at least 60kms) was amazing - we sat as close to the beach as possible dragging the engine on the bottom the whole way at over 80 kms per hour.  The short story is that we won the trip to the top - a couple of seconds ahead of my mate Jimmy in 'Crashpad'.  It was extra cool to be chased by the support crew - and even better the tourist buses - the length of the beach with 'Spike' an ex-Stray driver and his crew meeting us at the top.  We had a short break for fuel for ourselves and 'Spaceships' then headed back.  The trip back was much rougher as the wind got up.  'Crashpad' was pulling away from us but we were maintaining second until we caught a bad wave and I was knocked out of the boat.  'Crashpad' flipped and we still managed to finish second overall.  Not bad and it gives us big hope for next season.

The great news is that this isn't going to be the last race of the season as we have made the NZ team to challenge Australia on the 'Goldcoast' on June 6, 7, and 9.  I will report back after then.

Cheers,

Neil

25th February 2009

Well it's been a huge season this year.  We seemed to peak early having our best results at Raglan in November, winning the final of the day for the first time! Since then we've had up and down results - we had a great couple of days at the Mount and Whangamata where we had a couple of Spaceship campervans and we raffled off a Spaceship for a week to raise money for the club (thanks Spaceships!) We flipped in Wellington which damaged our engine and kept us out of form for the last couple of races.  This weekend is the final race day of the nationals at Piha beach.  We love the big surf so if Piha holds true to form then we could be in for a great day of thrills and spills.  If we can do well we could come out as West Coast champion which would be awesome.

If you're around head down to Piha this Saturday 28th Feb to check out the action!

Thanks again Spaceships for your support!

14th January:
Wellington was true to form - huge wind but unfortunately not much surf. This didn't suit us much - we like to think of ourselves as big surf specialists (that means 'heavy'). Our results were middling, which we no longer think is good enough. We ran out of fuel 100 metres from the finish while running 3rd in the first race, then got two 3rds and a 4th in the remaining races. We just missed out on making the finals. We are looking forward to better results in the last round of the Nationals on February 9th at Piha - big surf and carnage guaranteed!

If you're round Auckland that day - come check us out on this rough West Coast beach.

Cheers,
Neil

8th January 2008
We've just had the first two rounds of the National Championships. At the first in Whangamata - with my new co-pilot ('Taxi' the operations manager of Stray), we came unstuck in the first race and flipped the boat. While it should make for good TV it didn't help our cause much. We then had two third places and a fifth in the remaining races.

The second race day at Mount Maunganui was a different story - we won a race and made the finals for the first time, finishing 7th overall for the day. We even got a special award for promoting the sport. Looking forward to this weekend in Wellington - if it's anything like last year there'll be some huge waves and lots of carnage! Cheers, Neil