A big part of photography is knowing your subject. With boat racing it's being at the right place and at the right time and knowing the drivers style of racing that are a key but a little luck doesn't hurt either.

My 1993 Winston Eagle blow-over was a combination of all three. I was shooting my old Minolta X-370 camera with a 400 mm f-4 lens with a 2X adapter and a slow auto winder that winds roughly one frame every 3/4 second. I was on a Navy ship near the I-90 bridge on Lake Washington. Not an ideal spot to be but a very unique one. I had an angle that nobody else had.

The setting is the final heat. Mark Tate was in lane 1 in the Winston Eagle. Chip Hanauer was in lane 6 in the Miss Budweiser. Chip had had a DNF in an earlier heat that left him on the outside. Mark wanted to win Seafair for his owner Steve Woomer who had never won his hometown race and this was going to be his best opportunity. Mark was pushing his boat to the limit trying to hold off a hard charging Chip on the outside. One problem…………… a 20 mph wind blowing right up the backstretch.

I'm a half a mile to the north watching the race through my camera, waiting for something to happen. The wind, to strong for the boats to be flying the way they were. Mark on the inside. Chip on the outside. Then it happened! Mark lifted up and I snapped the first shot and let up on the camera. I thought, "Cool, a good action shot". Then I realized he wasn't coming back down. I pushed the button again and held it for five more shots. I was numb for the next week. It was the 4th blow-over I had seen in 7 days. The Tide with Nate Brown and Circus Circus with Dave Villwock had blown over the previous week in Tri Cities and Ken Dryden had blown over two days prior in the Miss Rock. Mark's capsule was the first one to fail. He was lucky the boat landed upright. Mark ended up having to be pried out of the boat.