AFTER a hiatus of seven years, model boat racer Bryan Roach returned to race in the United States as a special tribute to his friend and professional model boat builder Terry Moore of Knoxville, Tennessee.

With the help of sponsor Anthony Swan, Mr. Roach travelled to Knoxville to meet up with boating friend Barry Petrowski, and they drove to Atlanta at the end of April to take part in the Spring Nationals of the Atlanta Model Boaters club. "Terry and his wife Becky ran a business called Boat South, and he was the top model boat builder in the United States. He passed away in February, and I went to the funeral in Knoxville, and after the funeral, all of the Knoxville boat racers decided to go to the Spring Nationals in Atlanta as a tribute to Terry.

"We all have boats that he built, beautiful racing boats that are easy to drive. I hadn't raced a boat for seven years."

Mr. Roach, a 45-year-old Bermudian who works in generation at the Belco powerhouse, has had to get his adrenaline rush from racing one-tenth scale on-road model cars at the PCC club skating rink, or one-eighth scale off-road model cars at Southside, because there is no longer any properly organised model boat racing in Bermuda.

"Racing cars is harder, because the boats do six circular laps in a few minutes, whereas a car race may last 45 minutes with two pit stops. There is a lot more cornering and throttle work. However, I went to the States with pretty good expectations of doing well, because of my 20 years' experience, and racing cars keeps the skills and reflexes tuned. The main thing about any racing is finishing.

"This was the first race in the States without Terry, but the last race I attended with him, seven years ago, Terry reminded me that you don't drive with your throttle finger, you drive with your head. I was thinking of him, and concentrating on finishing in the top four."

Mr. Roach did better than that. Over four races of six laps, he finished second overall in a field of 16 in his F Mono class, which raced in heats of eight boats at speeds up to 70 mph.

"There are a lot of faster boats, but they don't all finish. As the race goes on, the tank gets lower, and the boat gets lighter, so you have to drive to compensate for that, and you can't run it as hard in the last lap as the first.

"If you can't catch the guy who is first, settle for second, but watch for a chance. In the first race, I was racing in third place, but on the last corner the guys ahead of me collided, and I won the race. In the second race, I caught the start light perfectly, and led from start to finish.

"In the third and fourth races, I blew exhaust couplings, but I still managed to finish in third and fourth places, which gave me enough points to finish second overall."

With other racing friends in Knoxville, Mr. Roach worked on his boat until 2 a.m. on the day of the race. It reminded him of how he had started in model racing, and the many trips he had made with his late friend Terry to different racing events under the auspices of the IMPBA, the International Model Power Boat Association.

"I used to go down to St. David's to watch the boats race. I really enjoyed it, so sent away and got a boat. I wanted to get into more structured racing, so I went with my friend Willis Simons to a race in Orlando. That's when I met Terry Moore, and he gave me his card and told me to come up to Knoxville if ever I wanted to go racing.

"I took him up on his offer the next year, and was going up two or three times a year, and doing quite well.

"He took sick with cancer the last five years, and I went up to see him, but I wasn't running boats because he wasn't running boats. We used to go all over the States, to the Winter and Spring Nationals, and the Internationals. I am a Christian, and my logo on the boat is 'Faith is the Victory', and in the Bible, the number seven is perfection, and that's the number of my boat, and it is seven years since I raced.

"Now I am planning to go to the Internationals later in the year, but this was my first race without my buddy Terry, and when his wife Becky arrived for a couple of hours there, we got very emotional, because we could still see him standing there with his radio in his hand."