Thunder on the Gulf

While we were down at the beach this past weekend, they had several events going on.  One of the events was Thunder on the Gulf...aka boat races. I've never really given boat races much thought, but I will admit I was quite intrigued when we drove into Orange Beach on Friday night and saw several ENORMOUS speed boats in the empty lot in front of the Wharf.  We soon found out that the races were on Sunday, but it was quite obvious that they were practicing all weekend.  We were a mile away from the beach and it sounded like the boats were behind the fence.  After hearing them run all day on Saturday, we (the girls) decided we'd go check out the races on Sunday.  We had some friends who knew some people staying in a condo right in front of turns 3 and 4, so we met up with them and were right on the water in front of the turns to watch!

The boats coming from the starting line....people were in the water the whole time. 

You can't see much of the actual boats but in that spray is from3 boats making the turns.  The other boats out there were just there to spectate.  I could not believe how close they were, but I think it would be so cool to see up close!  

Several of the boats coming out of the turn.

These were two of the boats.  They would get super close to each other.  I can't tell you how many  times I saw a boat go airborne!

 It wasn't much of race for 1st.  One of the boats jumped out to an early lead and ended up winning by almost half the length of the course.  The battle for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th was close and was like the picture above for much of the race.  I am not sure how many laps they did, but they raced for almost 30 minutes. I still can't believe how close they were to the beach.  Our friends told us that during the earlier race that day one of the boats flipped over in turn 3 right in front of the beach!

I got a video of one of their laps. We expected it to be really loud on the beach since it was so loud at the house, but it was not near as loud as we thought....no louder than it was at the house.  I guess the wind carried the sound up over the beach to the town.

I don't think I will be traveling up and down the gulf following the races any time soon, but it was a pretty cool thing to watch! Of course I just enjoy the being out at the beach part of it!

Perfection!

On another note, I saw that today is National Running Day!  I guess that means I need to strap on my sneakers and go for a run this evening.  At point I will take any motivation I can find.  There's something about coming off of a holiday weekend that sucks the desire to workout out of me.