Racers for a Day in Harbor Beach
The 2008 Honda Aquatrax/H&R Block Harbor Beach Invitational

By Al Kleinknecht

Photos by Lois Korbal

Have you ever wondered what it feels like to rip around the buoys of a professional Watercross course? Or feel the adrenaline that comes with speed and hear the crowd cheering as you do your best to crank out the best time for your team?

The 2008 Honda Aquatrax/H&R Block Harbor Beach Invitational catered to just those kinds of emotions.

For the 7th year now, this convention was put to the test. What started as 12 people on 3 teams 6 years ago is now a whopping 112 people on 28 teams, 5 hours of action-paced racing that is safe and lots of fun! With 112 participants, the Harbor Beach Invitational is one of the largest recreational PWC events in the country. Many of the participants are new to the sport and get to ride a personal watercraft for the first time in their lives in Thursday's practice session. This event is a great way to introduce newcomers to the sport; and always creates several new watercraft owners after they get the PWC buzz from their experience during the event.

This year, Honda stepped up along with H&R Block to sponsor this growing event that has people talking smack about the 2009 race even though 2008 is just freshly in the books. Is 2009 going to be bigger than 2008's event? With the challenges already being thrown down, it is a safe bet that it will grow even more next year.

In case you have never heard of the Harbor Beach Maritime Invitational, it is an annual festival that was created eight years ago with its feature attraction a Tour stop on the Midwest Watercross Tour. The festival also added a huge fireworks display, live bands and entertainment, craft shows and several vendors – but PWC racing remains the feature attraction of the event. The Harbor Beach Invitational was added the second year of the festival to give Harbor Beach locals an opportunity to participate in the excitement. Today, teams come from all over the state of Michigan, with several participants now coming from other states to participate. Many of the teams come from the many Michigan-based H&R Block offices. While really a recreational event, as the participants are not competing head-to-head on the course at the same time, participants get the same experience as the seasoned veteran racer. Each four-person team is then given a time to race which consists of one lap on the same Closed Course race course run by the top racers from the United States and Canada for the APBA HYDRO-TURF Watercross National Tour. All times are recorded and combined with the rest of the team and a score is generated. After the event is complete, team and individual awards are given out. Then the bragging and excuses start to fly -- thus setting up the 2009 race.

For the second year in a row, Patrick Mell of PM Sports Marketing and the APBA let us use the Course Marshal boats: 2 beautiful Hondas -- one being an F-12 and the other an F-12X Turbo.

Note: For the Invitational you need 3 boats: 2 that run about the same speed, and one with some major horsepower due to the fact that we use it as a rabbit (Someone who leads the riders thru the maze of orange and yellow buoys). This rabbit also fills in as a target the Invitational riders who are trying to come up with the fastest overall lap.

Craig Austin and Justin Allen of Ray C’s (the local Kawasaki watercraft dealer) kindly offered to handle the task of manning the rabbit boats (talk about iron man jobs) -- 2 ½ hours each -- staying out in front of the Invitational participants who have the sole intent of catching and passing the bigger machine and the racer who is on it. The rabbit was never caught, and both riders got a very good workout and had a great time.

It was a long day, but action packed. Awards were given out to the winning teams and, out of the 112 riders, the top 6 fastest individual riders were informed that they would be invited to race in the Honda Aquatrax/H&R Block Championship race the following night as part of the Budweiser/Novi-Tec Can-Am Cup race in front of 5000 screaming spectators. Though these 6 riders were not professional racers, they would be participating for cash and prizes as part of one of our country's top Watercross events. The Can-Am Cup is a night race that pits the best riders from Canada against the best from the USA and kicks off immediately after the six Invitational riders compete.

The Invitational race has created interest in watercraft riding and racing in people who would have never even considered such a sport. In fact, many of the riders have never been on watercraft prior to the event. Riding the new Hondas and discovering the ease at which the watercraft handled the course made all newcomers seem like hardened racers that for one day, and gave them the chance to carve up some buoys in front of hundreds of cheering spectators and show their stuff.

To all who say racing and recreational riding do not go hand and hand, they might want to check out the 2009 Harbor Beach Invitational. They will find the error of their thinking. The Harbor Beach Invitational is an open event so start putting your team together for the 2009 race!

(Above) Uncle, Grandmother, Curt, Grandfather and Dad. Mom took the picture. All congratulate Curt on a 2nd place finish in the H&R Block/Honda Aqutrax Invitational.