AS the fastest vessel in town for this weekend’s Barclays Jersey Boat Show, Thunder Child II falls into the ‘price on application’ category.
With a maximum speed in excess of 50 knots, four V12, 8.3-litre engines and a driver’s seat costing £27,000, the 23-metre yellow powerboat is set to be a highlight of the show, which returns to the Island after being cancelled for the past two years due to the pandemic.
Thunder Child II arrived in St Helier Marina in style earlier this week after a record-breaking run from Cork in Ireland.
Islander and owner of the boat Nick Ogden was one of a five-man crew alongside designer and skipper Frank Kowalski and three others for the 302-nautical-mile journey across to the south-west tip of Cornwall and then up the English Channel.
Having left Cork soon after dawn, the crew made it to St Helier in time for a late lunch, and soon afterwards were able to celebrate when the governing body of powerboat racing, the Union Internationale Motonautique, ratified their time of eight hours 52 minutes as a record for the journey.
With a range of 750 nautical miles and a cruising speed above 40 knots, Thunder Child II was built to break records – you would not find a one-inch-thick ballistic-glass windscreen on an average pleasure craft. It has already been recognised for setting new marks for the run between Ireland and Iceland, as well as the ‘sprint’ course from Cork around the Fastnet Rock.
Later this summer, the ambition is to establish a record time for the trip between London and Monaco, but before that there are plans for a rapid lap of Jersey next week, when the four passenger seats on Thunder Child II will be up for grabs.
During the boat show weekend, 2,000 tickets will be sold at £5 each, with two lucky winners getting the chance to get on board and the raffle’s proceeds going to Jersey Hospice Care. The remaining places were won by two winners of a competition to predict the exact time for the vessel’s crossing from Cork.
Having last been staged in May 2019 before being torpedoed by Covid-19 for two years running, the Barclays Jersey Boat Show is back with a bang for 2022 and set to retain its status as the largest free-entry event in the Channel Islands.
Attractions at the event, which opens at 1pm on Friday and runs until Sunday afternoon, are based both on the water and on dry land, with a range of marine and lifestyle exhibitors as well as displays and demonstrations.
The Royal Navy will bring a P2000 training ship, while Rear Admiral Jude Terry, an Islander who became the first female officer from the Navy to hold this rank, will be among the guests of the ‘In Conversation With’ interviews hosted by journalist Lucy Cotter.
More details about the Barclays Jersey Boat Show can be found at jerseyboatshow.com and in a supplement to be published with tomorrow’s JEP.
