National powerboat champion John Cooke explains how he came to be involved in racing, and why he decided to set up his own company making boats.

John Cooke moved to Devon 12 years ago, he never dreamt he would become a powerboat racer.
Now he is the National Champion in one class of powerboats, regularly seen racing his Bananashark Raceboat on the championship circuit.

When he’s not racing his time is spent developing and building the Bananashark 770 RIB, a boat best described as eye catching and individual; a must have if you want to spend your leisure time on the water.

John’s career in racing stemmed from when he was asked by a friend to help out in some film work driving and carrying out stunts in powerboats. While doing this, he met up with racing driver Derek Basham, and was told a race navigator’s place was available if he wanted to take up the position.
John lost no time in deciding he’d give this change of direction a go, and started racing in the OCR “A” class racing in a Phantom 18; essentially a ski boat reaching speeds of 76 miles an hour. As John explained,“It was quite scary at times. We had to sit side by side in that boat. We did crash once in Scotland and went completely under water. Luckily there were no injuries.”

After a few years of navigating, John was offered the chance to have a boat built for him, to race in another class which would provide a more varied role for a navigator.
As he said,“The OCR course is an inshore course and you have to go round and round the course similar to a motor racing circuit.
It’s not much of a challenge as a navigator.”

“In Class III there are multiple laps and the laps are mixed up.
It means that at 75 miles an hour, the job for a navigator is much more of a challenge. Some marks are around 10 to 15 miles apart so it can be quite tricky sometimes finding them, especially if you’re in the lead. John’s navigator, Graham Lawton, once had to find a rusty pole off the Norwegian coast from six miles away. He said it wouldn’t have been so difficult if it hadn’t been a similar colour to the land behind it!
It was intended for the new boat to be built and ready for John to take part in the 1999 World Championship, taking place from Cowes. However, progress on the boat was much slower than had been originally anticipated and John realised he had to take over and continue with the build process himself. It was at this point he teamed up with Kevin Stephens, who with many years experience of building a variety of craft was going to prove more indespensible than either of them realised.
John said: “We finished building the plug for the boat – the mould – which involved many, many late nights in order to get the boat ready for a race which was taking place from Ramsgate in 2000.

“I continued to navigate, with Derek still driving, and although this worked well to begin with, there were some clashes of dates as he was still driving in the OCR class. We went to the European Championships and won the first race of two in horrendous conditions. The wind was gusting force seven in the Solent, an unpredictable piece of water at the best of times!
“It was very windy, the worst conditions I’ve ever seen. Both the National and World Champions had problems and couldn’t continue racing. It was an epic battle with many other boats retiring – there was only one other boat in sight at the end.
For the second race of the series the wind dropped a little, there were still big swells coming in and the wind kept coming under the boat and trying to flip us over. We had to back off and be sensible.
Unfortunately half way round the course, our engine stopped and we couldn’t start it again – the battery had gone flat. It was a full 20 minutes before the next boat appeared, we were so far in the lead. We’d had a taste of victory though and proved that the boat was really quick, especially in the rough.”

In 2001, there were some clashes in the racing calendar, and with Derek unable to make some of the rib races, John took over the driver’s seat and took on a new navigator – Graham Lawton. “I’d had no experience of being a racing driver – I used to race karts many years ago, so had experience of speed and making things go quickly, but not boats.

It was a huge test.

Being a new boat it took a while to get the setup right. It was a bit like having a the wrong tyre pressures on a car, hard to pin point exactly what is wrong, but when you correct it the difference is remarkable.
With the help of Derek's experience in OCR, Kevin who had now become crew chief (as well as building the boat) and experience learned from their own races, we carried out many alterations with the propellers and other areas. Now have everything pretty much buttoned down.

One of the most important aspects is to anticipate what the boat is going to do, if you just react to what it has done it is too late. I have to make sure I’m able to feel the waves, adjust the trim of the engine and the amount of water in the bow tank, in order to reduce drag and increase stability when needed. Once this is all sorted out, we’ve proved we can go ridiculously fast. The feeling of achieving over 75mph in flat conditions and still maintaining speeds in the high sixties in a force 4 is incredible.
“I do love to win and love the challenge of making the boat go fast. It’s a challenge racing against people who you know are good drivers and have good boats.”

For John all his hard work is paying off, last year he was second in the Formula 200 Championships.
These boats are a minimum of 21ft and have a 200 horsepower engine. They include the Mannerfelt designed “Batboats”, capable of speeds of over 80mph in the right conditions. The BananaShark's reliability and a fantastic performance in rough conditions paid off, beating all but one of the fleet.
He is the current British Champion in the Formula One RIB class, a class he competes in so he can promote the leisure version of the craft which is now receiving much acclaim and interest.
“After introducing the race version to the circuit, we had so many people admiring it. We thought we’d develop it a stage further and introduce a leisure version which is proving very popular. It’s incredible the way it’s all happened.”

Although John and Graham have many race wins, possibly their biggest success to date was winning the Needles Trophy.
A race around the Isle of Wight, which has previously been won by none other than HRH Prince Michael of Kent and Stirling Moss.
“It’s one of the biggest trophies in powerboat racing. It’s a real honour. The race was amazing with a strong wind and a big swell. Three times we almost had the boat vertical in the water and were forced to treat it as a survival exercise. Instead of heading direct for the marks, we had to head into the waves covering a lot of extra distance before we could turn back to go round the buoy. It was an incredible race, and definitely one to tell the grandchildren about!”