Channel 4 – Scrapheap Challenge 2004 – Challenges – Jet Boats

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The Hogs celebrate early

Darrell races to victory

Result

After a build day constructing jet boats on a cold and muddy scrapheap, The Hairy Hogs and Team Ragbo were itching to test out their machines.

Speed test

Round one was a full-throttle dash up and down the lake to discover who had built the fastest machine. Would it be the Hairy Hogs' impeller-driven pocket rocket, or Team Ragbo's centrifugal pump-powered jet boat?

First to go was the Hairy Hogs in their Waterhog, piloted by Darrell, who happens to be a Stock Car champion. Since the start, judge Michael McDowell had backed the Hogs' impeller design to generate plenty of speed but the Waterhog was surprisingly slow. It looked like the ballast was all wrong as the boat was sitting uncomfortably low in the water and snaked all over the place.

Darrell did manage the 180-degree turn beautifully, though, and on the way back the Waterhog looked better balanced, crossing the line in a respectable minute and 47 seconds.

Team Ragbo's Flying Hippy was probably the first jet boat ever powered by a centrifugal pump and the judge didn't hold out much hope of it travelling very fast – especially with a pump weighing as much as a granite boulder!

Piloted by motorbike-mad Nick, the Flying Hippy was slow to get going – with all that weight, this was no surprise – but it kept on picking up speed all the way along the lake. In fact, much to everyone's surprise, it looked to be travelling faster than the Waterhog! But the turn slowed Nick down and despite a full-throttle dash back, Team Ragbo were two seconds slower then the Hogs on the line.

Off-shore obstacle course

The second round was a real test of jet-boat agility. Our teams had to navigate a series of smaller and smaller gates, followed by a tight slalom run – then they had a floating roundabout to circumnavigate.

This time, the Ragbos went first, with Nick confident he could set a tough time for the Hairy Hogs to beat. He just had to master the reverse steering on the boat – turning left to go right and right to go left.

In fact, Nick made an error early on and almost missed the very first gate, and never looked confident on the course. Then, as he approached the slalom run disaster struck. A radiator hose broke loose and Nick was showered in hot steam. Despite trying to stage running repairs Nick had to admit defeat and retire the Flying Hippy from competition.

With the Hogs' stability problems, there was no guarantee that Darrell would do any better. From the start, the Waterhog was better balanced, and Darrell fairly stormed his way through the first few gates. Even jet-boat whizz Michael was impressed at his boat handling!

If Darrell could complete the slalom run safely, The Hogs knew they would have done enough to progress to the next round. Darrell passed the test with flying colours, twisting and turning at high speed through every gate. His team began their celebrations in earnest as he roared around the floating roundabout and charged across the line in a super-fast time of 2 minutes 9 seconds, booking a place in the next round.