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The competition known as “bathtub racing” uses bathtub boats, which are tiny propelled watercraft built around bathtubs or similar structures.
Early boats were made of a variety of materials and were quirky. Nowadays, monohull planer boats with outboard motors make up the majority of racing bathtub boats. An essential component of the structure must be a roll-top tub-like form. The majority of tubbers create their “tub” by laying down a fibreglass mould using a bathtub as the basis.
The regulations limit the weight of the vehicle, including the driver, to 350 lb (159 kg) and the engine to 9.9 horsepower (7.3 kW). Bathtub boats fall into three categories: stock, modified, and super-modified. factory motors can be tweaked by varying the timing, but they must be factory engines that have not been altered. Only the propeller and bottom leg can be altered by modified motors. The entire engine can be altered by Super Modified as long as factory parts are used.
Nanaimo, British Columbia, was the birthplace of bathtub racing. The “Nanaimo to Vancouver Great International World Championship Bathtub Race” was the inaugural race held in 1967, and the purpose was to introduce Nanaimo to the world.
From its inception until his passing in 1992, Frank Ney, the mayor of Nanaimo at the time, was a major advocate and sponsor of the yearly event and an enthusiastic competitor. On a regular basis, he would tour the town and neighbouring settlements while dressed as a pirate.
Tubbers raced from Nanaimo to Kitsilano Beach in Vancouver as part of the city’s annual Sea Festival, also known as Sea Fest, until the 1990s. The race currently includes a course since the Vancouver Marine Festival was discontinued in the middle of the 1990s. The race now involves a course beginning and ending in Nanaimo Harbour.
The race is held annually on the last weekend of July and is currently 58 kilometres long, taking the tubbers into the open waters of Georgia Strait. Other cities, such as Auckland’s North Shore with its Englefield Bathtub Derby and Bremerton, Washington with its US-Canadian Friendship race, also host bathtub races, but the Nanaimo event remains the most well-known.
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