Arizona’s Waterless Boat Race

From the filmmaker: This was a story a year in the making. Nearly a year ago a friend who competes in demolition derbies called to tell me about this crazy race he drove in called a waterless boat race. Drivers drag fiberglass boats around a soapy asphalt track, trying to take out each other’s boats. The last driver to have a boat, or anything resembling a boat wins. After scolding him for not telling me about it before he did the race I made him promise that he’d give me enough warning before the next one so we could cover it. It sounded like an awesome video story that would be a blast to shoot.

He called a few weeks ago and said he was getting his car ready for a boat race in Lake Havasu. We decided to try and mount a couple of GoPro cameras to his car. He welded a few spots that I thought would give us some great angles. I was most excited about mounting one in the space where his headlight once was. I knew the odds were against the camera surviving but we thought it was worth taking the chance.

We went up to Lake Havasu with the plan to shoot the race from as many angles as possible. We covered the race with seven cameras- three on the car, one in the stands, one looking up a straight away, and one in each of our hands.

When I saw the car go through the first boat I instantly thought the front mounted camera was destroyed. After the race I was surprised when I saw the little red blinking light on the cameras indicating that it was still recording. It survived.

This was easily the most fun I have had at a shoot in a long time. I hope you have as much fun watching it as we did putting it together.