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Hydroplane flips near Vashon Island

By KIRO 7 Staff & Rob Munoz
By KIRO 7 Staff & Rob Munoz
A small hydroplane flipped Friday morning near Vashon Island, but the boat’s driver was not seriously injured.
The boat was part of the Ted Jones Memorial Race, an unofficial – and unpermitted – event that has been a Fourth of July tradition there since 1955.
The driver told KIRO 7 he had cuts and some boat damage. He crashed after the driver hit a break in some waves and flipped going about 70 mph.
"I had my helmet, on, I had my life jacket on. That's the biggest thing,” pilot Paul Hoffman told KIRO 7.
"I went through the front. The back end fishtailed a little bit. I went out the front, and the next thing you know this thing was pitched around backwards and I was sitting in the water."
King County sheriff’s deputies lectured the driver and gave him a $200 ticket for not wearing a Coast Guard-approved life jacket. The deputies, who came in a boat from Des Moines, said they had been trying to crack down on the race and could have given the driver more than $1,000 in tickets for multiple violations.
"This seems to be the only big event that seems to happen every year that people don't get a permit for,” a deputy told Hoffman.

Hoffman’s violations ran the gamut.

"No registration. No mandatory education card. No life jacket. No sound proofing device. No carbon monoxide decal,” the deputy read off as he wrote the ticket.
The Ted Jones Memorial Race started in 1955 when two teens with 10-foot hydroplanes thought it would be fun to race around Vashon Island and wake everybody up, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
"We thought it was a good time to do it because it was a holiday and the Fourth of July is known for fireworks and noise," one of the two, Roger Stanley, told the newspaper in 2002. "In the old days going 70 mph was outrageous."
The event grew and has gained huge support from islanders, with crowds coming out to watch. It’s a tradition for some people to party all night until the races start – as Stanley told the P-I he and co-creator Mike Bibbens did in 1955.
But sheriff’s deputies told KIRO 7 on Friday that the race is “very illegal” and that they’ve been concerned about safety issues.

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