T&T Power­boat As­so­ci­a­tion 2013 Boat of the Year, En­er­giza will be step­ping up in­to the 80mph cat­e­go­ry when the Carib Great Race takes off on Sat­ur­day morn­ing from Ch­aguara­mas to To­ba­go in one of the most chal­leng­ing but ex­cit­ing rac­ing trips over the open Caribbean seas.Hav­ing won the 70mph class two years in a row, the 38' Bowen's crew has set its sights on a new batch of op­po­nents in­clud­ing White Heat, Elixir and Hero III. Speak­ing to the Guardian yes­ter­day, dri­ver Shel­don Edghill said he and throt­tle­man An­tho­ny Brash need­ed a new test to keep them in­ter­est­ed."There's no fun in win­ning all the time," he re­vealed. "Where's the chal­lenge in that? Mov­ing up to this class gives us more work to do. We might get beat­en this year. We might get beat­en next year, but even­tu­al­ly we will win."

Af­ter ad­di­tion­al work on the boat's hull caused them to miss sev­er­al of this sea­son's re­gat­tas, the team were hand­ed a two minute penal­ty for Sat­ur­day's race."We will have lots of catch­ing up to do since the boats in our class are all strong," said Edghill. "This is one of the most com­pet­i­tive class­es."He added that prepa­ra­tions for the new class had tak­en a lot of en­er­gy.

"There's a lot of tech­ni­cal and struc­tur­al work to sort out to get that ex­tra speed. We've been go­ing back and forth, try­ing out dif­fer­ent con­fig­u­ra­tions and fine tun­ing every­thing to get an op­ti­mum per­for­mance. It's a very time-con­sum­ing process but we will be fin­ished in time."

Edghill and Brash, who have been friends since their time at Fa­ti­ma Col­lege, will be rac­ing to­geth­er for the fourth time this Sat­ur­day. He said that their fa­mil­iar­i­ty with each oth­er had been a key to their suc­cess."We're both are long ac­quaint­ed with the sea and can read it well. There's good co­or­di­na­tion be­tween us. Some­times things can go wrong but that's rac­ing."

As a life­long mariner with over 20 years of Coast Guard ex­pe­ri­ence, the Great Race has al­ways been spe­cial to Edghill."My fa­ther was a sailor and I've al­ways been in and around the sea. My fam­i­ly al­ways looked for­ward to watch­ing the Great Race every year and as a Coast Guard, I would be on the pa­trol boats," he said. "It's man and ma­chine for 95 miles in the open wa­ter. It's a pure thrill."

Con­tenders

Carib Great Race 2014

A Class (130 mph)

Mon­ster, Mr So­lo, Para­mount

B Class (120 mph)

Fire One, Stam­pede

C Class (110 mph)

Glob­al Warmer

D Class (95 mph)

Sher­iff Lobo, Rush, Chris Gone Wilder

E Class (80 mph)

Hero III, White Heat, Elixir, En­er­giza

F Class (70 mph)

Rite For­mu­lal, En­er­giza, Ex­treme Mea­sures, Cynis­ca

G Class (60 mph)

Ma­trix Re­loaded, Chris Gone Wild, In­fu­sion IV, Wet­head, Out­cast