Hydro Foyle: Protégé puts the pedal to the metal

BREWSTER – One never knows when personal lightning will strike and influence life’s path in one way or another.

Let’s say you are an unemployed logger stopping by the Down & Out Café to buy a cup of coffee with the remaining change in your pocket. You are wearing your Stihl chainsaw bill cap, red logger suspenders, plaid shirt, caulk boots, and those pants with the leg hems cut off. On the stool next to you sits a discouraged movie director who has been in town for a week looking without success for a genuine lumberjack to play the lead in his next big-budget, blockbuster film.

Or you could be young Hilton Foyle driving water truck for grandfather Bob Foyle in the family orchard when you encounter Tacoma Inboard Race Association (TIRA) representatives looking at the spot on the Columbia River to place their large digital clock.

“That was a lucky coincidence,” said Hilton’s father, Eric Foyle. “Where our orchard is was just the right spot for the time clock for the Brewster races.”

“How old are you, Hilton?” race director and Brewster resident Jim LaBrie asked.

When Foyle replied, “11”, LaBrie’s rejoinder was: “Well, you wanna race boats tomorrow?”

A quick “Yeah,” from Hilton and the family was in Pateros the following day to watch Hilton’s racing debut.

A sixth-grade student at Chelan’s Roots Community School, Hilton is more likely to be found in the orchard than in a racing craft. And the leap from behind the steering wheel of a truck hauling water to the wheel of an open cockpit rocket hauling on the water is no trifle.

The TIRA guys showed Hilton the boat, explained the controls, fitted him with racing/safety gear, and put him in the water for a couple of test runs. Then it was showtime.

Hilton drove the Atlas Van Lines J-stock boat powered by a 15 horsepower Evinrude outboard in the Terry Troxel Memorial Regatta exhibition race in Pateros. Race officials removed the boat’s speed control the restrictor plate so Hilton could experience the boat’s acceleration and power.

Two weeks later he drove in the Tony Newton Memorial Regatta in Brewster.

“I was nervous, but it was really fun,” Hilton said whose true passion is operating equipment on the family’s fifth-generation apple orchard.

The TIRA racing community “really adopted us for lack of a better term,” said Eric expressing his appreciation for the welcome his family received.

“Í would like to thank the group that invited me to do all this racing,” Hilton said.

And there may be more to come. Thanks to this experience, Eric predicts that by next season Hilton and family may be competing in the small J-stock class.