'Everybody frustrated' as Bluebird runs abandoned

The final day of running on Coniston Water for Donald Campbell's restored Bluebird was abandoned due to high winds and further technical woes.

The hydroplane had this week returned to action on the Cumbrian lake for the first time since its pilot was killed in a crash there in 1967 as he attempted to push his world water speed record past 300mph (480km/h).

Jeff Carroll, the chairman of Coniston's Ruskin Museum, which staged the event, said "everybody is frustrated" having thought engineering issues had been resolved on Friday.

It was hoped the craft could make several runs of 150mph (240km/h) over the seven days, but a single effort of 100mph (160km/h) on Friday was its only high-speed venture.

Saturday's action was thwarted by wind, waves and an issue with the cockpit canopy's latch not fastening.

Organisers aimed to get off to a prompt start on Sunday with reserve pilot DJ Gibbs in the cockpit rather than Australian speed record challenger Dave Warby, only for an issue with the starting mechanism to spring up.

It had been hoped Bluebird would reach sufficient speed to allow it to "plane" - the point at which hydrodynamics enable the machine to skim across the surface of the lake.

"Everybody is frustrated that we didn't get long planing runs," Carroll said on the slipway as Bluebird was towed back into the engineering tent for the final time.

"If it was that easy, everybody would be doing it."

He said the team thought it had "cracked it" on Friday, but a pipe coming off on Sunday was time-consuming to fix "and then you lose the weather window".

Campbell spent between November 1966 and January 1967 in Coniston trying to break the water speed record.

"As we said during the week, you feel how Donald must've with two months of it," Carroll said.

"You empathise with what he must've gone through with everybody doubting his conviction."

The event had been billed as a festival marking what would be the 70th anniversary of Campbell setting the first of four records on the lake in September 1956.

His daughter, Gina, said on Monday she had been "blown away" to see Bluebird running there again as thousands of spectators took to the shoreline.

However, there was criticism from some in the crowd and later online that the first day's action had only featured two low-speed "familiarisation runs".

Strong winds then prevented any running on Tuesday.

Anthony 'Robbie' Robinson, who was part of Campbell's support crew for that final record attempt, said: "It's disappointing Bluebird perhaps hasn't been able to make as many runs.

"But we've done what we set out to do, which was to get her back up on her planing surfaces as she used to do.

"We achieved that on Friday. Sadly, the weather has been against us as it so often is in record attempts."

Bluebird was recovered from the lake bed in 2001 and ran again on water for the first time in Scotland in 2018 under the supervision of Tyneside engineer Bill Smith and a team of volunteers.

It was handed to the Ruskin Museum two years ago following the resolution of a long-running row which saw Smith try to claim part-ownership of the machine as a result of the work he had undertaken.

As part of the settlement, he had to pay £25,000 towards the museum's legal costs.

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