There’s nothing like the smell of burnt two-cycle fuel on a warm summer day. It smells like … the Newberg Boat Club’s Memorial Day boat races!
The 77th installment of the annual event is set for May 24-25 at Rogers Landing County Park on the Willamette River in Newberg.
The spectacle of high-performance boats flying up and down the river has been held locally going back to the years following World War II (races have only been suspended once during that time — in 2020 during the pandemic). The first American Power Boat Association-sanctioned event race was held on Memorial Day in 1949 and was staged as a marathon starting in Independence and finishing 44 miles downriver at Newberg…