Yearly Archives: 2019

Photos by Brad Glidewell

Driving on a counterclockwise rotation on the Lake of the Ozarks, racers mounted their second of six meets in the OPA/P1 season as half a dozen classes kicked off competition on Saturday.

In the most exciting action of the day, #651 Deception took unofficial first place in Class 6 after running six laps. Cool Breeze Propellers, featuring the Smith Brothers Offshore Racing Team, took second place, with NuWave Marine in third. 

Class 3 entries ran eight laps for a total 44 miles, as Strictly Business and Advanced Marine traded first-place positions. Strictly Business, with veteran racer Johnny Stanch, was victorious in his 35′ Fountain

In Class 2, #218 Mama Ain’t Happy—a twin-outboard Wright Performance hull—led the race to finish first unofficially, with Advanced Marine Racing coming in second.

Class 6, a 70-mph bracket class, saw #651 Deception (with driver Jesse Schmig and throttleman Robert Bryant) taking the checkered flag against second-place Cool Breeze Propellers and third-place finisher NuWave Marine. #635 Throttle Therapy experienced a technical snafu and did not finish the race.

In Class 4, SimmonsMarine.com—winner of last month’s season-kickoff Thunder in Cocoa Beach—was first in the class. Competitor Team Woody left the race after losing an ignition coil. 

Knucklehead Instigator ran uncontested in Vee Extreme class.

 


Triple-digit speedboats, off-the-hook pool parties and drop-dead-gorgeous girls: it’s a Lone Star State tradition, and it’s all about to unfold again in the city of Kemah, TX.

One of the premier boating events in the nation, the Texas Outlaw Challenge, is revving up for its 12th annual installment, June 19-23. For the third consecutive year, the shootout will be held on the protected waters of Clear Lake—a major change from the previous custom of holding it on the open waters of Galveston Bay.

The 2019 event will encompass “all the highlights plus more,” according to event organizer and coordinator Paul Robinson. “We always seem to find a way to enhance our guests’ experience and give them something fresh every year.”

It wouldn’t be a Texas Outlaw Challenge without the over-the-top party thrown by Robinson’s neighbor, Kenny Armstrong, at his spectacular “casa,” which attracts throngs of locals and out-of-towners alike—plus, it doubles as a poker-run stop.

The Gunslinger Poker Run will feature nine total stops during the three-day run: Kenny’s Casa (Friday only), Barge 295, Bayland Marina/O’Neils, Blue Marline Fuel Dock, TopWater, Harbor Walk (Saturday only), CABO Club, Endeavour Marina, and Marine Max (Saturday night).

In addition to the usual parties, bikini contests, bike rallies, awards and on-water fun (see schedule below), this year Marine Max has offered its expansive facility in Seabrook—which includes a huge showroom, patio and private marina—to host an exclusive “Outlaws to the Max” finale gala and awards ceremony on Saturday, June 22, following the Gunslinger Poker Run.

“Because the event has gotten so big, the challenge has become which venues can accommodate you,” Robinson explains. “We like to enjoy each other’s company, along with all of our new friends, as a group, but we’ve never been able to do that in a big finale. Outlaws to the Max will allow us to extend our hospitality to everybody. It will allow us to do a grand Casino Night with live entertainment.”

The finale party will feature select VIP boat slips right in the party at the marina, and they will be offered complimentary bottle service straight to their boats. “I think that may be a first,” Robinson says. “I don’t think anyone’s ever had bottle service to their boat and crew parties. We’ll have 25 crew parties, as well as the big Gala going on in the main showroom, and it all connects. We’re excited about that.”

Also, for the first time, the gang from Missouri’s Performance Boat Center will be attending the event, and Robinson is also stoked that HCB Yachts/Hydra Sports is attending with its massive 53’ Sueños center console yacht.

Awards will be handed out at the Outlaws to the Max finale gala on Saturday, June 22 from 7 p.m. to midnight at Marine Max in Seabrook.

The Texas Outlaw Challenge supports numerous local charities through event participant and sponsor donations. Proceeds help the Shriners Children’s Hospital, Bridge Women’s Shelter, Boys & Girls Harbor, Clear Creek Environmental Foundation, Kemah Lions Club, Seabrook Rotary, Seabrook Marine Group, Galveston-House Families Exploring Down Syndrome, and various veterans’ groups. The Texas Outlaw Challenge supports the local community and businesses with a huge economic impact estimated to top $1 million every year.

Event schedule:

 

 

Photo by Pete Boden

Lake Race—the second competition in the 2019 OPA/P1 offshore season—officially kicks off tomorrow in Lake Ozark, MO, following up on the Thunder on Cocoa Beach blowout just days ago.

The action transfers racers from the turbulent waters of the Atlantic Ocean to the comparatively calmer conditions of a lake environment. But the festivities won’t be remotely calmer—quite the contrary. Organizers are pulling out all the stops to make the LOTO event bigger, wilder and more exciting than in previous years, starting with the involvement of multi-platinum selling country recording artist Billy Ray Cyrus. He is scheduled to perform on Saturday, following the race. But leading up to race day, there are several fun events on the schedule:

• Thursday, May 30—The big Kickoff Party starts at 6 p.m. at the two host sites, located next door to each other on the same cove: Camden on the Lake Resort and Shady Gators. “Most of our local racers will attend,” says event promoter Nikki Sorrenson. “Some of the other race teams will still be traveling, so it will probably be lower-key in terms of turnout. But we expect to see Reese Langheim with his brand-new Victory hull, Jackhammer, on display. They are finishing the rigging of that boat as we speak.” In addition, Thursday will also feature a special drive for victims in surrounding towns such as Eldon and Jefferson City, where tornadoes recently ripped through the area. A semi-trailer and a DJ will be set up, with Billy Ray Cyrus and the Red Cross involved in helping the community donate goods to victims devastated by the twisters. Loren Peters and Mike Wright of Wide Open Racing will also be on hand with their WIA offshore boat.

• Friday, May 31—Once again, Camden on the Lake Resort and Shady Gators will join forces to host the Festival of Speed, featuring fast boats, fast cars and fast motorcycles. “We’re encouraging everyone to come out, by boat or by car,” Sorrenson says. “The race teams are all going to be staying at Camden, and will all be on site. Performance Boat Center will have a big display out in front of Camden, so that’ll be pretty exciting. The other race teams that have come in will be set up in the dry pits up the street from the resorts, and there’ll be shuttles running so people can definitely check it out.”

Saturday, June 1—The main racing event will be livecast on Powerboat P1’s Facebook page; after the race—weather permitting—an awards ceremony will be mounted on the outside stage. “I think the race teams like to see people’s excitement, and I think it makes them feel good when they get cheered on by the fans, many of whom wear the colors and gear of their favorite teams. So we’re going to have it right there in the open, on the main outside stage at Camden,” Sorrenson says. Once again, there will be a DJ and a band at Camden, and Billy Ray Cyrus will be performing next door at Shady Gators. Cyrus recently hit another career high with a remix of the Lil Nas X hit “Old Town Road”; Cyrus earned his first number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100 chart as a “featured artist” on the track.

More information about Lake Race can be found by clicking here.

The Boatfloater.com team of Steve and Stephen Kildahl have been retroactively named winners of OPA/P1’s Thunder in Cocoa Beach offshore race in Super Vee Extreme (SVX) class, following Marker 17 Marine’s unofficial win on Sunday.

After the race, OPA/P1 determined that Marker 17 Marine—the 29’ Outerlimits formerly campaigned as Snowy Mountain Brewery—needed to add extra weight to the hull because it has two or more steps, per OPA rules.

“When we decided to race the circuit months ago, we didn’t see anything in the rule book on it,” said Marker 17’s Vinnie Diorio, who throttles for owner/driver Brian Forehand. “We want to support the circuit, and support offshore racing, but we just feel like it should have been brought to our attention before the race, and not after.”

Despite the “bad taste” of having the win taken away from them, Diorio says the team is committed to attending the next OPA/P1 race. “We’ll do whatever we gotta do—if we have to put weight in our boat, or handicap ourselves, we will. We’re still going to go run our boat and we’re still going to go do good with it. We have the best vee bottom driver and setup man in the world. Brian has the most amount of time in a vee bottom boat, period. It’s an honor for me to race with him.”

For his part, OPA race director Ed “Smitty” Smith told Powerboat Nation, “It wasn’t so much the team’s fault—they’d raced in Superboat International for years. But in our rule book, multi-step boats have to take a weight adjustment for parity. It was just a mistake, but it was a judgment call, and I had to make it. Brian Forehand was pretty upset about it, and justifiably so. I just want them to know that I want them at the Lake of the Ozarks. They didn’t do anything wrong—it was just a simple mistake.”

Lake Race, held at Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks, is scheduled for May 30 to June 1.

 

Class One racing capped the Thunder in Cocoa Beach action as the OPA/P1 competition pitted the big offshore boats against each other. Nearly all of these boats were powered by identical 1,100 QC4 turbocharged engines from Mercury Racing. 

The #222 Offshore boat from Australia (with driver Darren Nicholson and throttleman Giovanni Carpitella) took an early lead, but were soon passed by the #3 Victory team from Dubai (driver Salem Al Adidi and throttleman Eisa Al Ali). They themselves were passed by driver James Sheppard and throttleman Steve Curtis, piloting their famous Miss Geico Racing entry, which took the checkered flag and made short work of of #77 Lucas Oil as well. Meanwhile, #91 Zabo exited the race with a mechanical issue. 

Driver Edward Smith and throttleman Anthony Smith of #20 Instigator ran uncontested in Vee Extreme class.

In the third of four Sunday races, the OPA/P1 Thunder in Cocoa Beach offshore race saw half a dozen competitors duking it out in Supercat class.

The New Zealand team Pro Floors took the lead out of the gate and stayed out in front for the entire race, although MCON was often chasing them by only a boat length or two, at times taking on their competitors’ punishing rooster tail spray in the turns. Meanwhile, Myrick Coil and Johnny Tomlinson in Performance Boat Center/Jimmy John’s tried valiantly to gain ground after having relatively little time to test their brand-new MTI. Though MCON made excellent gains in the corners, Pro Floors continually shot ahead in the straightaways. Pro Floors took the unofficial win, followed by MCON, Performance Boat Center/Jimmy John’s and WHM Motorsports.

Cats and vees mixed it up in Cocoa Beach for the second of four races in OPA/P1’s first meet of 2019. More than 20 competitors in Pro Stock Vee, Super Vee Extreme (SVX) and Super Stock classes converged on the Atlantic Ocean, with Travis Pastrana—leader of the popular extreme sports extravaganza Nitro Circus—racing in #1 JRA Boat Sales in SVX Class.

Racing in relatively flat conditions with 7-mph winds, the field of 11 cats racing in Super Stock class saw Shadow Pirate and FJ Propeller trading off the lead position, with Performance Boat Center/Auto Alert frequently gaining on both. In the end, Shadow Pirate continued its amazing winning streak, followed by the new Performance Boat Center/Auto Alert entry piloted by Myrick Coil and Rusty Williams in second place and Gary Ballough, driving his brand-new FJ Propeller Victory hull, in third.

Exciting Pro Stock Vee competition saw LSB Hurricane of Awesomeness/RevX Oil battling for the lead with Fast Boys, and then Fast Boys battling for second with Play It Again and Done Deal. LSB held on to its lead for the win.

In SVX class, Marker 17 Marine took an early lead, with Boatfloater and Sheriff Lobo close behind. The #17 boat finished first and was named the unofficial winner in SVX class. However, OPA/P1 later ruled that because the Marker 17 Marine Outerlimits has multiple steps on the hull, it failed to add weight to the boat to achieve parity, according to OPA rules. Boatfloater was then named the official winner of SVX class..

The 10th Annual Thunder on Cocoa Beach ushered in OPA/P1 Superstock’s 2019 offshore race season, as the first of four races ended with a victory for #516 Bronx Phantom/JT Social House in Class 5, #623 Boom Shaka Laka in Class 6, #404 SimmonsMarine.com in Class 4 and #28 Porta Products in P1 Superstock.

Boom Shaka Laka repeatedly traded off its lead with New Wave Marine, but the Boom prevailed.

Of the 20 or so boats racing in this first round, several competitors broke down or dropped out of the race, almost from the first lap—including Team Woody, Specialized Racing, Hammer Head and Strictly Business. Each were seen either coming off plane or being towed back to the pits during the competition.



There’s a brand-new competitor in offshore racing, but the boat he’ll be campaigning in tomorrow’s Cocoa Beach OPA competition isn’t new to racing at all.

Driver Chris Grant of Ontario, Canada, will be behind the wheel of the former MTI raceboat known as Warpaint; after purchasing it, the rig was overhauled by Double R Performance of Fort Myers, FL, and rechristened Too Much? The editors from Powerboat Nation were on the scene in Cocoa Beach to chat with Grant and his crew, which includes throttleman Ken Jensen and crew chief Mike Dilapo.

“A couple of years ago, I tried to get into an offshore boat, and it didn’t work out,” Grant says. “Then last fall, Ray Roberts of Double R Performance, who knew I was looking for one, told me about the Warpaint boat, and everything came together.” Formerly owned by Bob Vesper, the 42′ MTI has been off the race course for the last few years, but is now back, proudly displaying the Double R logo—as well as the logo of the Canadian ski resort that Grant owns, Antoine Mountain.

Grant, 58, is the owner of a 42′ Fountain Lightning that he uses in the Florida Powerboat Club’s poker runs to Key West and Fort Myers. But these days it’s the offshore cat that has been demanding much of his attention. So what’s it like going from a vee hull to a cat? Grant opts for a land-based vehicle analogy.

“The Fountain is like driving a pickup truck, the way it handles in a turn. It’s nice, but you could slide a bit,” he explains. “But with the cat, it’s like you’re driving a dually truck. You just carve into the corners. The acceleration is amazing; the cornering and the speed is just unbelievable.”

Grant has been preparing for the Cocoa Beach race by testing in Florida’s Cape Coral. “Ray and I have been doing corners and straightaways. It’s been amazing and super fun. We did have a water pump belt pop off, which smoked the engine. Within two weeks, we had new engines put in, tested it again, and now here we are!”

Too Much? joins some pretty tough competition this weekend, including WHM Motorsports, Pro-Floors, AHM Racing, MCON and others.

Victory Team, the Dubai-based builder of high-performance offshore raceboats, recently unveiled its 27-foot closed-canopy Pro Cat and open-cockpit VTX models at the Dubai International Boat Show.

The 2019 edition of the show—held at a brand-new facility along the Dubai Water Canal in Jumeirah—ran for five days and attracted more than 800 companies and associations from around the world.

The high-profile debut of the VTX and Pro Cat were among the show’s most exciting, as Victory’s hulls have become forces to reckon with in racing in the United States and abroad. Buyers in the USA are used to seeing the 32’ and 40’ Victory hulls raced in offshore competition; World Champion Gary Ballough recently took delivery of his brand-new 32′ Victory that he plans to campaign during the 2019 season.

But the new Victory hulls are slightly scaled-down; they can be built in sizes ranging from 27′ to 29’, and in both open-cockpit and closed-canopy configurations. In creating this new boat, Victory drew from its 30 years of experience and innovation in powerboat racing. According to Victory Team reps, the Pro Cat is being aimed directly at the younger generation.

“We want more young faces in our sport, and one of the best ways to appeal to them is to give them a truly world-class experience through the launch of the Pro Cat,” said HE Huraiz Al Murr Bin Huraiz, chairman of Victory Team. “Pro Cat” is an abbreviated version of “Professional Catamaran,” and is designed to inspire younger and smaller race teams to hop into the powerboat racing field.

Typical power on the 27′ VTX and Pro Cat hulls will be twin Mercury Racing 300R outboards.

The boats will be sold in both the United Arab Emirates and the United States; the first dealer is FB Marine Group of Pompano Beach, FL.

Larry Bleil of Race World Offshore addresses the City of Key West board of commissioners.

The Key West Board of Commissioners, along with Mayor Teri Johnston, unanimously and officially approved Race World Offshore (RWO) as the sanctioning body to run the World Championships in Key West, ending the longtime regime of Super Boat International (SBI), whose contract with the city ended last year.

RWO President Larry Bleil did not try to hide his enthusiasm at the news, telling Powerboat Nation he was “ecstatic” by the news.

“We’ve been working very, very hard on this for a long time,” Bleil said. “I’ve been involved with Key West for such a long time, and now we can make this race the spectacle that it needs to be, getting it back to the glory days of the past and moving forward. We’re committed to that.”

Bleil additionally revealed to Powerboat Nation that RWO has also secured approval to mount this year’s offshore race in Clearwater, FL.

Along with Bleil himself, several business associates and racers attended the meeting to speak in favor of RWO. “There were even a couple of people I had no idea were going to be there,” Bleil said. “It’s fabulous. I’m really excited. But now the work really begins.”

RWO and SBI, along with Powerboat P1/Offshore Powerboat Association (OPA), had all submitted proposals to land the new contract. In March, each groups proposals were ranked and rated by a panel hired by Key West to grade them and determine which plan would best benefit the city. The RWO proposal scored best, and the panel made a recommendation to the city to hand the contract to that group.

On Tuesday evening, that recommendation won the board’s seal of approval.

As former president of the Conch Republic Offshore Powerboat Racing Association for 10 years, Bleil brings a special set of credentials to RWO and in overseeing the Key West race. RWO decided to step up to the plate because the Key West event had become “stagnant for years and years,” he said. “It just time for a change.”

As of Tuesday, May 7, SBI continued to list the Clearwater and Key West dates on its official website.