Don’t get me wrong, I flat out love covering the annual Super Boat International Offshore World Championships. I mean, what’s not to love about a week in Key West, Fla., in mid-November? That’s usually when the weather gets dicey in the San Francisco Bay area—where I live—so covering the Key West Worlds presents a nice getaway, even if it is “work.”

Last year's winner, Nauti Marine, a 50-foot Mystic cat with twin 2,000-hp alcohol engines, will attempt to defend its Top Gun title this year.



But for me the Key West Worlds are more about reconnecting with the people I know in the offshore powerboat racing community than watching the races. That’s because since the 1999 and 2000 seasons, the event has been in a steady decline—for a number of reasons—so much so that last year pleasure boats from the Florida Powerboat Club outnumbered race boats by at least three to one.

Thin fields where an entire “class” might consist of two to three race boats don’t make for riveting competition. Fact is, most of the racing at the Key West Worlds is, well, boring.

So where is the best action, the kind that spectators will actually watch, in the high-performance powerboat world? That’s a no-brainer—the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout, which will be held this year August 28-29.

The spectator fleet at the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout is more than a mile long.



Tagged “the largest unsanctioned powerboat race in the world,” the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout was founded in 1988 to raise money for the Osage Beach Fire Department. The event is a throwback to the Friday night car drag races of years gone by, except that the Shootout is legal and captures top speed in a liquid mile rather than an asphalt quarter-mile.

Last, year local hero David Scott and offshore world championship-winning throttleman John Tomlinson took “Top Gun” honors with a top speed of 196 mph in Scott’s 50-foot Mystic catamaran powered by a pair of 2,000-hp alcohol-fueled engines. A couple of years earlier, Dave Callan and John Cosker reached 203 mph in a turbine-powered Tencara catamaran. A couple of years before that when it looked like the Callan team might take the title, Miss Budweiser, the world’s most famous Unlimited hydroplane, driven by Dave Villwock entered and snagged Top Gun honors.

Yet the Shootout isn’t just about the big boys—far from it. Although the exotic stuff gets top billing, the Shootout remains a “run what you brung,” grassroots event. There is a slew of V-bottom classes, additional catamaran classes, a deck boat class, a personal watercraft class and more. There’s even a pontoon class and, let me tell you, there’s nothing that looks more delightfully absurd than a pontoon boat running nearly 100 mph.

Catamarans, as well as V-bottoms, of various sizes and power configurations shoot for top-of-class honors on the liquid mile drag strip.



Go-fast boat entertainment on the water just doesn’t get any better, but don’t take my word for it. Ask any of the estimated 70,000-plus fans, many of them in the incredible spectator fleet which is more than a mile long. The boats are rafted off so closely that you could walk most of the way from vessel to vessel without dipping a toe in the water.

People come from all over the country to the Shootout, and you’ll never meet a more cordial and easy-going group of performance-boat lovers. If you go, be ready make friends—it’s no place for an introvert.

Though the lead-up for this year’s Shootout starts Monday with a slew of extracurricular events including a radio-control boat Shootout with model boats that can reportedly run almost 100 mph, the days to be there are Saturday and Sunday. I’ll be headed there on the Friday prior to cover the event for Powerboat magazine.

Much to my dismay as I have a healthy sense of entitlement, Powerboat sent another writer to cover the Key West Worlds in 2009. That’s OK. One less week on Duvall Street adds a year to your life, or so I’m told.

Plus, at the end of the month I get to cover the best high-performance boating event in the world.

Written by: Matt Trulio
Matt Trulio is the co-publisher and editor in chief of speedonthewater.com, a daily news site with a weekly newsletter and a new bi-monthly digital magazine that covers the high-performance powerboating world. The former editor-in-chief of Sportboat magazine and editor at large of Powerboat magazine, Trulio has covered the go-fast powerboat world since 1995. Since joining boats.com in 2000, he has written more than 200 features and blogs.