Three Big Go-Fast Boat Events for 2016
Pack your bags and follow the fastest boats across the country. Here are three top happenings -- West, Midwest, and Key West.
April 19, 2016
No one buys a go-fast boat that can top 180 mph, much less dresses it up with a $50,000 paint job, just to go unnoticed. If flying across the water incognito were the goal of those who spend the big money required to do it, the boats would be plain white, or maybe gray. Go-fast boating events such as poker runs, rallies, and raft-ups wouldn’t exist, because the boat owners would only hit the water early on weekday mornings to escape attention.
But, to loosely borrow from Samuel L. Jackson in the movie Pulp Fiction, “That stuff ain’t real.” In the real world, the hottest high-performance catamarans and V-bottoms are big—40 feet is on the small side—and powered by twin 700- to 1,800-hp supercharged or turbocharged engines. And they boast wild, big-buck graphics.
For viewing high-performance powerboats on and off the water, Desert Storm is far and away the best event in the west. Photo by Robert Brown.
OK, you may come across a shy owner now and then, a guy or gal who just likes to go fast on the water and be left alone to do it. But the boats? In every aspect, they’re designed to command attention. And grouped together, they produce the kind of sensory overload that only a speed-loving gear head can truly appreciate.
Publicly or privately, if you answer to that description there are three events you must attend in 2016. As it happens, there’s one out West, another in the Midwest, and a third on the East Coast, more precisely Key West, Fl. And they occur in that sequence, months apart from one another, so if you have the travel budget you could make all three and get your fill of the finest go-fast powerboat hardware on the planet.
Desert Storm Poker Run—April 27-30
Not to go off on a tangent, but it’s flat-out weird that the London Bridge was brought stone by stone to Lake Havasu City, Ariz. The notion a short, old Limey causeway above a popular channel on the lake could somehow attract tourists to a tiny city in the scorched Arizona desert was, at best the very least, half-baked (or maybe it was whole-baked—from May through October, the place is like a kiln).
Then again, maybe the shakers and movers of Lake Havasu who decided that a vintage rock bridge would be exactly what the city needed were ahead of their time, because from that structure you can watch high-performance powerboats from Cigarette, DCB, Skater, MTI, Mystic, Outerlimits and more idle out in waves for the Desert Storm Poker Run on Lake Havasu. Of course, the best way to catch the action is from a boat on one side of the course or the other. Lacking boats, however, viewers can also find great viewing spots on the shoreline of the lake, which is formed by the Colorado River, though those views tend to be a little distant.
Those who want to catch the boats coming in should head straight to the Nautical Inn after the poker runs begins. It’s Desert Storm’s official host hotel, and because it offers dockage many of the participants stay there, with their boats in the water for the entire event.
The Poker Run happens Friday. On Saturday morning, the organizers run the Desert Storm Top Speed Shootout, which is held in a cove not terribly far from—you guessed it—the London Bridge. But you won’t see anything but faraway rooster tails from the bridge, so your best bet is to either bring your boat and join the spectator fleet (and there’s quite a party out there) or watch from one of the cliffs along the shoreline.
Lake of the Ozarks Shootout—August 24-28
Although the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout in Central Missouri is loaded with other boating events beyond the top-speed event on the lake’s liquid-mile course, the Shootout is the main attraction. For two days, owners of everything from pontoon boats to 50-foot turbine-powered catamarans nail the throttles and see what kind of top speed they can reach when they hit the radar trap. It really is that simple.
The granddaddy of top speed events on the water, the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout attracts competitors from around the country. Photo by Robert Brown.
The current record for the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout is a mind-bending 244 mph. It was set by Steve Curtis and Qatar’s Sheikh Hassan bin Jabor Al-Thani in 2014 in a 50-foot Mystic cat with a pair of 3,000-hp turbine engines. Lest anyone believe the Shootout is all fun and games, that record was established on the same day Outerlimits founder Mike Fiore crashed and sustained horrific injuries, the complications from which would claim his life three days later.
If you don’t own a boat or—even better—have a friend in the areas who does, the lake of the Ozarks Shootout presents big hurdles for viewing. The cliffs along the far side of the Shootout course are excellent viewing areas, but they’re also private property. So you either you have to know someone who lives there or ingratiate yourself with someone who does. OK, being a charming, persuasive, and publicity-promising media type also can work access wonders, but that may not be an option for you.
Your best viewing option is finding a way to be part of the mile-plus-long spectator fleet, kept well off the course at all times by the shootout’s patrol boats, and settling in for either Saturday, Sunday, or both (Saturday is most popular). Thanks to the antics of your new best friends—thousands of them—you won’t notice the sometimes long breaks between speed runs. Heck, for that matter, you might even forget there’s a top-speed shootout in progress.
SBI Key West Offshore World Championships—November 6-13
OK, for seeing the latest and great high-performance pleasure boats and offshore raceboats, the Super Boat International Offshore World Championships in Key West,
Fl., is the best event in the country. It’s not even arguable.
For the top fleet in domestic offshore racing, as well as a huge fleet of high-end go-fast pleasure boats, the SBI Key West Worlds are unbeatable. Photo by Andy Newman.
But it’s not just because SBI features three days (Wednesday, Friday and Sunday) of multi-class offshore racing. The Florida Powerboat Club’s annual Key West Poker Run happens concurrently with the SBI Key West Worlds, and that’s where the high-performance pleasure boat side comes into play. Organized by FPC founder Stu Jones, the run typically attracts 150-plus go-fast boats from around the country.
Though the poker run leaves Miami in several waves on different days, the most popular day for the fleet to head to the Keys is Thursday. It’s all an all-day run over a lot of water, which makes catching the boats in action tough for spectators. If you’re chasing the run, your best bet for catching the fleet—and least at the docks—is at the lunch stop at Gilbert’s on Key Largo.
Another good move is simply to grab a cold drink at the Conch Republic Restaurant, preferably on the patio, and watch the exotic catamarans and V-bottoms pull into the docks, starting just after 3 p.m. Stu Jones reserves the prime dock spaces for his sponsors and longtime club members/high rollers, so the boats docked in front of “the Conch” tend to be spectacular.
Eventually, you’ll need to look at something other than go-fast boats, which means you’ll wander off to Duval Street. And when you need a break from that, you may want to catch some offshore racing.
SBI runs three to four races per day (as noted above on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday) and there are endless options for great viewing. On the high end, things don’t get much better than at a waterfront suite at the Pier House. But if that’s not in your budget, there's everything from free viewing areas on the outer mole (a breakwater with a funny name) and in Mallory Square. Between free and spendy, there any number of waterside bars and restaurants that offer tables at various prices.
