Boyne Thunder Via Key West
With the 30th annual Lake of the Ozarks Shootout and Super Cat Fest events last week officially in the books, there aren’t many major—key word, hence the italics—happenings left in the 2018 go-fast boating season. Of course, there is the typically massive Lake Cumberland Poker Run Sept. 7-9 in Kentucky and the stunningly beautiful Lake Powell Challenge Sept. 13-16 in Arizona, a couple of houseboat-city-paloozas that should be on your event to-do list. (Jason Johnson, my speedonthewater.com co-publisher, will be on scene to cover the Lake Powell event next month.) But for the most part, that’s about it until the Florida Powerboat Club’s Key West Poker Run, which runs concurrently with the Super Boat International Offshore World Championships, in November.
Here’s one more great reason to put the aquatic speed week at the city at the end of the road on your schedule. Photo courtesy/copyright Pete Boden/Shoot 2 Thrill Pix.
Like many of you, I look forward to that season-ending debacle in the city at the end of the road. (And by the end of the week in Key West, I look just as forward to leaving the place.) Johnson and I cover the Wednesday, Friday and Sunday SBI races for speedonthewater.com, as well as the poker run and its assorted activities, so we don’t lack for professional obligations while we’re there. But while we work hard—a lot harder than we did as Powerboat magazine writers and editors when content production was monthly rather than daily—we still get our share of downtime fun.
The highlight of Key West for us, of course, is the annual Speedonthewater.com/Offshoreonly.com Bash on Thursday evening. Earlier this summer, we started brainstorming ideas for the event with offshoreonly.com moderator Greg Harris and his girlfriend Yvonne Aleman, and while we’re still in the planning process for the Nov. 8 party at the Sandbar Sports Grill, which will run from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m., we have nailed down a few key details.
and then