Carbon-Fiber 40-Foot MTI Wows Its New Owner
When David Spear and Billy Moore showed up to the Texas Outlaw Challenge at the end of June in Spear’s recently acquired 40-foot catamaran from Marine Technology Inc., in Wentzville, Mo., there weren’t too many people who knew they were coming, let alone that they were going to run a pristine closed-canopy MTI powered by twin Mercury Racing 1350 engines in both the poker run and the top-speed shootout.
David Spear and Billy Moore had a good time running Spear’s 40-foot MTI in Texas. Photo courtesy Todd Taylor/Todd Taylor Images
That’s mainly because the boat, which was introduced at the Miami International Boat Show in 2012, had been out of the limelight and seldom used by its former owner on South Carolina’s Lake Hartwell. Spear, who also owns The Sleeper, a stunning Outerlimits Offshore Powerboats SL 44 V-bottom with twin 1,350-hp Chief Performance/Precision Power Offshore engines, purchased the catamaran about week before the Texas Outlaw Challenge with assistance from Moore, who handled the boat—including overseeing the build of the lightweight all-carbon boat in 2011—for its original owner.
According to Moore, the 40-footer only had 30 hours on it before he and Spear took it Clear Lake and ran it up to 150 mph in the Texas Outlaw Challenge National Shootout Championship to win their class and finish third overall. (You can watch a 15-minute YouTube video from the cockpit of their last four runs in Texas.)“We did it all in Texas and had a great time,” said Spear, who enjoyed the entire event, including the street parties, the party at Kenny Armstrong’s following the shootout on Friday and the poker run the next day, with his wife, Lisa. “Although the conditions were windy and prevented us from using the larger props we tried first, we propped down to get more control and ended up running 150 mph, which wasn’t bad for our first shootout. We were able to get a great feel for the boat—it’s an incredible machine.
“Having Billy by my side was especially helpful since he’s so familiar with the boat and has an amazingly calm and knowledgeable way of talking to you and teaching you what to do,” he continued. “I tried to take everything he told me in like a sponge. He really knows what he’s doing in a boat.”
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