Inside SOTW Mag—The Randy Scism Interview

“It’s no big deal—just  and you’ll be fine; the thing practically drives itself,” he said with conviction. “You sure?” the rookie Powerboat magazine editor asked as the boat idled away from the docks at the Hyatt in Sarasota, Fla., the home of many Powerboat magazine boat evaluations.

With an array of high-performance catamarans and center console, Randy Scism has grown MTI into an industry powerhouse. Photo by Brad Glidewell copyright Brad Glidewell Photography.

That was my first encounter with Randy Scism, the founder and owner of Marine Technology Inc.—best known simply as MTI— some 15 years ago. I was rather green when it came to performance boats, especially offshore catamarans like Scism’s Wentzville, Mo.-based company specialized in at the time, and, frankly, I didn’t know anything about him, let alone all he had accomplished to that point in his career.

I had yet to read the Powerboat profile editor at large Matt Trulio had written about Scism in 2004, highlighting his successes with the Dubai- based Victory team on and off the racecourse as well as his rapid rise in the United States performance boat market since founding MTI in 1999. I had no clue Scism was the original Lake of the Ozarks Shootout Top Gun champion back in 1989; heck I didn’t even know what the Shootout was when I started with the magazine.

Upon returning from the Florida leg of the Performance Trials—that’s what we called the testing program—I found and read the article Trulio, who I eventually teamed up with on speedonthewater.com, wrote about Scism, the world champion throttleman who gave me a chance to control the wheel upward of 100 mph along Sarasota Bay on the way back to the launch ramp following our evaluation of the 42-foot MTI.

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