Image of the Week: A Look ‘Inside’ Qatar
With the Qatar Cup and the Miami International Boat Show coming within the same two-week period in February, we were looking for a photo that might tie the two events together. It seemed like a long shot, to say the least, but we stumbled on this shot in photographer Jay Nichols “50 Favorites of 2014” Flickr gallery. Ordered by the Spirit of Qatar team to host special visitors during offshore races, this wild “Gold VIP Edition” Cigarette Racing Team 38′ Top Gun debuted at the 2014 Miami Show.
Even in the product-rich Cigarette Racing Team booth during the 2014 Miami Boat Show, Spirit of Qatar team’s 38-foot “Gold VIP Edition” Top Gun stood out. Photo courtesy/copyright Jay Nichols/Naples Image
Most visitors to the show didn’t get the chance to crawl inside the 38-footer’s cabin, but Nichols did and he came back with this image. Bold and over-the-top, relative descriptions to be sure in the high-performance powerboat world, the V-bottom was color-matched to the team’s Al Adaa’am 96 turbine-powered Mystic catamaran driven by Sheikh Hassan bin Jabor Al-Thani and throttled by Steve Curtis.
We’ve never seen the team’s 38-foot “VIP boat” in the water in person. But come February in Doha, Qatar, we’re sure hoping to. Because we’re pretty sure we won’t see anything like it this year in Miami.
and then