Straight-A Student Driver
On the pristine waters of Lake Tahoe, one motorsports expert taught another how to handle a high-performance catamaran.
Chris Miller loves high-performance machines. When he isn’t driving his Cantina Racing Trophy Truck with an 870-hp engine and 32 inches of travel in SCORE International Off Road Racing competition, the 43-year-old Southern California-based businessman is piloting either his Beechcraft King Air or Learjet aircraft. A longtime V-bottom owner, Miller easily could have been overconfident in his ability to teach himself to handle the Skater 388 catamaran—powered by Mercury Racing 1350 engines—he purchased a couple of weeks ago from Karl Koster in Discovery Bay, Calif.
But then, Miller, and his wife, Jennifer, have five little girls from two to 11 years old at their home near San Diego. And even if he didn’t have a family to cherish and protect, overconfidence simply isn’t in the man’s vocabulary. But responsibility and humility are.
“These boats are very cool, but there is massive responsibility that comes with them,” said Miller, who is spending the summer—per family tradition—with his wife and children on Lake Tahoe’s north in Nevada. “You have to be humble when you approach it. You have to listen. You have to learn from the best people.”
In Grant Bruggemann of Grant’s Signature Racing in Bradenton, Fla., Miller found one of those people.
While spending summers at Lake Tahoe is a Miller family tradition, the clan has added a new wrinkle with a 38-footer Skater catamaran.
and then