Strollin’ The Street Party: 30 Hot Shots From Lake Havasu

It doesn’t matter how many times someone walks up and down the Desert Storm Poker Run Street Party, which stretches for roughly one mile on both sides of McCulloch Boulevard in Lake Havasu City, Ariz., the show is always impressive. Even if it’s raining, which has happened a couple of times during the Thursday spectacle, or if it’s scorching hot—like it was yesterday—there’s no denying the showcase of boats is arguably one of the coolest in the country.

Along with the impressive display of DCB models on hand, there were dozens of amazing machines to drool over from Eliminator, MTI, Nordic, Skater and more during Thursday’s Desert Storm Poker Run Street Party. Photo by Jeff Helmkamp/Helmkamp Photos.

Yesterday’s Street Party precursor to today’s poker run on Lake Havasu was nothing short of spectacular once again. Of course, there were boats that have been highlights of the Street Party for several years, such as Mike Smith’s gorgeous 43-foot Nordic Boats catamaran and Craig and Kim Hargreaves’ Spooled Up 52-foot MTI—Spooled Up II, their matching DCB M44 Widebody, also was on display—and many other boats that have been made new again like Larry Guillen’s Cállate Skater Powerboats 388 cat and Rick Bowling’s Gone Again canopied Hustler 377 Talon.

As usual, DCB banded together for its hometown event and had quite a remarkable congregation of boats. The showstopper of them all was Dave and Buffie Megugorac’s Bananas XL, a gorgeous new yellow, white and black M44 Widebody powered by twin Mercury Racing 1550/1350 dual-calibration turbocharged engines. Across from Bananas XL was Spooled Up II and up and down the street were several recently delivered single- and twin-engine—outboard- and sterndrive-powered—M Series models in a variety of bright colors.

Overall, it was a gorgeous day despite temperatures near 100 degrees, and the displays were as noteworthy as ever. Whether it was the Kicker Audio booth feature in the Eye of the Storm section or the E-Ticket Performance Boats pavilion on the west end of the boulevard, the visuals were notably cool this year.

Check out the slideshow above for more of Jeff Helmkamp’s images from the Street Party.

You can see some of the coolest boats that were on hand in the slideshow of images taken by Speedonthewater.com photographer Jeff Helmkamp above. Included amongst the 30 images featured here are several DCBs, the new Eliminator Boats 25 Speedster with twin Mercury Racing 300R engines that was uncovered on Thursday (read the story), and the new Lavey Craft Motorsports-built RPM 26 Redline with a single Mercury Racing 700SCi engine and M6 drive. (Read the story about the partnership announced at Desert Storm last year.)

Along with a pair of 43-footers, Nordic showed off its new 35-foot cat with twin Mercury Racing Verado 400R engines and the company also had a couple of its models from Hallett Boats models on display. As it has been the past few years, the MTIs on hand were some of the coolest boats there. Don Verkuylen made his second trip from Florida for the run in his Super Veloce G7 52-foot cat and George Argyros had his eight-seat 48-footer, Mayhem, on the street. The Wentzville, Mo., had some of its outboard-powered 340X cats and MTI-V 42 center consoles on display as well.

Jerry Barron of Barron Boats showed off his company’s new 290 Sport for the first time at the event and the team from Wozencraft Insurance had an energetic display that featured owner Devin Wozencraft’s 30-foot Skater cat that he’s hauling to Louisiana next week for the Tickfaw 200 Power Run.

It also was cool to see some of the Northern California representation between Bowling’s 37-footer, Dave Cook’s Fountain Powerboats 32 Thunder Cat with twin Mercury Racing Verado 400R engines and Gary Colledge’s power-hardtop Skater catamaran.

It’s safe to say that the annual Desert Storm Poker Run Street Party did not disappoint. And, assuming you haven’t been there before, you’re probably trying to figure out how you can get there in 2020 after checking out the pictures from one of the coolest parties of the year.

Strollin’ The Street Party: 30 Hot Shots From Lake Havasu

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