Szolack and Miller Test Shootout-Specific Sterling-Powered Skater 368

In between testing Ron Szolack’s super-powered 36-foot Skater Powerboats catamaran and John Jackman’s Team 27 42-foot MTI catamaran, Miller Marina’s Chip Miller checked in with speedonthewater.com to let us know how Szolack’s Flight Club Skater 368 handled in its first go round yesterday in St. Clair Shores, Mich.

Chip Miller and Ron Szolack are planning to do more testing in Szolack’s 368 Skater today. Photos courtesy Chip Miller

Specifically set up to run in next month’s Lake of the Ozarks Shootout in Sunrise Beach, Mo., the boat, which is powered by a set of supercharged 1,550-plus-hp Sterling Performance engines—recently upgraded to run Ignite Racing fuel—and Arneson ASD-8 surface drives, is the same one that was well documented on this website as the next Gone Again boat before Kenny Mungle asked for his deposit back at the beginning of this year (read the story).

Miller, who will be racing alongside Jackman in this weekend’s St. Clair River Fest race sanctioned by the Offshore Powerboat Association, said the 36-foot Skater ran incredible.

“We made a few small adjustments to the boat that seemed to help a lot,” Miller explained. “Yesterday’s testing was to get used to the boat and to test a few sets of propellers. We plan on testing a few more sets of props and I have a couple of onboard cameras were going to run today.

“We can’t talk about what kind of top speed we’ve seen, but I will tell you it’s probably the fastest accelerating boat I’ve been in,” he continued. “Yesterday’s test conditions did not allow us to run a top speed—we need more time in the boat to try something like that anyway. We made a few test pulls from 70 to 150 mph and the boat was very stable. The Skater 368 is probably one of the best-running cat hulls out there. Of course the icing on the cake with this combination is the huge Sterling power.”

Editor’s note: Speedonthewater.com is going to follow up with Miller and Szolack on future stories leading up to the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout.

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