Gallery Of The Week: Texoma Throw Down Shines Again

For Jake Nossaman, an Oklahoma performance boater who is all too familiar with Lake Texoma, he’s thrilled to have seen a resurgence on the massive lake that borders Texas and Oklahoma. The owner of a stunning new MTI-V 50 luxury performance center console with five Mercury Racing 450R engines that he took delivery of in June, Nossaman gives a lot of credit to passionate local powerboat enthusiast Casey Moore, who leads the Texoma Powerboat Association that organizes the Texoma Throw Down event that took place for the fourth year last weekend at Marina Del Rey in Kingston, Okla., for putting a spotlight back on the area.

Oklahoma’s Jake Nossaman enjoyed the Texoma Throw Down on Lake Texoma with at least a dozen of his closest friends on board his new MTI-V 50 powered by five Mercury Racing 450R engines. Photos by Kevin Johns/Instant Memories Photography

“Casey has done a great job generating enthusiasm for his event,” Nossaman said. “I’ve been going every year and we always have fun. His passion is genuine and passion goes a long way. The weather wasn’t great this year, but we still had a blast. I mean the new 50-foot MTI is unbelievable—it handles the water like nothing I’ve ever driven. It’s the perfect boat between their 42 and 57. It’s like driving a big sportscar. The throttle response is excellent and the torque from the outboards is like having big inboard power back there.”

Nossaman was quick to recognize some of the other radical boats on hand for the 2021 Texoma Throw Down, including several high-performance catamarans from Skater Powerboats, a few good-looking Nor-Tech Hi-Performance Boats center consoles and a new Cigarette Racing Team 41 Nighthawk that he described as gorgeous.

According to Moore, who organizes the run with his wife, Tegan, and a team of volunteers that includes Kevin Johns of Instant Memories Photography and several of their friends, the event ended up with 90 registered boats. That number was down from the 118 boats that signed up for the 2020 Texoma Throw Down, but last year’s event benefitted from better weather and the fact that many events around the country were cancelled because of pandemic restrictions.

Moore also said that the 2021 gathering ended up raising about $11,000 for the event’s charity—Mission 22, a non-profit organization that provides treatment programs to veterans for Post-Traumatic Stress, Traumatic Brain Injury and other issues they might be facing in hopes of combating the ever-rising veteran suicide rate.

Kim and Tina Smith, who own Smith Racecraft in Dallas, said they had an amazing time in their new-to-them 2020 Skater Powerboats 438 catamaran powered by twin turbocharged Mercury Racing 1550/1350 engines. The only negative, which the Smiths were quick to mention was out of anyone’s control, was that they didn’t get to enjoy Saturday’s run for as long as usual because it rained most of the morning and into the afternoon.

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Check out the slideshow above for more images from the Texoma Throw Down.

“We’ve done the run the last three years and always have fun,” said Kim Smith, who previously had a 46-foot Skater catamaran, which he still owns but is for sale, and a 34-foot Nor-Tech center console that he just sold this week. “It’s become one of our favorite events because it’s well organized and the people there are so friendly.

“The Skater 438 is amazing—Yves (Belanger, the boat’s original owner) named it right, that’s for sure,” he continued, adding that he considered renaming the boat but then he felt how hard it pulled and is going to stick with G-Force. “It really is such a nice boat. Pete (Hledin, the founder of Skater) outdid himself with the 438; those things are fast. It’s extremely stable and it accelerates like crazy. We hit the recall and it shows that the boat has been 174 mph before. And that wasn’t even in 1550 mode.”

Tina Smith, who gave credit to RP Elite Motors’ Ross Ramsey for helping purchase the boat from Belanger, agreed with her husband.

“The new Skater is phenomenal,” Tina Smith said, adding that the boat got a lot of attention during the event. “We’ve very happy with it. In fact, we feel like Yves (who is currently building a new 50-foot Skater) screwed up by selling us the boat. I love that it has air conditioning, too. I wasn’t sure if the air vents would even make a difference, but they work great.”

In his first time at the Texoma Throw Down, Ed Champion, who works for the Lake Ozark, Mo.-based Big Thunder Marine, which sponsored the event, said he had a lot of fun running the dealership’s Fountain Powerboats 38 SC powered by triple Mercury Racing 450R engines.

“We enjoyed the event overall despite the rain delay,” Champion said. “It all worked out in the end and we plan to go back next year. We are going to do more poker runs to promote the business.”

Another longtime Lake Texoma boater—Heath Kirkwood of Texas—was excited to show off his “new” boat as well, a 2017 Outerlimits Offshore Powerboats SV 43 canopied raceboat that competed in the Superboat Extreme class at the 2016 Key West Offshore World Championships.

“The Texoma event was the first time I’d been in the boat since I bought it from Bernie Neuhaus (vice president at Marine Unlimited in New Jersey) a couple of weeks ago,” said Kirkwood, who owned a 40-foot MTI catamaran with twin Mercury Racing 700SCi engines before purchasing the former raceboat that is powered by a pair of 800-plus-hp, 572-cubic-inch, spec-class engines from Sterling Performance and equipped with crash boxes, which he plans to replace in the offseason with BAM Marine 1550 Cyborg transmissions. “The boat ran great for the first time out. It’s a different feeling, but it rides really nice. I’ve never owned a canopied boat, but I’ve raced one with my friend, Brian Cole, who owns the WeOnTop Racing V-bottom. I’m looking forward to getting it dialed in and doing more events with it in 2022.

“I’ve known Casey (Moore) a long time—we’ve been boating together on the lake for many years,” he continued. “He’s done an excellent job with the event and he dedicates a lot of time to it. Every year he figures out what didn’t go as well as planned and finds a way to improve. I feel like the Texoma Throw Down is only going to continue to grow.”

Kirkwood said he is planning to revamp the boat’s cockpit in the offseason to give it more of a pleasure boat feel. Look for a story on the updates to the 43-footer on speedonthewater.com.

Gallery Of The Week: Texoma Throw Down Shines Again

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