Imhof Excited To Run Showtime Skater In Lake Of The Ozarks Shootout

Although he’s not expecting to run “a big number” since his “big power” isn’t quite ready to be installed in the former world and national champion canopied Skater Powerboats catamaran, Andy Imhof of Maryland Offshore Performance Marine Center in Rockville, Md., is looking forward to participating in the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout in Central Missouri this weekend for the first time.

Maryland Offshore Performance Marine Center founder Andy Imhof plans to run his 36-foot canopied Skater in this weekend’s Lake of the Ozarks Shootout. Photo by Tim Sharkey/Sharkey Images

Imhof, who started his business in 1996, is not a newcomer when it comes to the lake or the Shootout as he’s attended the annual late-August happening with several performance boat clients the past seven years and often visits Lake of the Ozarks for projects he’s working on with his good friend and business partner, Justin Wagner of Waves and Wheels in Osage Beach, Mo. The two co-own Graphix 1 Paint, also in Osage Beach.

Still, Imhof has never driven a boat down the famed three-quarter-mile course in front of Captain Ron’s Bar & Grill in Sunrise Beach, the host location of the two-day top-speed event that takes place August 29-30, so he decided this was the year to do just that. It helped that he already wanted to bring his canopied 36-foot Skater—the former Showtime raceboat—to the lake to have Waves and Wheels overhaul the cockpit after using it in the fourth annual Waves and Wheels Fun Run taking place September 19.

“I’m just planning to run the boat for the fun of it since the ‘big motors’ aren’t ready yet,” Imhof said referring to the twin 540-cubic-inch engines he’s expecting will make roughly 1,300 horsepower each. “We have a pair of 750-hp engines in it right now and it’ll run faster than 120 mph. Hopefully we can get it up to speed in three quarters of a mile, but we’ll see.

“I haven’t really done any testing because the big engines aren’t finished, but I have a decent set of props that should work,” he continued, adding that the boat ran great earlier this month at the Thunder In The City Poker Run in Chesapeake City, Md. “The smallest props I have for it are 37s. I could probably use something a little smaller for the Shootout, but I’ll make do with what I have. I’m mainly here to have some fun with it this week and to support a few of our customers.”

Imhof, whose company handles paint, rigging, bodywork, service and more on a variety of boats from Apaches, Cigarettes and Outerlimits to MTIs, Nor-Techs and Sunsations, is undeniably a fan of Skater Powerboats and the Douglas, Mich., company’s storied history. It’s a big reason why he owns this boat, which was, sequentially, the next one built after the famed Bacardi Silver 36-foot Skater—a catamaran Maryland Offshore has had the pleasure of working on. It’s also why he’s worked on and maintained so many different Skaters over the course of his career.

He described the canopied 36-footer as an incredible handling boat.

“When we were at Thunder In The City, the boat ran very well—it wasn’t the fastest boat, but we ran with or past any other boat there because the Skater 36 handles anything in its path. The boat just runs. And it’s really going to run once we get the big engines in it.”

Hopefully when that happens, Imhof will decide to bring the Skater back to the Shootout for a second year and show off what the more-powerful Showtime can do.

Imhof Excited To Run Showtime Skater In Lake Of The Ozarks Shootout

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