New Eliminator Walk-Off 27 Speedster Shines At Lake Cumberland Thunder Run
A few weeks ago, a rather unique boat for Kentucky’s Lake Cumberland—a new Eliminator Boats 27 Speedster powered by twin Mercury Racing 450R engines and featuring the new open-bow walk-off option from the Mira Loma, Calif., company—stood out within an incredible group of performance boats during the 13th annual Lake Cumberland Thunder Run hosted at State Dock Marina in Jamestown, by the team behind the Lake Cumberland Powerboat Club.
Eliminator Boats delivered a new 27 Speedster with the company’s new walk-off open bow feature to Ohio customer Stephen and Jacklyn Farrens in time for last month’s Lake Cumberland Thunder Run in Kentucky. Photos courtesy Stephen Farrens and Eliminator Boats
Owned by longtime local Eliminator Boats customers Stephen and Jacklyn Farrens, the 27-foot catamaran—the second one from Eliminator with the new GatorStep-covered walk-off option—is the Farrens’ seventh model from the custom boatbuilder. It’s also the Washington Court House, Ohio, couple’s first outboard-powered Eliminator and its first twin-engine model from the company that was founded in 1969 and started the West Coast custom craze.
“We got the boat two weeks before the poker run and it’s amazing,” said Stephen Farrens, who purchased the 27-footer, as he has with his previous Eliminators, through Dave Hargrove of Northcoast Performance Marine in North Canton, Ohio. “It’s a great-running boat. I’ve had a couple of V-hulls from Eliminator, but I prefer the cats. I had a 25 Daytona, a 26 Daytona and, most recently, a 28 Fun Deck with a 600-hp Mercury Racing engine. I really like the way they ride and handle the Lake Cumberland chop, which can get rough. It’s been fun getting used to the outboards, too—the Mercury Racing 450R engines are so responsive. The torque and midrange acceleration of the engines are very impressive.
“When I ordered the boat I was on the fence about spending the money on the 450Rs and whether I even needed the extra top-end speed,” he continued. “It’s not like I need to run the boat around at 120 or 130 mph all that often. But I thought I might as well go with the latest and greatest or that I’d end up regretting it down the road. The boat was fun to build. Working with the team at Eliminator was great—those guys truly provide a custom build experience. We were able to spec out every last little detail on the boat. We’re extremely happy with how everything turned out. My family especially likes the extra space in the boat thanks to the outboard setup. And the new walk-off section up front is cool; it’s almost like having a deck boat without the performance sacrifice.”
Check out the slideshow above for more images of the new 27-foot Eliminator powered by twin Mercury Racing 450R engines.
According to Farrens, who owns a houseboat and slip at Jamestown Marina, his daughter, Lauren, and two sons, Colin and Nick, enjoys boating just as much as he and Jacklyn do.
“I’ve been going to Lake Cumberland since I was a kid,” said Farrens, who added that his father owns an Eliminator 33 Daytona and his brother owns a 27 Speedster with twin Mercury Racing 400R engines. “My brother has a place at the lake and we’ve made a lot of friends there so it’s our family’s home away from home.”
Of course, there were some amazing boats at the mid-June Lake Cumberland Thunder Run, including Mark and Britney Godsey’s new MTI 390X catamaran Project Mayhem, Mike and Angela Goldbaugh’s LateFee$x2 36-foot Skater Powerboats catamaran, Mike Thorton’s Ridin’ Dirty Skater 388 cat and more, but the Farrens’ 27 Speedster commanded a ton of attention during the 120-boat poker run.
“It’s always cool when someone takes delivery of a boat just in time for our event,” said Justin Lucas, one of the organizers of the Thunder Run. “The Farrens’ Eliminator is an awesome boat. We hope to see them at future events on the lake with their incredible machine.”
According to Eliminator’s Mark Baker, the team did a few adjustments to the cat to maximize performance, including sharpening the transom corners to improve time to plane and installing Porta Products R-Series adjustable hydraulic transom brackets to precisely dial in engine heights. Baker said before delivering the boat that it ran a “comfortable 128 mph fully dressed with eight speakers, two subs, two amps and three batteries.”
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