Teamwork And The Faces Of Fort Myers Beach, Part II

For speedonthewater.com, covering Roar Offshore Fort Myers Beach—the final event of the 2021 American Power Boat Association Offshore Championship Series—last weekend was a full-team effort. It took a village—chief photographer Pete Boden, speedonthewater.com co-publisher Jason Johnson and contributor Cole McGowan—and one village idiot with a failed travel plan to make it happen.

Speedonthewater.com contributor Cole McGowan captured M CON’s Tyler Miller (right) and Myrick Coil taking time to answer a reporter’s question before the Supercat race during the Roar Offshore Fort Myers Beach event last Saturday. All photos by Cole McGowan copyright speedonthewater.com.

Short version? My 7 a.m. flight to Florida from San Francisco finally got cancelled thanks to a “stuck engine valve” and after five hours of futility in the airport I abandoned the trip. That meant Johnson and I would be watching the livestream of the Southwest Florida event on the P1 Offshore Facebook page from our homes on Saturday and interviewing winners—via phone calls and text messages—in advance of Sunday’s feature story.

We recruited McGowan, who was there working with the P1 Offshore group broadcast to help, specifically with the Bracket class categories. Boden did his usual impeccable thing, shooting practice form the Fort Myers Beach Pier on Friday and capturing the action from a helicopter on Saturday.

Canadian Chris Grant enjoyed his second Supercat race of the season with teammate Billy Moore.

By early Sunday morning on the West Coast, I had all pieces from all parties and knitted together the story. It was live by noon. And it only took four people and a whole lot of phone calls, text messages, emails and WeTransfer photo drops to get it done.

Nothing about any of these efforts is heroic. This is a job and skipping coverage is not an option. Still the teamwork on this one was exceptional and I’d be lying if I said I weren’t proud of our group, not just for their work in Fort Myers Beach but for an entire season of excellent coverage.

ballough

greg

billy

fehrmann

ivey

jimmu

kittredge

ramnsberger

vinnie

emmons

miklos

penta

ricky

julian

tyler

graydel

torrente

reese

nobody

wikced

storage

monster

punisher

southern

imprescia

milton

rusty

The faces of Roar Offshore Fort Myers beach included those of Gary Ballough, Billy Moore, John Emmons, Jimmy McIntyre, Greg DiRenzo, Nick Impresica, Ian Morgan, Julian Maldonado, Daren Kittredge, Steve Miklos, Steve Fehrman, Milton Calafell, George Ivey, Jim Kipfmueller, Cliff Shaw, Tim Vanderberg, Albert Penta, Charlie McCarthy, Anthony Silveira, Tim Ramsberger, Reese Langheim, Ricky Maldonado, Shaun Torrente, Todd DeFilipps and Vinnie Diorio.

Thank you, gentlemen.

Lost in the hustle of the weekend, however, were McGowan’s consistently fine images of offshore racers, which have been the backbone of our “Faces Of” content for the 2021 offshore racing season. As you can see from the photos above, he captured some gems.

Next up for our team is the Race World Offshore/American Power Boat Association Offshore World Championships, November 7-14 in Key West, Fla. We’ll see you there.

A late-season addition to the Stock V-class ranks, the Firm Racing/MSP Recovery team’s Richard Garcia (left) and Pete Riveiro have brought infectious enthusiasm and joy to the sport.

Teamwork And The Faces Of Fort Myers Beach, Part II

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