Commentary: Counting Blessings – Speed on the Water
In 2024, speedonthewater.com will celebrate its 15th anniversary. I started the website covering the high-performance powerboating world out of pure economic desperation and no small amount of fear for my professional future. But it has evolved into something I never imagined.
If you told me it would become a daily news outlet a few years after we launched, I’d have laughed. If you told me we would be producing groundbreaking videos—I’ll spare you the false humility—with our partners at Scrapyard Media for the past three years, I’d have laughed harder.
From the speedonthewater.com family to yours, may this Thanksgiving Day find you among those who love you. Photo from the 2023 Speed On The Water Key West Bash by Jeff Helmkamp copyright Helmkamp Photos.
And if you had said someday a silly party we throw in Key West, Fla., with our friends Greg Harris and Yvonne Aleman every year would raise $200,000 this time around for a worthy local charity, you’d have had to pick me up off the floor.
But all of those things happened. There are days I struggle to believe it. But they did.
Jason Johnson, my longtime friend and business partner, sometimes tells me, “Most of Speed On The Water comes from your head, dude.” (Yeah, he calls me dude.) He’s wrong. Some of what we do comes from head, some comes from my heart.
But all of it really comes from a remarkable team.
It comes from people like the endlessly creative Johnson and photographers Pete Boden and Jeff Helmkamp with their killer images, people such as Eric Colby, who humbles us all with his outstanding offshore racing coverage. It comes from Brad and Katie DiMaggio and Bobby Boyd at Scrapyard Media, with whom Johnson and I share a deep creative vision.
If anything, I have a good eye for talent and the ability to attract it, despite my occasional tantrums and crab-fits.
Speedonthewater.com is an advertising-based business. We make no secret of that. (Why would we?) So endless thanks also are due to the companies that support us, as well as speedonthewater.com sales and marketing manager Shelby Mattingly, who has brought order to the chaos.
But minus readers, a news outlet has zero value. That makes you the most important piece of the professional media puzzle. Without you, we have nothing to sell our advertisers. We are simply shouting in an echo chamber.
When I think of your support and kindness, especially through darker times—and you know who you are in that regard—it brings tears of joy and gratitude.
Today, Johnson and I will take a break from producing the ninth annual Speed On The Water Year In Review print issue, yet another aspect of speedonthewater.com I could not have imagined when we started. Tomorrow we’ll be back at it, plus back on the news beat, continuing to plan video projects for the coming year and addressing a long list of “tasks.” I’d rather not think too deeply about all that right now or I’ll end up working till the turkey hits the table and pissing off my family.
And angry Trulios are no fun to be around. Ask anyone.
So thank you all.
.
