Image Of The Week: OPA! Takes Flight

You will not meet more gracious and joyful humans in the performance boating world than Michigan’s Bill and Kristin Grannis. Spend 30 seconds with them and you’ll understand why they’ve been successful in the restaurant business. Hospitality is in their blood.

Dubbed OPA!, a 28-foot Pantera V-bottom owned by Bill Grannis lived up to its name yesterday with Grannis, his daughter, Nicolette, and the author on board for the ride. Photos by Pete Boden copyright Shoot 2 Thrill Pix

Spend a whole day with them and you won’t stop laughing. That’s what photographer Pete Boden and I did yesterday ahead of the Boyne Thunder Poker Run in Northern Michigan, which starts in earnest today with a lunch run from Boyne City to Bay Harbor that will set the mood for tonight’s American Custom Marine-backed welcome party at the Boyne Mountain Resort.

Either Grannis invited us or we invited ourselves—the details conveniently escape me—for a ride in his 2000-model-year 28-foot Pantera V-bottom that he campaigned long ago in offshore racing’s now-defunct B class. Like his 36-foot Skater Powerboats catamaran, the boat is called OPA! (Think Greek restaurant, dancing waiters and smashed plates and patrons.) The word is an expression of happiness and joy in Greek culture, and the name could not be more apt for the Grannis-owned boats.

There’s nothing quite as comforting as a bolster that treats you like a cork.

Powered by 500-hp Mercury Racing engines with 120 “hard” operating hours and no issues so far, the 28-footer is equipped with old-school, though recently updated, stand-up bolsters that embrace you as if you’re a cork in a champagne bottle. Its engines are loud. Its cockpit is windy. Goggles are necessary and hearing protection wouldn’t be a bad idea.

And the boat delivered the most exhilarating ride I have taken in a long time. OPA! is a brute. It feels invincible.

The waters of Lake Charlevoix were no challenge for it. But we did encounter one tall wake from a center console. The result?

OPA!

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