Image Of The Week—All Smiles Jennings

Offshore powerboat racing is supposed to be enjoyable. No one makes a living, much less gets rich, from the sport. It’s ungodly expensive and requires time away from home. It comes with endless drama. So frankly, it damn well better be fun.

Otherwise, why bother?

No one know this better than Miles Jennings. The British offshore endurance racer, who spends more time living well in Ibiza, Spain, than in the United Kingdom, could well be the most joyful man in the sport. On or off the racecourse, win, lose or draw, Jennings rarely loses his mega-watt grin.

Because he’s always having fun.

Why is this man smiling? Because he just can’t help himself. Photos by courtesy Miles Jennings

The only seven-time winner of the Cowes-Torquay-Cowes endurance race off the Isle of Wight just a short ferry-ride from Southampton, England, Jennings and Drew Langdon, his full-time Silverline teammate, ran their 43-foot Outerlimits V-bottom to victory earlier this month at the Lymington Challenge. And they had to beat nine other teams in their class to do it.

The Lymington Challenge was the final event of the 2024 United Kingdom Offshore Powerboat Racing Championship. It was the only event in the series Jennings and Langdon entered as the passing of Bruce Baker, their United States engine-builder, delayed the delivery of their engines until summer. But they did receive their powerplants in time for the British Offshore Powerboat Racing Club-produced Cowes event, where they finished second in rough water that sent Jennings to the hospital for much of the night with a back injury after the 200-mile race.

And yet just as he was following the more-recent Lymington event—where he described his back as “still pretty bad”—he was all grins after Cowes. Still having fun, still gracious.

Still all smiles. That’s just Miles Jennings.

Despite that you only spy the top of Jennings’ head in this image from Cowes-Torquay-Cowes 2024, there’s an excellent chance he was grinning despite his excruciating back pain when it was taken. Photo courtesy/copyright Nigel M. Cole—click here to view the photographer’s complete Flickr gallery.

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