Catching Up With Grant and Kellie Bruggemann—Power Couple – Speed on the Water

No couple in the high-performance marine industry works harder than Grant and Kellie Bruggemann of Grant’s Signature Racing in Bradenton, Fla., and no husband-and-wife duo is more professional. Together they form the nucleus of one of the world’s finest go-fast powerboat rigging shops, which has a heady roster of domestic and international clients.

The Bruggemann’s are close, so close you couldn’t slide a bit of tracing paper between them. They also are intensely private. And they avoid controversy, which is not an easy thing to do for a paid world-class offshore racing throttleman and team manager.

Close as they are away from Grant’s Signature Racing, Grant and Kellie Bruggemann are all business on the job.

But they take their downtime every bit as seriously as their work, and when I stopped by their headquarters yesterday to catch up they had just returned from a vacation in the Caribbean. Still blissed out from time away shared together, they were in classic, mellow post-vacation re-entry mode.

But packed with boats, the shop looked anything but mellow. At one end of the was the Valder Yachts/Pro Floors Racing MTI catamaran owned by Wayne Valder of New Zealand. A few feet away was Canadian Cole Leibel’s Super Stock-class Big East Construction Victory cat. In for service, a canopied 48-foot Doug Wright cat flanked a 42-footer in the build-out and rigging process.

Off to the side of the facility, drive wizard Brian Jackson’s Offshore Outdrives station was in its usual state of controlled overflow.

During lunch at First Watch, a nearby restaurant loaded with healthy menu items (the Bruggemann’s eat healthfully and stay fit), I talked shop with the couple. Here’s what they had to say.

The shop looks busy, as usual. Still as crazy as it was a couple of years ago?

Grant: No. We’re steady with lots of work, but things have settled down since then. But we never let ourselves get too crazy. We turn down jobs that don’t make sense to us. We manage our work flow. We work with clients who are the right for Grant’s Signature.

grantsstop-08

grantsstop-09

grantsstop-01

grantsstop-14

grantsstop-10

grantsstop-04

grantsstop-03

A look inside Grant’s Signature Racing.

It looks like Danny DeSantis’ eight-seat, 42-foot Doug Wright catamaran is coming along well. When will it be finished?

Grant: We’re just waiting on the interior from Cutting Edge. The boat should be done in about five weeks, you know, with the holidays and such (chuckles). It’s going to be the first eight-seat Doug Wright 42.

You have another “first” on the way as well.

Kellie: We have a 32 Doug Wright coming that we will be rigging for Rick Hildago of Maxed Out Marine at Lake Havasu. It will be the seventh boat we’ve done for him but the first boat we’ve rigged with the new Mercury Racing V-10 400R outboards. We’re excited about it.

What’s your general take on the new 400R outboard? It seems as if the 500R has somewhat overshadowed it.

Grant: Oh, I like it. I think it’s a good platform because of the cubic inches of the engine. Displacement is what’s going to move these boats. They’re heavy, well they’re not that heavy, but you need displacement to move them, right? So that’s a good combination, I think.

And who knows where Mercury Racing is going to take that platform from here? So I think the V-10 will be a perfect fit for the 32. I think the power-to-weight ratio is going to be perfect.

Big East Construction is a new offshore racing team client for Grant’s Signature. You have four racing clients now.

We do—we also handle the Super Stock Northwing boat for Daren Kittredge, the CELSIUS Super Stock boat for Chris Hopgood and, of course, the Valder Yachts/Pro Floors Super Cat. The Big East Construction boat hasn’t been here that long and we’ve already figured out that it’s been down on power in one engine. We’ll get it all sorted out. We’re very happy to have Big East here in the shop.