Cowboy & Indian Summer Tour, Part IX—Road Family

Why would anyone fly 1,800 miles, drive 200 miles through the Arizona desert to Lake Havasu for 40 minutes of boating on a 110-degree day, then head back to Phoenix 11 hours later to catch a two-hour flight followed by two-hour drive through North Texas for a work commitment?

Same remarkable platform, different remarkable view Photo by Matt Trulio

Because family was at the end of the road for the annual DCB Performance Marine Regatta in Lake Havasu City, Ariz.

So far this year, I have joined the Cowboy & Indian DCB M37R catamaran-owning posse of Kelly and Julie O’Hara and Jessica and Kiran Pinisetti—though rarely all together as they all have lives beyond boating—for nine events across the country. I have been a guest in their respective homes, broken bread with them in their kitchens and slept in their guest bedrooms while pretending not to be wickedly allergic to their cats.

Cowboy & Indian (right) departs the Thursday DCB Owners Regatta lunch run. Photo by Tom Leigh copyright Tommy Gun Images.

I have become an oddball uncle to a dog and veteran go-fast boat passenger named Sally, and been a reluctant detective on a mission to track down a stolen truck.

I have logged more than 100 hours in Cowboy & Indian, a little less than half of the 37-footer’s total hours on the water, as a passenger. I know every seat—except for the driver’s bucket—and every fine detail of what it means to be a privileged guest enjoying a work of performance-art.

Jessica Pinisetti, Julie O’Hara, Kelly O’Hara and Kiran Pinisetti have treated the author (holding Sally The Wonder Pooch) to an unforgettable season in an unforgettable boat. Photo from the 2024 Boyne Thunder Poker Run by Pete Boden copyright Shoot 2 Thrill Pix.

Want to know the best seat in the boat? Call me.

Along the way, we became a road-family. And that family soon extended beyond the O’Haras and the Pinisettis to their DCB catamaran-owing friends Greg Harris and Yvonne Aleman, who to be honest were already family, Greg and Heather Scheller and their friends Ray and Crystal Brasher, who don’t have a DCB just yet but plan to in the not-too-distant future.

While I traveled to Oklahoma yesterday to cover the first Skaterfest event today on Lake Texoma, my road-family was finishing up the DCB Owners Regatta with a lunch run to Pirate Cove Resort. My longtime DCB owners-group brothers Jeff Johnston and Tony Chiaramonte led the way.

New DCB M37R owner Dan Kuhn and second-time DCB M37R owner Greg Harris flanked company president during Thursday’s lunch to Havasu Springs during the DCB Owners Regatta. Photo by Matt Trulio.

The Florida Powerboat Club Key West Poker Run is a month away and I look forward to it, And then again I don’t, as it will be the final-round-up for the Cowboy & Indian Summer Tour article series. It will mark the end of a season on the road with family.

Home is where your heart is, as the saying goes. And thanks to my road-family this season, home has always been close by.