Desert Storm Street Party Still A Standard-Bearer

Before this week, Jeff Corbel, the general manager of Performance Boat Center’s Fort Lauderdale, Fla., had never been to the Desert Storm Poker Run. Today he’ll get to see 130-plus high-performance boats—the most accurate count available at the moment—from all over the country take to the waters of Lake Havasu. Though it should be exciting enough for Corbel thanks to the desert setting, he’s no stranger to go-fast boats or poker runs.

When the sun starts to go down, the Desert Storm Street Party comes alive. Photos by Jeff Helmkamp copyright Jeff Helmkamp Photos.

But the magnitude of yesterday’s Desert Storm Street Party, the standard-bearer for all poker-run street celebrations and exhibits, captivated him. This is Corbel’s first Desert Storm happening, and he’d never seen anything quite like yesterday’s scene in downtown Lake Havasu City, Ariz.

“The amount of people that came through was impressive,” said Corbel, who is representing Performance Boat Center with multi-brand dealership with teammate Michael Hall. “We had a lot of interest in both the Performance Powerboats P-360 cat and Sunsation 32 CCX center console.

Go-fast boat builders from around the country displayed their catamarans, center consoles and V-bottoms on McCulloch Street in downtown Lake Havau City.

“We are looking forward to getting out in the water today on the poker run, too” he added.

Corbel joined Performance Boat Center a year-and-a-half ago and he didn’t come from the marine industry, which explains his Desert Storm rookie status. Yet DCB Performance Boats vice-president of manufacturing Johnny Bauer, a 30-plus year industry veteran who joined the Phoenix-based company in late 2023, also is experiencing Desert Storm for the first time this week.

And so far he’s loved what he’s seen.

“We had a nice setup, talked to a lot of people and sold a lot of merchandise at the street party,” he said. “It was a really good event.”

KICKER Marine Audio, the presenting sponsor of the Anderson Powerboat Sports Desert Storm Poker Run, had its typically strong presence yesterday,.

Among the boats displayed by DCB was Cowboy And Indian, an M37R catamaran co-owned by Indiana’s Kiran Pinisetti and Kelly O’Hara of Upstate New York. Pinisetti and O’Hara are taking the cat on an extensive “poker-run tour” season. Last week, O’Hara and his wife, Julie, enjoyed the Super Cat Fest Event in Lake Havasu City. Pinisetti flew in Wednesday to join them.

But this is their first Desert Storm experience. And yesterday’s street party more than met their expectations.

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Enjoy more images from the 2024 Desert Storm Poker Run Street Party and Exhibit.

“The Street Party was just as I had always seen and read about—packed with people,” said O’Hara. “Our DCB on our MYCO tilt trailer customized by Adrenaline Trailers looked incredible as part of DCB’s display.

“Some partygoers thought our Coach was open for display,” he added, then laughed. “So Julie stayed outside it to answer questions.”

Of course, most of the folks in town this week for the event, such as high-performance insurance and finance Devin Wozencraft and Speed On The Water contributing photographer Jeff Helmkamp, aren’t newbies.

Mercury Racing’s Kevin Skiba and Nick Pedersen talked shop with Devin Wozencraft (center) before things got too busy.

“We have displayed every year since Desert Storm’s inception,” said Wozencraft, as usual is sponsoring a card stop for the poker run. “Thousands of people went by our display yesterday.”

Helmkamp has been shooting the event since 2016 and he’s currently on the water capturing the poker run. He was particularly taken with the Gulf Oil racing-themed DCB M37R owned by Travis Ringe on display and estimated the either DCB or Eliminator had the most boats displayed yesterday on McCulloch Street.

“That Gulf Oil DCB?,” he said. “Wow.”

Unveiled at last week’s Super Cat Fest West event, the Mercury Racing’s new mobile marketing vehicle stuck around for Desert Storm.

Though Helmkamp lives in Illinois, the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri is his home-water. The photographer was pleased to see plenty of hardware from his part of the go-fast boating world on the street.

“Justin Wagner of Waves and Wheels (of Osage Beach, Mo.) had a really good display,” he said He had the 50-foot Raiden Skater, a 30-foot tri-tune with twin Mercury Racing 400R and an Outerlimits 39 GTX. And of course, he had his 36-foot Doug Wright Waves And Wheels Edition right up front.

“Between customer and factory boats, MTI (of Wentzville, Mo.) had a good cross-section of models on display, he continued. “I think Tom Stuart brought a 390X cat and 42-foot center console from the factory. And there also were several customer-owned MTI-V 50s on the street.”