MTI At 25—Team Vengeful Takes Key West
Offshore powerboat racing fans can stop wracking their brains—as in “Who the heck is Team Vengeful and when did it compete in Key West?”—about the headline above. That’s just the name the speedonthewater.com team gave Johnny O’Loughlin’s color-matched 48- and 34-foot MTI catamarans when they arrived as part of the 2018 Florida Powerboat Club Key West Poker Run fleet.
Twin Mercury Racing 1550/1350 sterndrive engines powered the 48-footer called Vengeful. A pair of Mercury Racing 400R outboard engines, of the in-line six-cylinder kind of course, powered the 34-footer, naturally dubbed Lil Vengeful.
Johnny O’Loughlin’s Vengeful and Lil Vengeful stole the show during the 2018 Florida Powerboat Club Key West Poker Run. Photos by Pete Boden copyright Shoot 2 Thrill Pix.
Longtime friends from the Empire State, O’Loughlin and Jimmy McIntyre, now the throttleman for the Super Cat-class LiquorSplit team, ran from Miami to Key West on Wednesday in the larger cat before the primary departure-wave the following morning. To make it back for the Thursday run in the 34-footer from the Wentzville, Mo., company, they left the 48-footer in Key West and flew back to Miami Wednesday evening.
And that is how two people get two boats to Key West in two days.
Despite the occasional squall, photographer Pete Boden captured O’Loughlin’s matching cats in action on Friday morning during the annual Speed On The Water Key West photo shoot. But even the poor weather conditions weren’t enough to stop O’Loughlin and McIntyre from hopping in separate boats (they brought a few spare friends as passengers) and run for the photo helicopter.
O’Loughlin and McIntyre were at it again—in two new MTI cats—during the 2019 Key West Poker Run.
Just one year later they did it again in Team Vengeful, Part II. That’s right, O’Loughlin had two more MTI cats—another 48 and another 340X—in the works while he and McIntyre were making their first twin-cat appearance in Key West. (O’Loughlin enjoys the build process, no doubt about it.) Once again, water and weather conditions were less than ideal.
And, of course, the cats were color-matched.
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