Performance Boat Center Spring Fun—Another Family Matter In Missouri
Though there are three primary families—customer, boatbuilder and staff—at Performance Boat Center, they compromise one large extended family bound by the culture of the multi-brand full-service dealership headquartered in Osage Beach, Mo. Devoted, loving and loyal to one another? Absolutely.
Occasionally dysfunctional, combative and dramatic? Without question.
The author enjoyed the day with his extended Performance Boat Center family on a Sunsation 40 CCX center console. Photos by Rob Rich/Performance Boat Center and Jeff Helmkamp/Jeff Helmkamp Photos.
But what extended family worth being part of isn’t a combination of those things and more?
Example: The first time I saw Performance Boat Center client Adam Seraphine and dealership co-owner Brett Manire together five years ago at the Performance Center Fall Fun, the scene was anything about an extended family love-fest. Though the details escape me—it was one of those nights at the adjacent Lakeside Bar and Grill—Seraphine was griping to Manire about something business-related Manire was in no mood to listen.
The next time I saw them together, Friday night on the eve of yesterday’s 71–boat Performance Boat Center Spring Fun Run, at the same venue, they were laughing and sharing stories like brothers.
A quiet morning led to a busy, 71-boat event.
“The culture of Performance Boat Center is family, friendship and fun,” Manire told me the following early afternoon at The Cave Bar And Grill, the first stop of the 10th annual Spring Fun Run.
During the next stop for the run at Fish and Co., Sunsation Boats plant manager Aaron Treppa elaborated on the dealership’s culture
Performance Boat Center’s Brett Manire and Michael Hall shared the morning address to the the participants heading out for the run.
“When you come here, they make you feel wanted—it’s not just an event,” explained Treppa, who was in town to drop off one Sunsation center console at Performance Boat Center and pick up another. “They want you here. They want you to have fun. It’s a really good feeling.
“They are very family-oriented,” he added. “And that’s exactly what Sunsation is, very family oriented.”
The Cave Bar and Grill was the first stop of the day.
Though Treppa is an established member of that family, new members are always welcome. Bill Grannis and his wife, Kristen, joined the Performance Boat Center tribe this weekend. Joined by a couple of friends, they hauled their 36-foot Skater 13 hours from there Michigan for the first time.
Though this weekend was a first-time experience for Bill and Kristen Grannis of Michigan, it won’t be the last.
“The whole set-up is first class,” he said during lunch at The Cave stop. “I’ll be back next year.”
During the driver’s meeting and breakfast in the Performance Boat Center showroom earlier that day, Grannis sat stared wide-eyed at the surrounding hardware.
“This is candy land,” he said in a tone normally reserved for church. “It’s an adult store.”
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A family album from yesterday’s fun run.
And like any good extended family, the Performance Boat Center clan has members who come and go, but are always welcomed back. Case in point? Travis Reed.
A passionate character well-known in the Lake of the Ozarks go-fast boating community, Reed has never been a Performance Boat Customer beyond much beyond buying gas at its fuel dock. He’s a diehard do-it-yourselfer who owns a locally famed 42-foot V-bottom dubbed White Lightning as well as a 36-foot Skater catamaran that currently occupies most of his spare time.
A longtime friend, Reed hasn’t joined a Performance Boat Center event in several years, and it had been several more since I’d last seen him before Manire—another of his longtime buddies—and I bumped into him Friday night.
But it was an instant love-fest. Nothing had changed.
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The 71-boat fleet encompassed every brand carried by the dealership—and more.
Manire challenged him to join us for the Saturday run. Reed promised he would. Manire bet him he wouldn’t. Reed took the bet.
And when Manire, his girlfriend Kaitlyn Kristal, photographer Jeff Helmkamp and several other guests on board a Sunsation 40 CCX center console pulled out of the cove that leads to Performance Boat Center, there was Reed and his girlfriend waiting in White Lightning.
Owned by Travis Reed, White Lightning is a rare sight these days on the Lake of the Ozarks.
I asked him how long it’s been since he’s had the Brad Smith engines-powered 42-footer on the water.
“Oh man, I don’t know buddy, maybe two or three years,” he said. “I’ve been playing with the Skater.
“I probably wouldn’t have come if I hadn’t bumped into you and Manire last night,” he added. “But you guys—you know I love you. You’re family.”
Whether by extension or blood or the culture of a powerboat dealership at the Lake of the Ozarks, family is family.
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