Save The Boat But Leave The Baby Grand—How Race Winning Brands Made It To Key West

Bill McComb has enjoyed several offshore racing lives. His competition history goes back to the glory days of Tom Gentry and Al Copeland, Sr., as well as celebrities Chuck Norris and Don Johnson, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He remains one of the sport’s most enduring and endearing characters.

McComb’s most recent offshore odyssey is as the owner/throttleman of the Super V-class Skater 399 Race Winning Brands raceboat he shares with driver/crew chief Ed Wendt.

Race Winning Brands heads into today’s Super V world-championship finale with a second-place result on Friday. Photo by Pete Boden copyright Shoot 2 Thrill Pix.

McComb lives in Sarasota, Fla., and like his fellow Sarasotans faced two hurricanes in the space of two weeks. Milton, the most recent of the two storms, made land at nearby Siesta Key.

“When it was about 250 miles offshore, I thought, ‘Maybe this time I don’t have to move all the stuff out of my house,’” he said. “And I have my boat and equipment stored in a well-built warehouse.”

Wendt, who served in the United States Coast Guard, also kept a close eye on Milton from the time it became tropical storm in Caribbean Sea. When it became clear that the storm—then a full-blown hurricane—would pass over Sarasota, he reached out to the team owner.

“Ed said, ‘Bill, I want to take the raceboat to a Category 5 warehouse,’” McComb recalled. “He wouldn’t let it go. But it was kind of late in the game, so Ed made a call to (TF Motorsports/Hancock Claims Consultants team owner) Win Farnsworth. Win had a friend who has a Cat 5 warehouse, and he helped us get the space for our boat.

“That was an awfully nice thing for a competitor to do,” he added.

Bill McComb and Ed Wendt made the right call to save their raceboat ahead of Hurricane Milton.

Hurricane Milton made land with the Race Winning Brands V-bottom safely tucked away. The boat and all of its supporting equipment were undamaged.

McComb’s home and its contents, which included Baby Grand piano, weren’t so fortunate.

“There was three feet of water in my house,” McComb said, then shook his head and laughed. “The first time I don’t take everything out of my house ahead of a hurricane, everything is destroyed.”

McComb and Wendt has planned to compete in the season-ending Clearwater and St. Petersburg races. Both were canceled because of the back-to-back storms.

Now they are in Key West preparing for today’s final Super V-class race. They head into the double-points contest with a second-place finish on Friday.

A win won’t replace McComb’s Baby Grand piano. But it wouldn’t hurt.