Skater At 50, Weekend Edition—Skaterfest 2024
All prettied up for last night’s Skaterfest dinner celebration at the West Bay Resort and Casino in Kingston, Okla., Skater Powerboats founder Peter Hledin and Tony Cutsuries, his longtime national sales manager, sat at a dining room table in one of the resort’s spacious villas. Though far from sweltering by Lake Texoma standards, their day on the water had been a warm one. So they enjoyed a couple of cold beverages in their air-conditioned digs while they waited for the party to begin.
Lake Texoma had more than enough wide-open water to handle the Skaterfest fleet. Photos by Pete Boden copyright Shoot 2 Thrill Pix.
Asked what they thought of the event produced for the first time by Skater dealer RP Elite Motors and Marine in Springtown, Texas, Hledin and Cutsuries glanced at each other and smiled. Cutsuries fielded the question.
“It has a lot of potential,” he said. “It’s a good event that needs a little tweaking. Lake Texoma is perfect for something like this. It’s really big and groups of fast boats need space. This time of year, the lake isn’t crowded, even on a Saturday.
“The venue is great,” he added. “I think it will grow.”
Indiana’s Jonathon and Amber Hendrick treated friends to two days of boating in their Skater 368 catamaran.
Hledin nodded in agreement. “It just needs a little bit of tweaking,” he said.
For both Hledin and Cutsuries, some of that tweaking would translate to running longer distances. Skater catamarans tend to cover water quickly, and lunch was 15 minutes in each direction. (A brief grouping for video and still photography in front of a dam added a few minutes to the pre-lunch outing). And the mid-90-degree heat was a bit much for a post-run raft-up for a group of 14 open-cockpit catamarans with zero escape from the afternoon sun.
Just 10 days ago, 21 skater owners had signed up for the event, according RP Elite Motors and Marine owner Ross Ramsey, a true Texas gentleman. But as Ramsey knows as well as anyone, boats break and plans change.
Craig and Patti Mears brought their outboard engine-powered 30-footer from Louisiana.
“We had four owners cancel in the past 10 days, and three boats broke yesterday in the fun run,” he said, then chuckled softly. “I counted 14 boats that actually completed the run today.”
Ramsey and his wife, Mackenzie, who now handles marketing full-time for RP Elite Motors and Marine, are realistic when it comes to what Skaterfest on Lake Texoma can be.
Lake Texoma was home to a strong fleet of Skater catamarans this weekend.
“We know this will never be a big (boat-count) event,” he said during a quiet moment before the band started playing after last night’s party. “There are only so many Skaters and so many Skater owners willing to travel to Texas and Oklahoma. But this is our home-water and the size of the lake is one of the reasons we chose it. We also wanted our event to be after Labor Day. We respect everybody else’s event. I didn’t want to put ours on someone else’s weekend.
“We are still learning with this being our first Skaterfest event and our really focused on hearing what our participants have to say,” he continued. “Some people want to run 150 miles in one day, others want to run 60 miles the whole weekend. We will probably have longer and shorter courses that end up in the same place next year. But on the positive side what I’ve heard most is how much everyone really enjoyed the laidback, family atmosphere.”
The distance between Northern California and the Texas/Oklahoma border area wasn’t about to deter well-known Skater fanatic Dale Razor and Lisa Molls from participating in their 36-foot Skater cat called Relentless. Texans in the mix included Curtis Morris and Jamin Jones of Team Yahoo top-speed shootout fame, who brought their 36-footer for the weekend.
No Texas event would be the same without Team Yahoo’s Curtis Morris and Jamin James of the Lone Star State.
Both Razor and Morris are longtime Skater owners. On the flip side, their fellow Skaterfest participants Jonathon and Amber Hendrick of Indiana purchased their first Skater catamaran, a 368 formerly owned by Utah’s Jim Mellor who was among the would-be participants but had to cancel, in June.
“There are just so many good people here,” said Jonathon Hendrick. “And we brought a couple with us who had never done anything like this. The memories are all about the people, and there are good people here.”
Asked if the event will return next year, Ramsey didn’t hesitate to respond “definitely.” Asked what might be in store for Skaterfest 2025 other than adding long and short courses for the Saturday run, Ramsey chuckled.
“I think I’ll add another hour of helicopter phone time he,” he said. “But you know, I told everyone to ‘wait for the helicopter’ before taking off. And, of course, I didn’t wait—I was the first to go. I broke my own rule.”
Editor’s note: The regular installment of Skater At 50 will run on Wednesday, October 9.
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