To kick off its 50th anniversary celebration and introduce its new V-10 outboard engine on the eve of the Miami International Boat Show, Mercury Racing threw a swanky private bash in a parking-structure venue reimagined to look like a South Beach nightclub. The event attracted all sorts of high-profile marine industry types and assorted media […]
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Before their late-January arrival in Fond du Lac, Wis., for Mercury Racing’s “Water Street Confidential” video series, Adrian Barrett and Amanda Latham had never met. They live and work a little more than 2,400 miles from one another—Barrett in Lake Havasu City, Ariz., the home of Barrett Custom Marine, and Latham in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., […]
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The National Marine Trades Council has announced the dates and location for its 50th anniversary conference. After a four-year hiatus, NMTC will return July 10-13 on Cape Cod with the host hotel being the Lighthouse Inn, in West Dennis, Mass. The NMTC conference is open to all leaders from local, state and national marine trades […]
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Not since the late-1990s and early 2000s has offshore powerboat racing been as poised for success as it is at the moment. The 2022 season, from the midpoint on, boasted strong fleets in the Super Stock, Super Cat and Class 1 ranks, making the pandemic-forced interruptions of 2020 and 2021 seem like a couple of […]
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As the 2023 United Kingdom Offshore Powerboat Racing Association championship prepares to kick off May 13 at the Poole Bay 100, many onlookers will once again relish the prospect of seeing and hearing a very famous name again out in the bay—the vintage 35-foot, Martini & Rossi liveried Dry Martini Cigarette Racing Team V-bottom. During […]
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With the first race of the offshore powerboat season—the Race World Offshore-produced 7 Mile Offshore Grand Prix presented by Performance Boat Center and M CON in Marathon, Fla.—just five days away, there’s plenty of action for fans to look forward to this year. The United Kingdom-based organization Poweboat P1, which holds the media and marketing […]
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Any doubts as to how well the new organizers would execute this week’s 25th annual Desert Storm Poker Run in Lake Havasu City, Ariz., were pretty much squelched thanks to a well-orchestrated opening day with charity rides and a welcome party on Wednesday followed by another off-the-charts street party on Thursday afternoon and evening. As […]
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The 70-90ft semi-custom superyachts sector is booming. Toby Hodges explores some of the hottest new designs bridging the gap between production yachts and superyachts A bubble has appeared, the rise of a buoyant large yacht market sector that’s proving difficult to label. It typically caters for those who are looking for extra size, space and […]
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It didn’t start out this way, but the Perfect 10 headline above Mercury Racing’s MTI 390X cover/demo boat powered by two of the engine builder’s all-new V-10 400R outboards ended up being a perfect summation of the first of three feature-filled Speed On The Water digital magazines going live this year. The issue is now […]
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A pair of industry pros who studied at the knee of Reggie Fountain, Jr., Jeff Harris and Geoff Tomlinson are direct competitors. Harris is the chief operating officer for Fountain Powerboats in Washington, N.C. Tomlinson is the dealer manager for Nor-Tech Hi-Performance Boats in Fort Myers Beach, Fla. Though their products are distinctly different, both […]
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When Don McIntyre decided in 2015 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first ever Whitbread crewed race around the world, it had to start in the UK. That’s where the Whitbread story began. He did the same thing when deciding to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the original 1968 Sunday Times Golden Globe Race […]
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A fleet of 47 offshore racing yachts will line up to make sailing history when they contest Australia’s second oldest blue water yacht race – the Gladstone Ports Corporation 75th Brisbane to Gladstone Yacht Race (B2G) which sets sail on Good Friday (7th April 2023). Entries closed on Monday, 20th March with the milestone running […]
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Mostly absent from the high-performance powerboating scene these days since the death of his best boat-wrangling buddy Larry Goldman in 2017, New York’s Gino Gargiulo made a big splash with exotic automobile-themed MTI catamarans. That isn’t to say that the Wentzville, Mo., company didn’t build outrageous theme-boats for other clients during the years, but Gargiulo’s […]
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Mercury Racing’s new V10 400R outboard. Courtesy Mercury Racing The Wide Open gang at Mercury Racing kicked off its 50th Anniversary celebration at the Miami International Boat Show with the introduction of an all-new V10 400R outboard model. This motor will replace the supercharged 2.6-liter L6 400R, a model that may be the best-selling outboard […]
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“ In the Spirit of the original 1973 Whitbread Race” Celebrating its 50th Anniversary. The Golden Age of fully crewed ocean racing around the world seems a distant memory. Huge budgets and elite professionals racing custom carbon yachts that ‘fly’ on €800,000 foils steered by sophisticated autopilots, not sailors, where shore teams via satellite are […]
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Released last week on the Mercury Racing YouTube channel, the first segment of Water Street Confidential featuring the Fond du Lac, Wis., company’s director of customer experience Steve Miller and Double R Performance co-owner Peter Robert runs 5-1/2-minutes. For that episode, Scrapyard Media and Speed On The Water captured a little more than an hour […]
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As The Ocean Race crews charge around the world, is racing under autopilot cheating… or progress? Matt Sheahan considers the implications of the the new normal 15 January 2023, Start of The Ocean Race, Leg 1 IMOCA Biotherm That’s not racing. It’s cheating. If you’re going to use the autopilot to sail around the world […]
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Knowing that no one is born with the technical skills for a career in the high-performance marine industry, the decision-makers at Mercury Racing launched the Fond du Lac Wis., company’s “Excellence in Trade” scholarship program five years ago and added its “Impact Institute” scholarship program three years later. New for 2023 is the company’s “Great […]
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The “Tiffany blue” color scheme of the jaw-dropping boats from Wentzville, Mo.-based Marine Technology Inc., in the photo below isn’t the only thing the two boats captured running together by Tom Leigh during last week’s MTI Owners Fun Run in the Florida Keys have in common. The boats are built by MTI, are powered by […]
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Around the same time Steve Miller, Mercury Racing’s director of customer experience, was falling in love with groundbreaking licks of Luther Perkins, Peter Roberts, the co-owner of Double R Performance, was becoming with the unmatched virtuosity of Slash. That the two guitarists could not be more different in style and substance—Perkins played with the Johnny […]
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