Tampa Bay Poker Run Reveals Split Personality—Again

Repeat participants in the Tampa Bay Poker Run know to expect one calm day and one not-so-calm day. It’s become almost routine for the weekend-long Florida Powerboat Club event. But until the weekend arrives, no one knows for sure which version of Tampa Bay—friendly or hostile—will show up first.

Chris and Sam Ryder joined their friends Joey and Maria Castellano in the Castellano’s Skater 388 catamaran for the event. Photo by Pete Boden copyright Shoot 2 Thrill Pix.

As it happened for the 15th annual Tampa Bay affair, which attracted 60-plus registered boats, Friday was the “friendly” day. Flat water, light breezes and midday temperatures in the mid-to-high-70s greeted the casual, lunch run fleet for its short trek from downtown Tampa to a waterfront restaurant about 10 minutes up the bay.

The Miami Marina-based Angle of Attack Marine crew continued to make its presence felt at Florida Powerboat Club events.

But for yesterday’s poker run, the waters of Tampa Bay turned a little hostile. As predicted, sustained winds of 18- to 20-mph started in the morning and persisted throughout the day, and they whipped up messy, 1-to-3-footers inside of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. Between the remarkable, sail-inspired span and the first floating card stop off Egmont Key, the seas built to a messier 2 to 3 feet.

“That was perfect,” said Chris LaMorte, who throttled his 36-foot Skater catamaran and was joined by frequent guest-driver Ron Muller and an equally frequent guest-reporter—this one—as they idled away from the card-stop. “It was just rough enough to be fun without being too rough.”

Enjoy more images from yesterday’s poker run in the slideshow above.

Muller, who couldn’t stop grinning, agreed. “That was Skater water,” he said. “That’s what these boats are built for.

“I thought we had a good rhythm,” he added.

They did, though as the sole passenger on the bolster-bench behind them I can say there were a couple of attention-getting moments. The first was a janky landing from a big launch, which proved you don’t need an accelerometer to understand what a hard hit means as expressed in G-forces.

You just need a lower back—and preferably one less than 64 years old.

The Manatee Marine Unlimited a 44-foot quad-outboard-engine-powered center console in the event.

The second was of my own creation and taught me a literal and figurative valuable lesson: A baseball hat under an intercom headset for sun protection is a bad idea in an open-cockpit catamaran at 110 mph, especially the boat launches and your butt loses contact with the seat. In that moment, when you suddenly become “taller” than the bucket seat and windscreen ahead of you, the onrushing wind can get under the brim of your hat and rip the headset of your noggin.

Short version? I was lucky to catch both, as well as my fancy sunglasses, as they were flying out of the boat. All three would have been gone.

A Tampa Bay Poker Run veteran, Gino Gargiulo ran the 52-foot Spooled Up MTI catamaran he purchased from DCB Performance Marine managing partners Craig and Kim Hargreaves in early December 2024.

Just as I had to be gone ahead of last night’s dinner and awards celebration at the Tampa Convention Center.

But before I left downtown Tampa, I joined LaMorte for a late-afternoon drink at the rooftop bar of Marriott Water Street hotel, the event’s host venue. From 10 stories above them, the poker-run boats at the docks below looked like pretty little toys. Brushed on its surface by the breeze, the protected water of the Tampa River was tranquil.

At least from our perch, Tampa Bay had returned to its friendly Friday self.