The Top 10 Biggest Stories Of 2024—Part I

By the time the 2024 Speed On The Water Year In Review issue reaches your doorstop in January, I won’t remember all the work that went into it. You’ll be thumbing through the 212-page, 10th anniversary edition for months. I’ll be struggling to remember which boats my speedonthewater.com partner Jason Johnson and I picked for the cover.

Enjoying seat time with Peter Hledin (right), the founder of Skater Powerboats, in Sarasota, Fla., and covering Skater’s 50th anniversary weekly were two of Speedonthewater.com founder Matt Trulio’s (left) 2024 highlights. Photo by Pete Boden/Shoot 2 Thrill Pix

That is the nature of producing more than 1,000 daily news stories a year. You don’t have time to sit around and admire your work. You’re only as good as your last story in this business, so you keep moving because there’s always another one to tell.

But this year didn’t lack for stories of significance.

Speedonthewater.com turned 15 years old this year and Johnson and I have annually selected the most newsworthy pieces—in our view of course—for this two-part, end-of-year series for the past 10 of them. What follows, in no particular order, are my top five picks. Johnson’s will follow tomorrow.

MTI Maps Its Future
A little more than a year ago, Taylor Scism, the younger daughter of MTI owners Randy and Cherell Scism, was promoted from client relations manager to vice president of the Wentzville, Mo.-headquartered high-performance catamaran and center console company. Just three months ago, Randy Scism announced he was launching an Employee Stock Ownership Plan—commonly known as ESOP—and that made MTI into a 100-percent employee-owned business. Scism naturally wants his legacy to continue after he retires, but he wisely realized that wasn’t going to happen on its own. Now MTI is one of the very few go-fast boat builders with a succession plan.

MTI’s Randy Scism said the company’s new Employee Stock Ownership Plan gives employees a retirement plan with some true wealth. Photo by Brad Gildewell/Brad Glidewell Photography

A Shootout For The Books
The 2024 Lake of the Ozarks Shootout in Central Missouri will be remembered for three accomplishments on the three-quarter-mile racecourse and one off it. Multi-time Shootout top guns John Cosker and Tony Battiato reached 221-mph in the 51-foot American Ethanol Mystic Powerboats catamaran, the fastest pass yet since the course was shortened from one mile to its current length. On the mono-hull side, one pass was all it took for Jim Schultz and Mike Faucher to improve on last year’s 184-mph run with a 186-mph blast in Factory Billet, a 51-foot Outerlimits Offshore Powerboats V-bottom. (That was a good thing, as Schultz only had time for one pass before he had to fly to Florida to celebrate his daughter’s fifth birthday.) Thanks to Skater 388 owner Slug Hefner who let Performance Boat Center’s Myrick Coil and Rusty Williams run his cat, Skater Powerboats finally entered the Shootout’s 200-mph club with a 202-mph run.

But the most important record wouldn’t be known until after the event when its proceeds were totaled. The 2024 Lake of the Ozarks Shootout raised $730,000 for local charities.

There will never be another Lake of the Ozarks Shootout Top Gun champion like Don Onken’s American Ethanol Mystic, which reached a record-setting 221 mph on the three-quarter-mile course at the 2024 event. Photo by Pete Boden

Super Cat Docu-Series Breaks New Ground
Thanks to a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy at ESPN, NBC Sports or Netflix, there has always been talk about an offshore powerboat racing video series “in the works” or “just around the corner.” And it never happens. The team at Scrapyard Media, which tapped Speedonthewater.com as a project consultant/producer, rolled up its sleeves and changed that with an outstanding four-part docu-series titled “Super Cat – Race For US-1.” Captured through perspectives of the Dirty Money Racing, M CON/Monster Energy and TF Motorsports/Hancock Claims Consultants captured the chase for the American Power Boat Association Offshore National Championship Series in the Super Cat class on and off the racecourse.

The finale of the new Super Cat – Race For US-1 series on the Speed On The Water YouTube Channel focused on the Key West Worlds.

DCB Goes Bigger
Four years ago, DCB Performance Marine introduced its first full-tunnel catamaran called the M37R catamaran. The outboard-powered 37-footer was an immediate hit, and it led the Phoenix-based company to add a larger version to its lineup. The builder announced the new model dubbed the M42R in January and the first one hit the water in early December. The 42-footer is by all accounts the new flagship of the DCB line and orders for it are already streaming in. And a 45-foot-long, sterndrive-engine-powered version is in the works and slated for a July 2025 release. Anyone who still thinks DCB is a “West Coast-style” builder needs to think again.

The first M42R catamaran from DCB was delivered to devoted clients Kris and Shelby Hansen on Lake Havasu just in time for Christmas. Photo by Tom Leigh/Tommy Gun Images

Skater Turns 50
Often imitated but never duplicated, Peter Hledin of Skater Powerboats has been creating some of the most exotic high-performance catamarans in the world for 50 years. His Douglas, Mich., company celebrated its 50th anniversary this year with Hledin, his son, Michael, and Skater national sales manager, Tony Cutsuries, taking to the road and mixing it up with the Skater faithful around the country. The Hledin entourage even made it to the inaugural Texas-based Skaterfest event hosted by Skater dealer RP Elite Motors and Marine. To shine a spotlight on the venerable brand, speedonthewater.com launched a weekly feature called Skater At 50.

The radical Skater 438 Rockette was one of many impressive machines created during the past five decades by Peter Hledin and his team featured on the website this year. Photo by Pete Boden