Tuff Marine Eyeing Single-Engine V-Bottom Record At Lake Of The Ozarks Shootout
Although Mark Weigl and the Tuff Marine crew out of Ontario, Canada, have been absent from the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout in Central Missouri since 2019—mainly because of pandemic restrictions—the team is returning this year with a bigger boat, and a goal of taking back the single-engine V-bottom record at the popular event hosted at Captain Ron’s Bar and Grill in Sunrise Beach at the end of next week.
The Tuff Marine team is looking forward to showing off its 36-foot V-bottom at the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout next week. Photo courtesy Mark Weigl
According to Weigl, the company is bringing its Tuff 36 powered by a single Mercury Racing 1350/1100 engine to show off the new boat and try to break the 132-mph record set in 2021 by Michigan’s Tyler Crockett in his 26-foot Joker on the event’s three-quarter-mile course. The previous fastest single-engine V-bottom speed at the Shootout, which is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year and takes place Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 26-27, was held by Weigl following the 125-mph top speed he reached at the 2018 event in his Tuff 28 powered by a Mercury Racing 860 engine.
“We’re excited for this year’s Shootout and can’t wait to get back to the lake,” said Weigl, adding that the Tuff team is going to have its 36-footer on display during next Wednesday’s Shootout On The Strip gathering presented by Waves and Wheels. “We are ready—hopefully nothing gets messed up between now and then.”
Weigl said his son, Thomas, has been doing a lot of testing in the boat and has got it “dialed in.”
“The boat is a fast; it’s doing everything we hoped it would,” Mark Weigl said. “It’s gone 148 mph on the rev-limiter in 1,100-hp mode and we’re working on a new propeller that we think could push it to 150-plus mph. Anything can happen at the Shootout, but we’re expecting to properly take the record back.”
Weigl, who won offshore racing national and world championships in the 1990s with his wife, Dana, in their 32-foot triple-engine Skater Powerboats catamaran known as Tuff n’ Uff, has been building custom boats for 20 years and called the new boat a “magical performer.”
He said the boat has plenty of power with the 1,100-hp engine setting and that the 1,350-hp version hits a little too hard.
“I told Thomas that the boat should have a canopy if we’re going to run it any faster,” Weigl added. “It’s pretty magical how well it handles the power and settles in. We are on version 2.0 with the model. At first it was 34 feet and the next generation, with the bussel extension, now measures 35 and a half feet, hence the 36 designation. Our original ’winter soldier’ was the 34-foot 1.0, so we called the second version the Tuff 34 again. It’s a little confusing but all future boats will be called the Tuff 36.”
Whatever the boat says on the side, either way there are going to be a lot of Shootout fans waiting to get a closer look at the latest speed machine from Tuff Marine.
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