A couple weeks ago we had the opportunity to chat with Bob "JR" Noble, Mark Kowalski, and Dave Hutchinson while they were visiting Skater to check up on both of their team's boats. It was a slight bit colder up here than in Florida when they left. (Mark just had to drive over from Ohio).

The current boat, damaged in Key West as most will remember, was almost ready to take home for final rigging to be ready for the Cocoa Beach race. Dave was able to take it back south to TNT the next day for final assembly, rigging, and testing.

"Past"

"Bumping" with Broadco in Key West


Oops, Drive ...

Is this fifty shades of grey, it very well may be and we will double check with the paint designers. But Skater is, with this 50 feet of fulfillment (as Christian Grey says in Fifty Shades of Grey), “Raising the ordinary to extraordinary”. And extraordinary is the perfect word to describe this Skater beauty.

We are kind of hoping they name it “Fifty Shades of Grey”. Seems perfect for something that can hurt you while looking this good and giving you pleasure at the same time.

Follow along as we show a few photos of this extraordinary craft being built. We will add to the photos in the thread ...

James Kimmel, the original Jimmy Kimmel as he says, is proud of his new 30’ Skater SS and has every right to be. The color scheme, right down to the specially wrapped steering wheel, gauges, gauge bezels, and interior stitching set this beauty off as a performance boat with all of the looks, performance, and custom tweaks that have given Skater their outstanding reputation. I think he was more impatient than he let on while at the show in Miami. Their winter play spot in Florida had to be waiting for this beauty to see what it could do in his hands.



During ...

Courtesy Shoot 2 Thrill Pete

Stock Outboard, the only class where the world's rules match the US rules, also appears to be strong this year. There are a few boats who will have the role of favorites, the wider Doug Wrights being the boats with the advantage over the narrower tunneled competition. But, there is one boat that we will be keeping our eyes on closely to see how it does. Risky Business, a 1992 Skater 28 with a pair of Mercury Racing 200 XS outboards (running approximately 240 HP), will be competing against ...

Superboat in SBI has been growing since they modified the rules for the class a couple years ago. As the combined classes of the old Superboat 750, Superboat 850, and Supercat, the class had a group of teams to choose from. The only question was, would they all buy in to a class that almost mimicked the old Supercat Rules before the changes early in this century.

Many of us can remember the 12 or 13 boats that competed on a regular basis in the Supercat Class in the late 90's and early 00's, but it disappeared into a multitude of classes where the rules seemed to change annually. Well, that seems to be the case no longer and the teams appear ...

For everyone who survives the influence of the overall Key West atmosphere of fun, the races on Wednesday, the races on Friday, and still have the energy to head down to Duvall Friday evening for the parade and street party, there will also be another place to hook up with ardent performance boaters while admiring all of the race teams along Duvall. Our friends Matt and Jason from Speed On The Water and Gino from BurgerFi will be hosting a party at Gino and John's BurgerFi restaurant on Duvall Friday evening.



Once again, ...

As ranked in most military expert’s reviews, the F-4 Phantom, F-15 Strike Eagle, F-16 Fighting Falcon, F-22 Raptor, and F-117 Nighthawk are 5 of the top U.S. Fighter Jets of all time. But, if the military had decided to build a high performance fighter catamaran, this latest Skater F-426 at 12 feet wide and 42 feet long, is what they would likely conceptualize and commission to protect us all from evildoers on our waterways.



There is nothing that can be over-stated about the distinctiveness of the paint when compared to other high end performance boats on the water. The team assembled to design this scheme ...