Rich Luhrs Resigns From APBA Offshore Racing Commission

[Speed on the Water]

A significant development for the offshore racing community, https://www.speedonthewater.com/rich...ng-commission/

[Bobcat]

[Ratickle]

Hello APBA Offshore:

We are deep into the 2024 season with only three races remaining. There are many things happening everywhere and there is much to talk about.

I want to focus on the resignation of your chair, Rich Luhrs.

After many years as your chair, on Tuesday morning, Rich sent me his letter of resignation and I accepted it. I feel Rich resigned due to the incident that occurred at LOTO. This incident went all the way to the national commissioner, who then put together a five-person committee to review everything, starting with the initial call and all the events that followed. If you have not yet heard, this five-person committee decided that proper procedures were not followed and reversed the ORC decision. To put this simply, APBA did not follow the proper “chain of custody” protocols, and the case was “thrown out.” In the aftermath of all of this, we are left with two questions:

1.Who is the new chair?

 For the time being, it will be me. Your ORC runs APBA Offshore, so to keep things as consistent as possible, I will become the interim chair while we look for a new, permanent chair.

2.How do we do things better?

 Well, as I look through all the documents and rules, I believe we can start doing better with a better rule book. To that end, I have convened a three-person Rule Book Review committee. This committee will comb through the Offshore rule book to find the weak areas to strengthen them and simplify the rules and the processes. This next sentence is in bold on purpose so that we all read it: The technical rules will continue to stay with the teams and are not subject to review by this committee.

So that we all know the who and what of this committee:

Paul Rose — Chair. Paul is an Offshore insider, a longtime racer and one of the few people who reads and understands the rule book in its totality.

Fred Hauenstein — Committee Member. Fred has been a powerboat racing advocate his entire life, is a former APBA president and is heavily involved in all aspects boat racing.

Mark Weber — Committee Member. Mark is a former APBA president, an APBA national commissioner and is also heavily involved in every facet of boat racing.

Who better to review the rule book and make sure we reduce the possibilities for any other potential issues?

Once the recommendations are complete, they will be sent to your Offshore Racing Commission to be approved. Once again, and with emphasis, your Offshore Racing Commission controls APBA Offshore.

I have known Rich for a very long time. I know the personal sacrifices he made for Offshore, the time he spent on Offshore and the time Offshore took away from his wife Doreen. I would like us all to extend our thanks to both Rich and Doreen for all they have done for us and the monumental effort they put forth. Thank you, my friend.

This is all I have for now. We will preserver, we will move forward, and we will race!

Chris Fairchild

APBA President

[Ratickle]

It would be cool if Rich can do some color commentating now. His old video's were sweet to listen to.