Speed On The Water

On the heels of an offshore racing season that generally saw small boat fleets and low spectator counts, Mark Weber, president of the American Power Boat Association invited representatives from several sanctioning bodies to a meeting Dec. 6 at APBA headquarters in Detroit. Representatives from the Offshore Super Series, Pacific Offshore Powerboat Racing Association and P1 USA attended.

“We have committed to keeping the lines of communication open,” Weber said during a telephone interview yesterday afternoon. “We basically explained where APBA is right now. We announced our new insurance program for races, which is the most competitive program in the industry. We told them we want to reinstitute the APBA Hall of Champions and start documenting record runs. It was all very well received.

“I did a lot of listening,” he continued. “What I heard loud and clear was that the racers want to race, and that they want to be involved with an organizational body that has things like record-keeping and a Hall of Champions. That’s really what APBA does.”

Not invited to the meeting were representatives from Super Boat International. According to Weber, APBA terminated its contract with SBI earlier this year.

“There’s still some unfinished business from when the contract was cancelled,” said Weber. “But I do plan to call John Carbonell from SBI as well.”

Unable to attend because of a prior commitment, said Weber, was Ed Smith of OPA.

Among the announcements Weber made during the meeting was that APBA would no longer “lease” the offshore category, as it did with APBA Offshore LLC several years ago. He also said that APBA is working to develop a long-term business plan for the offshore category.

“We want a structure where we have strong divisional club racing and a national race in each division,” said Weber. “We want a national circuit by 2011, maybe even 2010. I’m not worried about when it gets done, just that it gets done properly. At some point, we’re going to have a national championship and at some point we may even have a UIM (Union Internationale Motonautique) world championship.”

Just caught up with Terry Sobo, the director of sales and marketing for Nor-Tech Hi-Performance Boats in Cape Coral. Fla. I reached Sobo in his office where he was patiently waiting for the Cape Coral Sheriff’s Department to arrest him and take him to the Victory Lane Café until he could post $2,500 bail.

Sobo is being charged with—absolutely nothing. His arrest and incarceration are of part of an annual fundraising publicity stunt put on by the local arms of the national Muscular Dystrophy Association. The “bail” Sobo raised, which currently stands at $7,400—and counting—goes directly to MDA.

“They’ve called me several times over the years, but I’ve never had time to do it,” Sobo told me over the phone. “It’s a great cause and I finally said,  ‘Fine, I’m in,’ and then they told me that the minimum bail was $2,500. So I started thinking about it and I was like, ‘OK, where am I going to get this money? I’m going to have to contact like 250 people.’ So I threw it online.”

Enter seriousoffshore.com, through which Sobo received an immediate and overwhelmingly positive response.

“The guys at seriousoffshore were just unbelievable,” said Sobo. “The three head guys there made generous donations. Within an hour, I had $1,800. By the end of the first day, I had $4,000. Now we have $7,400, and my goal is to get to $10,000.”

For his trouble, Sobo has received what he called “national all-star lock-up status.” That means he has raised enough money to be nominated to present his donation at MDA’s annual telethon in Las Vegas.

“If they pick me, I think I get to present the check to (telethon host) Jerry Lewis,” said Sobo.

If you’re reading this right now and decide to call Sobo and donate, you won’t reach him as he’s likely handcuffed—meaning he can’t reach his mobile phone—in the back of a Cape Coral Sheriff’s car. But you can still pledge to his bail fund by clicking right here.

OK, I knew my latest Boats.com column, “The Big Picture: 10 Most Influential People in High-Performance” might fire up a few folks. But what I didn’t expect were Sunday night emails on a column that posted Sunday morning.

You guys aren’t supposed to get online until you get into work Monday morning. So much for Internet usage pattern research.

Please keep the comments coming. I love them. Without discussion and debate, nothing happens. Nothing changes. Nothing grows.

Here’s what I want to make clear: Influence and power in and of themselves are not good or bad. They just—are. Whether or not John Carbonell of Super Boat International, for example, has had a positive or negative impact on the sport is debatable. But it would be hard to deny his impact.

Whether or not the pricing of Mercury Racing’s engines developed under Fred Kiekhaefer’s leadership there is high, to use another example, is debatable. But Kiekhaefer’s impact on the industry is not.

In other words, though my list is quite obviously subjective, something I pointed out in the introduction, it is without value- judgment. Every person on this list has supporters. Every person on this list has detractors.

And every person on this list has made and continues to make a significant impact. That, and only that, is the point.

Check it out if you haven’t already and let me know what you think. I’m counting on it. And to read a message board thread on SeriousOffshore.com, click here. (You will have to log in to view the thread or register if you have not before.)

You might have missed this—Ilmor Marine limited the release of this news to its Facebook page and word-of-mouth during the Super Boat International Key West Offshore World Championships in November—but Ilmor is offering a retrofit kit for its Indy stern-drive. That means that owners of Ilmor's Generation III 550-, 625- and 710-hp engines can replace their existing drives with Indy units. So now owners of boats with Generation III Ilmor power can have complete Ilmor propulsion packages.

"We introduced the kit very quietly because we're not expecting a huge rush of orders," said Paul Ray, the president of Ilmor, earlier this morning. "We'll make it very much more public as we go through the boat shows and poker runs in 2010."

That leads to an obvious question: Does Ilmor plan to offer a kit that will make Indy drives compatible with powerplants from other high-performance engine builders?

"Not at this stage," said Ray. "We'll take a very long, hard look at that in the future, but at this point, no. It's a matter of making sure we protect the good name of the Indy drive. We want to build a reputation around that drive that says it's a good piece. When you open yourself up to other engine options, you run the risk of someone putting too much power through the drive. The Bravo drive, for example, gets a bad rap because of that. It's a good drive, but it was never meant for 800 horsepower. We don't want that to happen to the Indy drive at this stage.

"If we were to make a move like that, we'd probably go work with Bob Teague (owner of Teague Custom Marine, a noted engine shop in Valencia, Calif.)," added Ray. "That way, Bob could sell the Indy drive with his engines and we'd have some control."

The price for the Indy drive with a retrofit kit is $37,488,