With the second race of the season in the books, the Super Boat International teams are saying goodbye to Marathon, the Florida Keys fishing town that hosted the Marathon Super Boat Grand Prix on Sunday, and making their way to Michigan City, Ind., for the seventh annual Super Boat Great Lakes Grand Prix at the end of this month.

Team AMSOIL‘s Bob Teague and Paul Whittier won the Superboat class in Marathon, Fla., on Sunday. Photos courtesy Yvonne Aleman

As usual, some teams are leaving with checkered flags while others are leaving with a checklist of repairs that need to be made before the next race.

“It was a long race, almost 80 miles,” said Bob Teague, owner and throttleman of Team AMSOIL, the 36-foot Skater Powerboats catamaran powered by twin 750-hp Teague Custom Marine engines, after taking the victory in the Superboat class. “The boat ran great, the competition was pretty good and the crew at SBI did an excellent job. Overall it was a great event. We’re leaving here tomorrow morning and headed to Michigan to race in St. Clair, then Michigan City, then Port Huron on back-to-back-to-back weekends.”

Teague said an encounter at the start of the day’s second race led to a couple of teams swapping paint—STIHL and Cleveland Construction—while WHM gained the early lead coming out of the first turn. STIHL broke after the first lap of the race while WHM held the lead until about halfway in when Teague and driver Paul Whittier passed WHM’s Billy Mauff and Jay Muller, who broke down after completing eight laps.

Although the boat counts in the two ultra-competitive Superboat and Superboat Stock classes were less than normal because of some race teams opting to compete in the Sarasota Grand Prix Powerboat Festival, the teams made the most out of their 4-plus-mile course in the Keys.

Check out a few more images from the Marathon Super Boat Grand Prix in the slideshow above.

In the Superboat Unlimited class, Miss GEICO decided not to race after experiencing engine-cooling issues during testing on Saturday. And while there were not any more Superboat Unlimited boats to challenge both CMS boats owned by longtime offshore racer Bob Bull, the teams put on a good show for the spectators while pushing the 48- and 52-foot MTI catamarans on the warm afternoon.

“We ended up blowing a water hose before the last lap so we pulled off the course and decided not to push it any more,” said throttleman John Tomlinson, who owns TNT Custom Marine in Miami and won the Superboat Unlimited class with veteran driver Jeff Harris in CMS 03, Bull’s 48-footer. Bull and MTI owner Randy Scism drove the 52-footer, CMS 3, but exited the race after lap 17 with mechanical issues.

“We didn’t need to limp around the racecourse for one more lap,” continued Tomlinson, who hopped a flight from Miami to Italy this evening with veteran offshore racer Gary Ballough to race for Team Abu Dhabi in this week’s Union Internationale Motonautique Class 1 race in. “Overall it was a fun race on a tight little course.”

Speaking of Ballough, the veteran throttleman proved once again that his FJ Propeller Doug Wright catamaran could compete despite opting for less power in the form of Mercury Racing OptiMax 200XS engines. Ballough and Mike Eggelston of FJ Propeller, who was sitting in for company owner Jimmie Harrison, outlasted Kyler Talbot and Muller in the Talbot Excavating Doug Wright with the class-approved 280-hp engines and Scott Porta and Mike Fosse in the Papa’s Pilar Rum Doug Wright with twin Mercury Racing OptiMax 300XS engines.

Running uncontested in Superboat Vee, Steve Miklos’ Sun Print Extreme maintained a good pace—a 73-mph average speed—across the 13-lap 48-mile race. In Production 3, the 2nd Amendment Spectre catamaran averaged 78 mph in a race that was ran primarily without any competition after The Developer team dropped out on the fourth lap.

In Production 4—the only class where every boat that started the race finished it—Fast Forward averaged 72.5 mph around the course to edge out Five Guys/Rum Runners and Two Cruel, who averaged 71.5 mph and 69.2 mph respectively.

Overall, the teams that attended the first offshore race in Marathon in several years had a great time and were impressed by the number of spectator boats lined along the course.

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