Two weeks ago, the dedicated team at Antelope Point Marina in Page, Ariz., took a moment to catch its collective breath and celebrate a job well done as it appeared that the fundraising goals set for this year’s eighth annual Lake Powell Challenge had been met.

Chris Hamlin and the crew from Prestige Marine ran their Scarab in the Lake Powell Challenge. All photos by Jimmy Biro

In 2015, the event, which benefits JDRF, topped $200,000 in donations and Burl Griswold and company at Antelope Point Marina wanted to raise the bar to $250,000 this year. After a couple of weeks of collecting additional donations and wrapping up various expenses, Griswold was happy to report that the event, which had 74 boats register, raised well over a quarter-million dollars thanks to some extremely generous sponsors and participants.

Speedonthewater.com correspondent Jimmy Biro was on hand and captured a ton of great photos. Many are featured in the slideshow below, and even more will be included in the next Speed On The Water digital magazine (download the latest issue here). Biro enjoyed the company of longtime event supporter George Argyros, who brought his 44-foot MTI Mayhem and his 43-foot Donzi Donzilla to the Lake Powell Challenge.

“We had another safe run without any major problems, and it seemed like everyone had a great time,” said Griswold, who thanked all of the companies that attended the run including DCB, MTI, Teague Custom Marine, Eliminator Boats of Arizona, Horizon Motorsports, Prestige Marine, Barrett Custom Marine, Maxed Out Marine, Elite Marine and Octane Marine for their support. “Some guy named Bob Teague won the poker run with four kings and he immediately donated his $2,700 prize back. Teague also told me that the Lake Powell Challenge is one of his favorite two poker runs of the year—I can’t imagine what the other one is.”

From the rise of the Harvest Moon to catamarans and V-bottoms running, here are 12 of Jimmy Biro’s favorite images from Lake Powell.

Griswold said after eight years of doing the poker run and attending many other charity functions that performance boat owners are by far the most charitable group of people—hands down.

“From someone whose family has been touched by Type One diabetes, I can tell you that all of the hard work that goes into planning one of these is worth it after seeing the results at the end of the day,” Griswold said. “I thank each and every one of the donors, participants and the staff at Antelope Point Marina. If we did this with any other group of people I don’t believe the results would be anywhere near as good.

“We’ve already started planning next year,” he continued. “Brianne Norris, our special events manager, already has some fun and big changes that we think our guests will enjoy. And Roland Schebesta, our food and beverage director, promised me we will be stepping up the dinner. How he plans to do that I can’t image after eating Saturday’s dinner.”

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