Caught up with Terry Sobo, the director of sales and marketing for Nor-Tech Hi-Performance Boats in Cape Coral, Fla. Sobo told me he’d just finished the lottery drawing for a slot to order a new Nor-Tech model—such is the unprecedented demand for custom performance-boats these days.

OK, Sobo was joking and indulging in a little “gallows humor.” Late summer never is a booming time for the performance-boat business, and the current economy has done nothing to help change that. We enjoyed a good laugh, especially when Sobo told me the tents were already being pitched on the Nor-Tech plant lawn for tomorrow’s lottery drawing.

Funny guy, that Terry Sobo, a real prankster. So when I asked him what white-hot, stupid-fast Nor-Tech was headed for the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout August 28-29, and he said “our new 39-foot center console,” I thought he was joking.

Turns out he wasn’t.

“We’re definitely taking the 39,” said Sobo. “It’s time those people on that dark-water lake see what the ‘ultimate deck boat’ looks like.”

Sobo said he plans on entering the 39-footer, which is powered by triple 300-hp Verado outboard engines and reportedly runs in the low 70-mph  range, in the Shootout.

“I don’t even know if they have a class for center consoles,” he said. “But they have one for pontoon boats, so why not?”