In August, Taylor Chastelet, the 18-year-old son of noted former offshore racer Gerry Chastelet of St. Charles, Mo.—not far from the Lake of the Ozarks—will start his freshman year at the University of Alabama. While he’ll enter the school as one of many students majoring in business management and entrepreneurship, the odds are good he’ll be the only one in his class with six offshore races under his belt by the time he gets there.
Starting this coming weekend with the Super Boat International season-opener in Charlotte Harbor, Fla., Chastelet will be sharing the cockpit of a 32-foot Doug Wright catamaran in the Superboat Stock class with the boat’s owner and throttleman, Stock- and XCAT-class veteran Gary Ballough. The current plan has Chastelet running with Ballough, a 12-time National and World champion, in the GB Racing cat for the entire season on the SBI circuit, and with well-known Stock-class throttleman Ryan Beckley at the Smokin’ The Sound race in Biloxi, Miss., and the Lake Race event on Lake of the Ozarks. Earlier this year, he logged seat time with Beckley in his Stock-class Skater catamaran during a Fort Myers Offshore fun run event.
(Photo courtesy Ryan Beckley.)
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