Cockpit duos don’t come any cooler than the father-and-son team of Dennis and Jason Parvey. Photo courtesy/copyright Jeff Helmkamp/Jeff Helmkamp Photos
Jason Parvey’s sense of humor isn’t dry. It’s arid. Parched, even. Ask him why he and his father, Dennis, plan to push their 43-foot Black Thunder V-bottom past 140 mph this year at the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout in late August and you get this:
“We don’t know any better.”
Then you hear something that easily could be mistaken for a soft laugh.
Ask him who enjoys the annual top-speed contest in Central Missouri more, his father or him, and—once again—you hear something not unlike a soft laugh. Then this:
“I’m a bad influence on my dad.” Then another soft laugh sound.
Dennis Parvey, who is 66 years old and still lives in Ham Lake, Minn. (Jason lives in Dallas), started competing in the Shootout in the early 1990s. In 2000, he purchased his current 43-footer and he took it—along with his then 15-year-old, wide-eyed son—to the event. Now 29 years old, Jason joined his father in the cockpit at the Shootout in 2012 and hasn’t been out of it since. Last year, the father-and-son duo laid down an impressive 145-mph top speed, making the boat, which boasts twin electronically fuel-injected supercharged engines each making close to 1,700 hp, the fastest V-bottom in the 2015 Shootout fleet.
and then