For John Tomlinson—one of the Ts behind Miami’s highly regarded marine center and custom rigging shop TNT Custom Marine (Mike Thomas is his partner)—2012 was pretty memorable. Unfortunately memories can be good and bad. Obviously Tomlinson would like to forget that Gasse, the 48-foot MTI he races with driver/owner Tor Staubo, lost in a points tiebreaker to Spirit of Qatar at the Key West World Championships after winning the first two Superboat Unlimited class races and having a frustrating mechanical failure force the team out early in the final day’s double-points race. Luckily, rather than dwell on the negative, Tomlinson can look back on 2012 as the year he smashed the Round Long Island record by 55 minutes.
High: My high for the year? Setting the Round Long Island record in August with Stuart Hayim was pretty cool. (Read the story here.) We did some endurance-calculated test runs before the boat left our shop for New York to make sure everything would work. Thanks to perfect weather and the powerful Mercury Racing 1350 engines behind the capable 42-foot MTI, we pulled it off on our first attempt without any issues.
Low: I can tell you what the low was for me—that’s easy. Losing the Key West World Championships in a tiebreaker because of a loose steering hose. That just shouldn’t happen—it was extremely frustrating for our team.
Legendary throttleman John Tomlinson
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