I have always enjoyed the big off shore racers, at least since I moved to SoFla. Totally outrageous in every sense. But now they are running gas turbine engines, and doing over 200mph on open water. 4000 HP. Insane. Expensive beyond comprehension, used to be the domain of the Coke Lords, don't know if that is still the case, but check out www.missgeicoracing.com and www.jbsracing.com. I killed over an hour on youtube watching this stuff. Worth it.
Yeah, that seems to be the other place to poor Maximum Dollars, along with racing airplanes.
Jeff(owner jbsracing) spent an hour talkin with him at Oshkosh air show, he had two boats there,on trailers, got bunch of pics.
plus Roush airplanes,, P51 Mustang (2)
Apparantly Mr. Stevenson does not have to worry about paying his bills. His family owned the Wall Street Journal, which, I believe, was sold to Rupert Murdoch for 5B or so. Perfect for motorsports.
I paid my way through engineering school working on these silly things. cwh has it right when he says they were the playground of the coke dealer set. The cost to keep one running is incredible. We could easy do $500 a day in fuel just playing around in Lake Ontario.
The races are just as crazy. The only way to properly relate to them is to get yourself involved in a plane crash that last two hours. They sure look smooth jumping in the air and landing gracefully. Just not so if you are on board.
We were just on 100 mph on good water and that was plenty for me. 200 mph in a boat is incredible. You just never know where the next piece of floatsam (coconuts were off the FL coast were a B--ch) In those days you were not belted in and just staying in the boat was a bit of a chore.
Last I took a peek it was all Lambo and Ferrari engines. The turbines were not yet mainstream.
They are fun to watch in videos.
Pete
For a few years, US Customs was using boats they called Blue Thunder. Catamarans, built by one of the Miami companies that supplied the smugglers, apparantly a plea-deal thing. I came home from work one day to my waterfront apartment just west of FLL airport. All kinds of black uniformed, highly armed men running around, and Blue Thunder docked at my door. They had been tipped off to an aerial drop about to happen. Don't know if it happened, but that boat sounded incredible. Twin 540's with BIG cams.
I saw a TV show about the turbine boats once. You could easily spend 6-figures on a single engine, burn it up in a race, and then drop the cash again the following weekend. Salt water and turbine blades don't mix well.
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