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here was a time, not too long ago, when 100mph on the water was reserved for daredevil racers. There was even a club, the Century Club, that included a handful of men who had broken the 100 mark. Today, anyone with a sufficiently loaded checkbook can walk into a boat dealership and, by checking off a few boxes on an options list, order a 100mph speedboat. Want 120mph? Just check off a few more boxes. Even the most mundane family sportboats now run at speeds that would have won the Miami-Nassau Race back in the ’70s. But there has been an evolution in what might be called high-performance boats. There are, of course, the pure speed machines from builders like Cigarette, Nor-Tech, Donzi Baja and Fountain. These are single-purpose waterborne hotrods with deeply bolstered seating for six or eight thrill-seekers and marginal accommodations under the long forward decks. But there is a new challenger: the performance center console. Center console boats were once the province of fishermen, because they could walk around the helm console while reeling in a fish. But fast center consoles have been embraced by both the family boater and those defecting from the hot boat set. “Center consoles have become the SUV of boating,” says Richie Powers, director of business development for the FastBoats Marine Group in Pompano Beach and Miami. Powers knows of what he speaks, having won 11 World Offshore Racing Championships and seven National Championships. “Look at what happened to sport utility vehicles on the road,” says FastBoats owner Randy 2 | M AY 2014 | F LMag .co m
Sweers, adding, “They’re everywhere!” Sweers is a 10-time world champion who continues to race in the Superboat class reaching speeds of nearly 200mph. “We’re getting a lot of people who might have had a performance boat in the past, but they can get the same speed with a boat that seats 8-10 and does everything.” Sweers recently tested the first Midnight Express 43 Open, with four Mercury 300hp outboards. “Out of the box, no tuning, we were running over 70mph!” he says. Sweers adds, “The performance boats, like Cigarettes and Bajas, were the Ferraris or Lamborghinis of the water, but they’re not right for everyone.” “Center consoles are a lifestyle boat,” says Powers. “They’re great for a day on the water with the family, you can run to the Bahamas or down to the Keys comfortably, but you still get that speed kick, thanks to modern outboards.” The outboards Powers mentions are the new preferred power, with Yamaha and Mercury offering engines up to 350hp each. But this new breed of center console owners isn’t content with one or two outboards. Even three
There has been an evolution in what might be called high-performance boats, such as those offered by Deep Impact Boats, top; Jupiter Marine, above; and Midnight Express by FastBoats Marine Group, right.
THE NEW FAST Speedboats have moved from hotrods to center consoles.
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High-performance boats offered by FastBoats Marine Group, including Midnight Express, below.
Both the family boater
and those defecting from the hot boat set have embraced
fast center consoles.
outboards is, well, passé. Quad outboards, with four big engines bolted to the transom, are becoming de rigueur and many center consoles are designed to handle five outboards. “High performance boats used to rely on temperamental inboard engines but, today, these outboards are turnkey and bulletproof. You even get a five-year warranty,” says Powers. Deep Impact Boats of Opa-locka helped pioneer triple and quad outboards on center consoles. Their largest, a 39-footer, can easily handle quad outboards but, with triple Mercurys, still tops out at over 72mph and yet the center console conceals a comfortable cabin with twin settees, enclosed head and mini-galley. Opa-locka has become a hotbed of performance boatbuilding, with Cigarette, Jupiter and Invincible also in that area. Cigarette, of course, is the granddaddy of performance boats and the 4 | M AY 2014 | F LMag .co m
largest in their fleet is the 50-foot Marauder. Interestingly enough, Cigarette responded to the defection of performance boat owners to center consoles by creating their own versions, built on the race-winning Cigarette hulls. Their 42-foot Huntress center console, for example, runs 65mph with five Mercury outboards.
Midnight Express, based in Hollywood, builds only performance center consoles, including the 39-foot Interceptor, which is fast enough to be popular with the U.S. military as well as Caribbean and South American countries that use them to run down drug smugglers. Invincible, another Opa-locka builder, builds three models from 33-foot up to a 42-foot walk-around that merges overnight comfort in a luxuriously appointed cabin for three, complete with galley and enclosed head with shower. Using triple 300hp outboards, it tops out at over 60mph. John Rosatti, the driving force behind the Palm Beach-based Burger-Fi restaurant chain, had a Cigarette Marauder that could hit 135mph, but he’s now sponsoring the FastBoats Racing Team owned by Sweers. “It was fun,” says Powers, “when you would race to a restaurant and then back with a half-dozen friends in a hot boat. But that’s all you could do with it. Today, there’s no question that the high-performance center console has captured the market as an all-purpose boat that blends speed, comfort and utility.”