Just a few weekends ago, Steve Miklos and Steve Fehrmann double-barrel-rolled their way into offshore racing history during the St. Petersburg Grand Prix in their Mod V-class El Bandido Yankee Tequila raceboat. Even the most seasoned observers of the sport had never seen anything like their 29-foot Extreme V-bottom corkscrewing through the Southwest Florida air and landing sunny side up. Though they were towed back to the wet pits, Miklos and Spates even fired up the boat’s engine after it came to rest.
Now the longtime teammates are on the cusp of their bounce-back event, meaning this weekend’s Race World Offshore Clearwater Nationals. It is the last regular-season of the year before the Key West World Championships in early November.
Miklos described the damage to the boat from the St. Petersburg mishap as “very minimal.”
“There was one area at the nose on my side that had a few cracks, but I got it over to Doctor Porta (former offshore racer and marine industry innovator Scott Porta of Porta Products) and he took care of it in a couple of days,” Miklos said, then chuckled. “Mark Spates built one hell of a strong boat.
“Plus, we bled a lot of speed in the air,” he continued. “When you look at the data, we were going 40 mph when we hit the water.”
The only damage to the boat’s engine, Miklos added, was a cracked tailpipe. “That can happen anytime,” he said, then laughed.
Both Miklos and Fehrmann were sore for a few days after the incident, especially in their legs as they made hard contact with the carbon-fiber dash. But they are ready and eager for the Clearwater races. They’ve already put the raceboat through a complete shake-down session and are ready to resume practice—and racing—this weekend.
“We’ve had kind of a tough season,” Miklos said. “But we ready to go racing and finish strong.”