Hard as it may be to believe with dozens of documentary videos—including two multi-segment series—that have brought in millions of views populating the Speed On The Water YouTube channel, Speedonthewater.com and Scrapyard Media started working together just four years ago. The collaboration began when Andrea Jansen, then the marketing manager for Mercury Racing, reached out with a simple proposition.
Mercury Racing would provide funding. Speed On The Water would use those funds to produce high-performance powerboating videos. The arrangement itself wasn’t complicated.
But everything that followed was. As the founder and co-publisher of speedonthewater.com, I was terrified. I am no stranger to storytelling in the print and digital worlds. But Speedonthewater.com had never planned, much less produced, a documentary video.
Nor had Scrapyard Media, which was doing video shorts for Sunsation Boats at the time.
But within moments of our first meeting, our teams agreed that real storytelling was the top priority. No one involved had any interest in producing the typical babes-on-boats set to blaring, low-rent rock music stuff. We knew we could work together because we shared the same fundamental vision.
We just wanted to tell compelling stories through video. And starting with the “In The Lead” series focus on high-performance marine world luminaries from Grant Bruggemann to John Tomlinson, we did.
From there we went on to various documentary subjects, from the making of the Monster Energy/M CON Class 1 Skater raceboat, to the record-setting Lake of the Ozarks accomplishments of the Factory Billet Outerlimits V-bottom to last year’s four-part, reality-style documentary series that focused on three teams competing for the Super Cat National Championship.
Side notes? A lot of racers didn’t like the Super Cat video series. But 350,000 people watched it. Make of that what you will.
Just six days ago, we added another video to the In The Lead series. And that got me thinking.
What would you, as a dedicated performance-boating fan, like to see from Speed On The Water-produced Scrapyard Media videos in 2026? We have plenty of our own ideas, for sure, but we want to hear yours.
At this writing, we have no plans set for video productions next year. Once we find a project we want to produce, we have to find funding for it, a task that is far easier said than done because video isn’t cheap. Think $1,000 a minute and you’re in the ballpark, yet by no means near the top of it.
But we still want to hear from you. So fire away. Now’s your chance.