Home to a healthy variety of high-performance powerboat exhibits during the Fort Lauderdale International Boat, the Bahia Mar Yachting Center is a manageable venue once you reach it. Traffic in and around the area—and most of South Florida for that matter—is congested most of the time and savage at peak hours. But once you get there, there’s plenty to see at the docks and the layout is easy to navigate.
Yet for exhibitors, the challenge of offering demo experiences is ongoing. All of the boats in the water dock-locked for the duration.
It’s not just a hurdle at the Fort Lauderdale happening. It’s also a major headache at the annual Miami International Boat Show. In fact, the problem is so acute at the Miami event that Mercury Racing hosts an annual invitational demo-event at Grove Harbour Marina—a 30-minute drive from the Miami Convention Center on a very good day—in Coconut Grove from Wednesday morning through Friday at noon during the show.
Introduced at Performance Boat Center in early September 2025 by MTI leaders Randy and Taylor Scism, the 422 center-console model will in that water at the upcoming Fort Lauderdale Boat Show and concurrently available for demo experiences at Haulover Marine Center. Photo by Jeff Helmkamp copyright Helmkamp Photos.
For that reason, MTI will once again back up its display fleet at the show with a demo fleet at Haulover Marine Center. The Wentzville, Mo., company will have 422 and 50 V center consoles at the Bahia Mar docks. The team also will have the same models at Haulover for by-appointment demos. (Demo reservations can be made through MTI’s Shaun Peters and Tom Stuart.)
The company has used the dual-location boat-show strategy for several years and it’s been successful. Other performance boat builders have followed its lead.
In boat-show-related news for MTI, the company completed its first exhibit at the Cannes Yachting last week on the French Riviera this last week. From there, Peters and the company’s John Teague headed to the Monaco Boat Show, which opens today.
“I feel like the reception to MTI went very well— something different for the client base over there,” said Taylor Scism, the vice-president of the company, who was on scene for the Cannes event. “There was a lot of excitement to try to product.”