Displayed just outside the Miami International Boat Show, the new Statement Marine 430 Tigress CAT center console has attracted solid crowds this week and likely will continue to throughout the weekend. First, the 43-footer powered by quad Mercury Racing 500R outboard engines is based on a full-tunnel catamaran hull. Of course there are plenty of those in the open-water fishing world—the name Freeman leaps to mind—but not so many in the high-performance pleasure-boat realm.
Second, the boat is equipped with a massive sound system from Rockford-Fosgate. It’s a muscular combination to be sure and one—at least with the volume cranked—that won’t sneak up on anyone.
“As the industry continues to evolve, we felt it was time to take our own path, one that brings something not only new but truly exciting to the industry and our clients,” said Nick Buis, the owner of Statement Marine. “The revolutionary 430 Tigress CAT hull design is a first-generation departure from conventional center consoles. In fact, it’s more than a boat—it’s a statement.
Four 500-hp outboard engines power the 43-footer.
“With unmatched space, cutting-edge technology and exhilarating performance, it’s setting a new standard for what’s possible in the market,” he added.
As for Rockford Fosgate, the Phoenix-based audio company is continuing its push into the marine segment that kicked off during last year’s Miami event. The company currently provides factory-installed sound system’s for Harley-Davidson motorcycles and Polaris side-by-side off-road vehicles.
But he 43-foot center console provides an impressive platform in the marine space for the well-known audio outfit.
“We have extremely robust, performance-driven product purpose-built for the marine space—we’re definitely not in our infancy from a product standpoint,” said Zach Luke, Rockford-Fosgate’s managing director, in an interview with this reporter last year. “But we haven’t necessarily focused on the marine category. It’s now a priority for us. It’s not just a focus, it’s a priority and we are moving forward accordingly.”
The new Statement 430 Tigress CAT center console rides on a catamaran hull. Photos by Pete Boden/Shoot 2 Thrill Pix.
You don’t have to know anything about high-performance powerboats, engines and accessories to be spellbound by the CP Performance/Hardin Marine exhibit outside the Miami International Boat Show, which opened this morning. The products are colorful and shiny—the very definition of bling. And bling, by design, is attention-getting.
From simple items like black push-button accessory switches and carbon fiber steering wheel “centers” to heavy-duty hardware such as tubular “Cyclone” headers and hatch rams that sync precisely with one another, the outdoor showcase is a marine gear-head’s toy store. That’s a given.
Hardin Marine’s beautifully polished stainless steel headers New Center Caps for Isotta Carlotta Steering Wheels
But in the 15 minutes I spent ogling the CP Performance and Hardin Marine display I watched one show-goer after the next stop and stare and point.
And more than once I heard, “What is that?”
Point being? Even show visitors who have no idea what they’re looking are drawn to the bling of steering wheels, complete engines on stands and cool Bluetooth-enabled items such as trim switches and audio controls—if they look cool and exotic.
In that regard, the CP Performance Marine/Hardin Marine exhibit is the perfect first stop to pump you up before you move to the bigger stuff—high-performance boats and such—inside the Miami Convention Center.
Don’t miss it.—Matt Trulio
Go See CP and Hardin at Booth MBCCD7 thru the 16th of February!Isotta’s Carlotta Mounted Control Pods on display
If you haven’t already scheduled a demo ride in the new DCB Performance Marine M42R catamaran in Coconut Grove, Fla., this week, you might be out of luck. Company vice-president Tony Chiaramonte, who will run the 42-footer Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at Grove Harbour Marina by appointment only described the demo schedule as “pretty stacked up.”
Translation? If you still want to experience the latest addition to the Phoenix-based high-performance custom catamaran line, you need to jump on it now via the Mercury Racing demo schedule link. You’ll definitely thank me if you secure time for a ride in the new cat.
How do I know? First, I spent almost a full year covering the build of the first model. Thanks in large part to Johnny Bauer, DCB’s vice-president of manufacturing, speedonthewater.com chronicled the build through every major stage of its development.
With the new DCB M42R catamaran coming to Grove Harbour this week for by-appointment demo rides, East is about meet West in a spectacular way.
Second, I spent a whole 10 minutes in the boat on Lake Havasu in Arizona with Chiaramonte in early December. The sweeping turn we performed at 110 mph is something I won’t forget—but hope to do again.
High-speed maneuvers performed by professional test drivers are nothing new to me, of course, but doing them in a new cat I followed and reported on through its entire development at a granular level? Yeah, that was new to me. The experience ride felt like a reward.
Just as it will when I join Chiaramonte and our mutual friends Greg Harris and Yvonne Aleman, who live in South Florida and own a DCB M37R, for the Florida Powerboat Club Miami Boat Show Poker Run next Thursday.
You might not snag a demo in the 42-footer. But, trust me, it’s worth a try.
The power-couple behind the current momentum of Fort Myers Offshore, organizers Tim and Cyndee Hill have an ongoing, success-driven problem. Regardless of the Southwest Florida waterfront venue they choose for the nonprofit scholarship fundraising club’s lunch runs, they have more registered boats than places to put them.
Demand outstripping supply is an uptown problem, of course, and the Hills are grateful to have it. Fort Myers Offshore members are well-aware of dock-space squeeze, so they work as a team to make sure every boat gets safely crammed into whatever space is available. No group is more efficient at creating massive side-tie raft-ups.
But until the final boat is secured at a given lunch, Tim Hill can’t relax. On the contrary, he’s twitchy, albeit charming and gracious.
“Our members do such a great job of making it all work,” said Hill. “After everyone was tied up at the last event, the dockmaster said he’d seen never such a skilled and organized group.”
Still, relief is anything but imminent for the club. During the 2023/2024 Fort Myers Offshore season, almost every event had a record-setting turnout. The current 2024/2025 schedule of events picked up right where the last one left off.
With its 2024 Winter Fun, the club saw its largest-turnout to date with 90-plus go fasts crammed into the tiny confines of the Riviera Bar and Grill in Boca Grande. Said a simple awestruck Bob Barnhart, the founder of Fort Myers Offshore, “When I was running the club, the most we had at any event was 30 boats.”
No group puts limited dock space to better use than Fort Myers Offshore. Photo by Pete Boden/Shoot 2 Thrill Pix.
Compounding the dockage challenge is that high-performance center consoles and catamarans are getting bigger. Where once a 50-footer was a rarity that turned heads, the same heads now see one every time they turn. New marinas with bountiful dockage, on the other hand, are in short supply. Plus, late 2024’s hurricanes Helene and Milton finished off some of the existing dock space Hurricane Ian didn’t erase a few years ago.
Right now, 62 boats are registered for this Saturday’s lunch run to the Naples Hyatt House. Last year’s Naples run saw an event-record-setting 55 boats. Any notions—or hopes—that the penultimate day of the Miami International Boat Show, which opens tomorrow, might make for a smaller turnout are long gone.
“We’ll make it work,” Hill said, as much to himself as this reporter. “We always do.”—Matt Trulio
There was nothing quiet about this week, which leads up to the 2025 Miami International Boat Show. The annual South Beach event opens Wednesday, February 14, and if it delivers a fraction of the news that came out of the past seven days it will be a big-time success. Plus, the exhibit leads right into the Florida Powerboat Club/Speed On The Water Miami Boat Show Bash, the Miami Boat Show Poker, the Deep Impact Winter Run and Keys Island Runners Islamorada Fun Run.
Buckle up.
Deep Impact is making an exclusive owners run to Bimini this month.
The founders of Nor-Tech, Trond Schou and Nils Johnsen have always thought big.
Nor-Tech’s 35th anniversary stories series continues with the Lady Lisa, an 80-footer that blew away the poker-run world. Photos by Pete Boden/Shoot 2 Thrill Pix.
With this year’s later dates designed to help minimize debris in the water, the Lake Cumberland Thunder Run organizers are expecting a stronger-than-usual turnout.
All business on the racecourse and a portrait in humility off it, Joey Imprescia was a throttleman’s throttleman. Photos courtesy of the Imprescia family.
For the purposes of efficiently finding useful information on pretty much any subject, social media is a train wreck. Yet not everything—just most things—it has spawned is crap. OK, well at least one thing that come out of social media, Instagram to put a fine put on it, is excellent.
Born and raised in Key West, Fla., Daniel Garcia, III, created an Instagram group of that name a few years back. Now that group has more than 30,000 members and an annual schedule of casual, “run-what-you-brung” events.
Garcia runs an immaculate 24-foot Progression V-bottom.
The group grew out of a simple, basic premise: No matter what you boat own, the most important thing is being on the water.
Garcia loves performance-boating almost as much as he loves his hometown—and that’s saying a lot. He doesn’t care what kind of boat anyone owns. He never has. He just enjoys being boating with his friends. Long ago, he noticed that boat-owners throughout the Keys were too intimidating to run their less-than-marquee rides in “major” runs and such. He knew there was a demand for something more less structured and more inclusive.
A Key West local, Daniel Garcia, III, founded the Keys Island Runners group.
A few of these wheels aren’t even available for sale yet, but you’ll be able to touch them at the Miami Boat Show from February 12th-16th, 2025.
From left to right, Isotta Mesola, Onda, Orione, Nexa, and RIV-7, and lastly the latest from Max Papis Innovations
Of course CP Performance will have the classic Isotta Carlotta, Fanete and other wheels on display, even some with custom color wraps available nowhere else.
The Isotta Carlotta and Fanete wheels now have available custom brackets to mount up to three bluetooth controlled trim switches between the spokes. This new bluetooth design eliminates unsightly wires and will allow tab and drive trim functions right at your fingertips. Brackets are also available to fit 6-bolt Momo pattern wheels as well, such as the Max Papis Corsa wheel.
Custom bracket on an Isotta Fanete wheel with Bluetooth Trim Switch. Also shown is new carbon fiber center caps that CP Performance says will be available for sale soon.
If you need more control you can add the new Isotta Control Pods that are capable of controlling any NMEA2000 function. These pods offer an amazing array of control flexibility at your fingertips. These however will have to be directly wired and won’t function over bluetooth.
These control pods have customizable switches to control any NMEA2000 function.
It’s worth a trip to come see these products on display at the CP Performance / Hardin Marine display trailer at the Miami Boat Show. CP Performance will be at booth MBCCD7A just outside the main entrance. Otherwise check out their website or give them a call for more information.
Set for June 27-29 this year, the Lake Cumberland Thunder Run in Kentucky opened registration yesterday. For the past few years, the event has been happened a couple of weekends earlier, and the typical spring rains in the area have flushed most everything on the forest floor—logs, branches, dead opossums and other unpleasant things that will do your propellers, drives and hull no favors—into the water.
As a result, the 17-year-old event has seen participation steadily decline.
So why didn’t Thunder Run organizers Justin Lucas and Dan Weiss “just change the dates” per the unsolicited advice of so many, to put it kindly, numbskulls for the past few years?
For the Lake Cumberland Poker Run, this year’s date changes were a small miracle that took tremendous effort. Photo by Pete Boden/Shoot 2 Thrill Pix.
Here’s a fun idea: Ask Lucas and Weiss that question. Then step back and watch their heads explode.
Let’s start with what should be obvious. Most lakes are public spaces, meaning—pesky as it is—they have to be shared. Producing events on those spaces require permits, for without them there is no insurance and without insurance there are no events. Permits, hence the plural usage, means more than one, which in turns means working with more than one permit-granting agency.
Forget that nothing about the event-permitting process is fun. Remember than it doesn’t happen overnight.
And of course, the new dates you want actually have to be available. If another event is already permitted for the same dates, you’re immediately out of luck.
That Lucas and Weiss were able to pull off a date change on a waterway as busy during the season as Lake Cumberland is a small miracle that took years. So when you see them this year at the Thunder Run, the best thing you can do is tip your hat and thank them.
The last thing you want to do? Ask what took so long.—Matt Trulio
The founder of River Daves Place, thego-to website for high-performance boating fans who call Lake Havasu home-water, Dave Johnson is a well-known figure in the Lake Havasu City, Ariz., community. Equally well-known in Missouri performance-boating circles, Alvin Heathman, his partner in producing Super Cat Fest West, lives at the Lake of the Ozarks and founded the original Super Cat Fest event at the waterway.
Both are strong-willed, passionate dudes who like to run their own shows and raise money for children’s charities while they’re at it. And yet for the past two years, they have successfully teamed up to produce Super Cat Fest West on Lake Havasu. The event, which is hosted out of Havasu Riviera Marina and set for April 10-13, has grown every year since Johnson and Heathman joined forces.
Super Cat Fest West is entering its third year under the direction of Arizona’s Dave Johnson and Alvin Heathman of Missouri. Photo by Tom Leigh/Tommy Gun Images.
What’s more, it has grown steadily in the shadow of the famed Desert Storm Poker Run, scheduled for April 23-26. Desert Storm celebrates its 26th anniversary this year. And though its original and current owners didn’t invent the idea of a street party exhibit before their main event, the Desert Storm version set the standard by which all other such celebrations and product showcases are measured.
The mile-long display of exotic boats and cars in downtown Lake Havasu City is impressive, the crowd that fills the street once the sun starts setting even more. For performance-boat fans, it surpasses any formal boat show.
With its charitable fundraising efforts, Super Cat Fest West has set quite a bar of its own. In 2024, the event raised $300,000 for local children’s charities. This year, thanks to a generous benefactor who will match up to $200,000 raised by the organizers, the event has the potential to bring in $400,000—and maybe more.
The Thursday Desert Storm Street Party attract thousands of visitors every year. Photo by Jeff Helmkamp/Helmkamp Photos.
A full week separates the two events. So unless you can carve out three weeks away from your business—meaning you’re probably not needed—you’ll have to choose between them this year.
Either way, you’re in for an experience. Registration for both events is open.—Matt Trulio
If you’re still experiencing withdrawals from powerboat winterizing—symptoms include deep depression and a burning desire to buy boat parts you don’t need—you’re not alone. Go-fast powerboat fans around the country—with one notable, regional group-exception—feel your pain.
The exception, of course, is those in Florida.
Go-fast boating is just starting to get good here. OK, that’s not accurate. It’s good for the past couple of months, though the unseasonably cool temperatures of December and January, sent native Floridians scurrying for the nearest REI or Helly-Hansen location.
Starting with the February 12-16 Miami International Boat Show, this month is stacked with worthwhile happenings. Florida Powerboat Club members in good standing have two events to keep in mind—the February 14, Florida Powerboat Club/Speed On The Water Miami Boat Show Bash at the Sagamore Hotel and the following weekend’s Miami Boat Show Poker Run to Hawks Cay Resort on Duck Key.
How stacked with cool events is Florida in February? In just one week you can party like a rock-star with your boat-loving friends in Miami, hang around the pool at the Naples Hyatt House and have lunch at Gilbert’s Resort and Tiki Bar (above) on your way to Hawks Cay. Resorts a part of the Florida Powerboat Club Miami Boat Show Poker Run. Photo by Jeff Helmkamp copyright Helmkamp Photos.
For go-fast-boat types across the state who don’t feel like traveling east for any of that, Fort Myers Offshore’s Naples Fun Run is set for February 15.
But this puts folks who want to hit the Miami Boat Show Bash and be in front of the Sanibel Island Bridge by 11 a.m. for the Saturday Fort Myers Offshore lunch run in a bind. Because almost 170 miles of road separate the two locations.
The solution? Mine, at least?
Show up on time, Irish-fade from the celebration early and head across the state at sunrise. Yeah, I’m one of the part hosts, but people who know me expect that anyway. It’s a little work to do both, but the Miami bash and the Fort Myers Offshore lunch run will be worth your time.
Want to make it a February event-trifecta? Toss in the Florida Powerboat Club Miami Boat Show Poker Run the following weekend.
All eyes will turn toward South Florida next month and thanks to the “Countdown To The 2025 Miami International Boat Show” article series, you already know what’s coming to the annual exhibit. But there are sure to be a few big stories from the show itself, just as there were this in this week’s new. Canada’s Big East Marine became an MTI dealer, a new team joined the Super Cat class, Peter and Michael Hledin are working on their first Skater catamaran, Big Thunder Marine will produce its Lake of the Ozarks Boat Show and much more.
Between its Speed and Luxury Showroom and Family Boating Center locations, the multi-brand dealership will have than 100 boats on display during the two-day event.
A new Concept Boats 4400 Open center console powered by four Mercury Racing 500R engines will anchor the company’s booth at the upcoming Miami International Boat Show.