Florida Powerboat Club Rocks Islamorada
Annual poker-run showcases the finest in high-performance boating.
February 28, 2007
With two 700-hp supercharged engines under the hatch, the Donzi 38 ZR Competition throws an impressive roostertail as it heads toward Islamorada. Note the Miami skyline in the background. (All photos courtesy Bob Christie/Typhoon Performance Marine)
The best adventures—the best times for that matter—go by too fast. You know, those amazing journeys where you get so lost in the moment that you lose track of time and, all of a sudden, you're back on an airplane, heading home.
That's where I am as I write this, some 30,000 feet above the ground and three hours from my home near San Francisco. When I woke up this morning, I was at the Holiday Isle Resort in Islamorada, which is about midway down in the Florida Keys. Between then and now, I drove an exquisite Donzi 38 ZR Competition high-performance V-bottom at 65 mph through 2- to 4-foot seas, said goodbye to friends I never see enough, had one bad cheeseburger and three good beers.
All and all, a great day. Three great days, actually, Feb. 23-26, covering the Florida Powerboat Club's Miami Boat Show Poker Run to Islamorada.
As the editor at large for Powerboat magazine—that's in addition to my editorial role at boats.com—I have covered poker runs for more than 12 years. Usually, that means a photographer and me flying in a helicopter, capturing action shots of go-fast boats, and landing at the lunch stop to chase quotes and "candid" photos. Good work for sure, but work nonetheless.
But this was the first time I had covered an entire poker run as a passenger in a boat. I left all the magazine- and website-logo shirts at home. I chilled. I mingled. I hung out. I stayed up far too late and rode out a hard morning.
The first 38 ZR Comp built in one-and-a-half years, our ride featured an almost-flat deck and five sit-down wraparound buckets.
That privilege came courtesy of Bob Christie, owner of Typhoon Performance Marine (www.typhoonperformancemarine.com), one of the event's sponsors, in Brick, N.J. A longtime friend, Christie is a Donzi dealer and he had the 38 ZR Comp built for the run. Of course, it is for sale. Quite.
So what the heck—you might reasonably ask—is a poker run? It's essentially a powerboat rally with card stops. Boats get one card per stop until they reach their final destination with five cards. During a big party at the end of the event, the best hand wins—sometimes just bragging rights, sometimes a little money, sometimes a whole lot of money. The Islamorada Poker Run's cash-and-prize purse, valued at $7,500, qualifies as "a little money," especially in a world where it can cost boat owners more than $1,000 to fill up their 200-gallon fuel tanks.
You can go through fuel mighty fast in a boat like our 38 ZR Comp, which ran 105 mph with five big guys in the cockpit and a full tank of gas. The fastest boat in the run, a 50-foot turbine-powered Nor-Tech catamaran, reportedly can top 180 mph.
Poker runs came out of the motorcycle rally world. In the early 1990s, they started gaining popularity in the performance-boating realm. The events gave owners of go-fast boats something to do together, and in the years since they have far surpassed all other go-fast boat activities, such as owner rendezvous held by individual manufacturers and offshore racing, in popularity.
The plush cockpit upholstery was color-matched to the boat's exterior.
Among the pioneering organizers of these events is Stu Jones, who flew the snowy environs of Canada for south Florida more than two decades ago. Jones founded the Florida Powerboat Club (www.flpowerboat.com) more as a hobby than anything else, but it has become a major enterprise with runs—with up to 170 registered performance-boats—almost every other weekend for most of the year.
"We've been coming to Islamorada for 14 years now," Jones told the crowd at this year's event. "And it's always been one of our greatest runs."
It might also be the outfit's last—at least to Islamorada. The property, which includes The Holiday Isle Resort hotel and the infamous/notorious/uproarious "Tiki Bar" is slated for development at the end of the year. It will become an upscale condominium resort. That's the plan anyway.
"Don't worry," Jones told the crowd. "We will find another venue, and the tradition, at least, will continue."
The impending demise the run of didn't seem to put a damper on the crowd, which came down from Miami in a small group on Thursday and a larger group on Friday. By Friday night, there were about 80 boats in slips or rafted off to one another, and the party at the Tiki Bar raged. It rolled right into Saturday morning, breaking up—at least from the Tiki Bar—at 2:30 a.m.
Come Saturday morning, the flat conditions everyone had enjoyed on the way down had turned to evil 6- to 8-foot seas. On a calmer day, participants might have made lunch runs to nearby Hawks Cay or even all the way down to Key West, but the rough water kept many of the boats at the docks.
Sleek lines and a low-profile are the hallmarks of the 38 ZR Comp.
Or that could have just been a byproduct of Friday's late night/early morning festivities. Whatever the case, mid- to late-afternoon runs when the water calmed were best the call on Saturday. That evening after the awards ceremony, the party cranked up again, though to a kinder, gentler level.
Among the coolest aspects of the event was that it enabled participants to hang out with the boat builders who sponsor it. So there at one corner of the Tiki Bar was Mike Fiore with his Outerlimits customers and crew. About 20 feet from Fiore was Skip Braver, the owner of Cigarette, chatting with some new friends, who was next to Trond Schou of Nor-Tech, who was chatting with some old friends.
"I think all of our customers had a really good time," said Braver. "That's what it's all about."
"I sponsor this event for a lot of reasons, but really it's about seeing everyone, running down to the Keys and enjoying every minute of it," said Christie of Typhoon Performance Marine. "When you're down here, life is pretty good."
Sitting in this plane as I write, I couldn't agree more. Life is pretty good, even when it goes by—like the Florida Keys from a powerboat running 105 mph— too fast.
Editor's Note: Matt Trulio is the Powerboat editor for boats.com.
