Mercury Racing revises the NXT1 drive skeg for single-engine applications.

By Matt Trulio

More years ago than I care to count, I took my first ride in a twin-engine performance boat with Bob Teague, this magazine's lead test driver. I was as green as a head of lettuce when it came to the performance of go-fast boats, and I made the mistake of framing a question to Teague as a statement.

Eliminator Boats relocates to new state-of-the-art facility.

By Jason Johnson

Nearly 40 years after calling an empty gas station home in Huntington Park, Calif., a new era of Eliminator Boats is beginning in Perris, Calif. The largest performance boatbuilder on the West Coast is relocating to an impressive 100,000-square-foot facility built by the company as part of a larger complex with more than 400 indoor boat and recreational vehicle storage units and a handful of commercial buildings.

Offshore racers know quite a bit about performance boats. Lucky for you, a few of them are available to teach you how to hone your skills.

By Ben Gallagher

Think back to the first time you stepped on a performance boat and prepared to drive. There were gauges and controls to worry about, let alone an array of emotions, from apprehension to excitement, to overcome.

Offshore racers know quite a bit about performance boats. Lucky for you, a few of them are available to teach you how to hone your skills.

By Ben Gallagher

Think back to the first time you stepped on a performance boat and prepared to drive. There were gauges and controls to worry about, let alone an array of emotions, from apprehension to excitement, to overcome.

A cradle for your baby, trailer bunks need periodic service.

By Brett Becker

You probably don't give trailer bunks much thought, right? But if you think about it, you'll find that trailer bunks are in contact with your boat more often than you are. And that means they're important enough to warrant your attention and periodic maintenance.

Offshore racers, poker runners and thousands of performance-boat enthusiasts transformed Arizona's Lake Havasu into powerboat heaven.

By Jason Johnson

Watch out Key West. A lake in the middle of the desert is threatening to become the "performance-boat capital of the world." How can that be? Ask anyone who made the trip to Lake Havasu in Arizona for the Desert Storm Poker Run and its surrounding festivities and you'll understand how.

To gauge or not to gauge, that is the question. The answer depends on who you are—and maybe even which generation you're from.

By Matt Trulio

If you're of a certain age—what the heck, let's make it my age (47)—you grew up with gauges. You learned to glance at a speedometer and, without actually "reading it," know you were going 80 mph. (And back in the day, that used to be really fast in a powerboat.) You could look at a tachometer and see engine speed without actually "seeing" the number. You could look at an oil-pressure gauge showing zero pressure and realize, as your engine came apart, that you should have looked at it more often.

The only thing more amazing than the sheer amount of amenities Formula Boats manages to pack into its Sun Sport models is that none of the Sun Sport editions feel particularly "packed." On the contrary, every luxurious offering in the Sun Sport line feels spacious and open. Sure, they boast lots of "stuff," but none of it gets in the way.

That holds true for the latest—and what could well be the greatest—model in the lineup, the 350 Sun Sport. The 35-footer is undeniably plush and filled with features, but from an interior standpoint it feels roomy and, frankly, a whole lot bigger than 35 feet.

Top speed definitely gets top billing in the performance-boat world. Magazines, manufacturers and consumers focus—if not occasionally fixate—on it. But top speed is merely an aspect of performance, and it is far from the most important one. Without handling and stability, a "fast" boat is worthless.

No builder pumps up speed in its marketing campaign more than Fountain Powerboats, and for good reason. Fountain does build efficient stepped V-bottoms that make excellent use of whatever power package happens to be under the hatch. But what tends to get lost, or at least obscured, is how well Fountain offerings handle and how connected they feel when they're running fast.

A study in feature refinement, the elegant Wakesetter 23 LSV from Malibu Boats simply blew us away this year. From build quality to amenities, no tow boat we tested better exemplified the best of the breed. In an ultracompetitive market that includes some of the best boatbuilders in any genre, that's quite an accomplishment.

On the high-end techie side of things, there was Malibu's new-for-2008 MUX digital electronic system that could—among other things—recall and reset the Wedge Hydrofoil and Malibu Launch System water ballast setup for the preferences of multiple riders. It could even recall and play their favorite radio stations, with the tunes pumping through speakers integrated in the boat's forward-swept, carbon-fiber Illusion XS tower.

Things were mighty close in this year’s deck-boat category, but—truth be told—they always are. The West Coast custom market takes its deck boats seriously, and for good reason. Nothing, at least out West, sells better. There’s market share at stake.

Close as it was when all the scores were tallied, the 28 Sport Deck from Howard Custom Boats was the clear winner. This 100-plus-mph beauty handled precisely, was constructed artfully and offered a bounty of sweet features such as a rearview video system and a 5,000-watt stereo.

By all accounts—even those of its competitors—Cigarette Racing does a brisk business in Europe. At swank marinas from Monaco to Capri, you'll find brand new as well as vintage Cigarette offerings. And that's a good thing, given the current sluggish sales of performance boats in the United States.

But here's the rub: Cigarette performance boats are a distinctly American product with American styling and functionality. None of Cigarette's products, with the possible exception of the 50 Marauder, have been designed with European buyers in mind. At least until now.

Even in a down economic year, the caliber of the high-performance boats in the 2008 Performance Trials was way up.

Regardless of where you point the finger, the economy isn’t exactly roaring these days. Just ask a few go-fast boatbuilders and dealers. Sales are fewer and farther between, and making them is as tough as it’s ever been.

Nothing dresses up a boat's dash like sporty new gauges and controls. Here's a step-by-step look at a red-hot helm installation.

The functional elements of a go-fast boat's helm are pretty simple. A steering wheel-connected to other hardware of course-is for maneuvering. A throttle gives a driver control of speed, and a shifter channels that control to forward, reverse or neutral. The instruments provide information.

A crewless offshore race boat ended up 4,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of England, yet no one knew how it got there. By Ben Gallagher

Every year, thousands of ships cross the Atlantic Ocean, but it's rare to hear of a performance boat completing the voyage. In 1986, a powerboat did make the journey—just not with anyone on board.

Liquid Glass blends performance and pleasure to create an elite offshore catamaran. By Jason Johnson

You may not be familiar with the name Liquid Glass quite yet, but you've probably heard of designer Randy Schultz, who co-founded the company with Dave Kratz and his son, Ryan.

Weighing a svelte 523 pounds, Raylar's aluminum LSM 550 engine produces an astounding 550 horsepower.

By Matt Trulio

Weight and horsepower aren't exactly fast friends. In fact, you could say they're mortal enemies. So the idea of a lighter engine that produces the same—or better—power than its heavier counterparts always has been appealing. The trick, of course, is executing that idea.

The Miss GEICO team thought outside the box when it came to building it unique rescue boat.

By Matt Trulio - Photos by Robert Brown

Scott Begovich and Marc Granet, the throttleman and driver for the turbine-powered Miss GEICO offshore racing catamaran, dearly hope their rescue boat never has to do its job. But in addition to being racers, they are realists. They know that things can go bad—as in really bad—instantly in a cat that can top 180 mph in racing conditions.

In one week, John Tomlinson logs more seat time in offshore race boats and high-end go-pleasure boats than most people will spend in a lifetime.

by Matt Trulio

Yet when it comes to his personal boat, the world-championship-collecting throttleman and owner of TNT Custom Marine in North Miami owns an R-8 Airship from Adaptive Composites of Vermilion, Ohio.

Out of the propeller-tuning business, Throttle-Up is making its own wheels—and gaining some traction.

by Matt Trulio

Even within your own industry, reinventing yourself isn't easy. Just look at Throttle-Up Propellers. You, as a connected performance-boat lover, probably know the St. Petersburg, Fla., company as a respected high-performance propeller-tuning outfit. But did you know that Throttle-Up has been making its own props for two years and is—for all intents and purposes—out of the wheel-tuning game?