History is made as the Salton Sea Speedweek brings boat racing back to the legendary waterway that is considered to be the fastest on Earth.

Originally published in February 2009 issue

By Jason Johnson • Photos by Robert Brown

As the sun set on the Salton Sea, ending a warm, early December day on Southern California’s massive, middle-of-the-desert lake, you couldn’t help but feel the significance of what was happening.

Powerboat racing had returned to the notable landmark for the first time in decades, breathing some life into the Salton Sea State Recreation Area’s North Shore, a tiny town on the northeast portion of the sea.

And with speed records falling as anticipated, everyone who attended the 2008 Salton Sea Speedweek presented by Centurion Boats was part of history.

“My Dad and Bob Patterson and all these guys who ran back in the ’50s and ’60s used to race out here, so I figured why not bring the Cracker Box out and see what we can do,” said Dwight Moody Jr., who set a APBA/UIM Kilo Run record in the Mr. Magoo P-66 boat.

Moody, who ran with rider Bob Overcash at his side, broke a 20-plus-year-old record on his final run of the day. Heading north to south and then south to north through the timing traps that were 1 kilometer (5/8 of a mile) apart, Moody averaged 107.294 mph on the course.

Along with a handful of Cracker Box race boats, a variety of other boats registered for the three-day event in hopes of setting a record in their own class on this traditionally fast waterway.

Because of the lake’s low elevation—227 feet below sea level—and its high salinity content, many regard the Salton Sea as the fastest body of water on Earth; others are not so sure. Either way, the lake has a special spot in boat-racing history as records have been falling on it since 1929. And after the results from the Salton Sea Speedweek, it’s hard to argue against it.

More than 10 records were set along the APBA/UIM-certified course, which was monitored by traditional Kiekhaefer scanners and a new wireless setup provided by APBA/UIM official Fred Hauenstein, the former director of Mercury Racing.

The first two days were dedicated to the APBA/UIM Kilo Runs, while part of the second day and the entire third day were devoted to the offshore boats under Pacific Offshore Powerboat Racing Association (POPRA) certification.

In a battle right from the start, the Super Stock class pitted Dave Bryant against Tony Scarlata. By the end of the first day, Bryant had broken Scarlata’s record of 122.906 mph with a 123.522-mph average in the boat owned by Dave Rankin.

“We battle with those guys, the No. 80 boat, in everything—you name it, we battle,” said Scarlata, who drove the Loud ’N Proud boat owned by Jeff Brocheuser to a top speed of 123.044 mph.

Bryant also attempted record runs in the K Racing Runabout class, driving the K-69 boat owned by Gordon Jennings.

“Gordy (Jennings) owned the K-boat record up until two years ago, so he wanted that back,” Bryant said. “Actually, we thought we had a better chance at a record in the K-boat, but we lost our good prop when we broke the prop shaft during testing.”

Arguably the highlight of the weekend was the show put on by Team AMSOIL, the 36-foot Skater driven by Paul Whittier and throttled by Bob Teague. The team made quite a few passes in front of Mecca Beach, which was a half-mile south of the race pits, and each one was better than the last.

On its first run along the certified course, Team AMSOIL demolished the Super Cat Light record set by Bob Bull in his MTI in 2004 by more than 4 mph. But Teague and Whittier weren’t done. They upped the record two more times, ending with an average top speed of 131.981 mph on the final day.

Although the Super Cat Light record is recognized by POPRA, it won’t be included in the APBA record books because the event was not sanctioned by APBA Offshore, which is owned by Super Boat International (SBI) President John Carbonell.

Ross Wallach of RPM Racing Enterprises, which produced the event, could not come to an agreement with Carbonell.

“I decided to co-mingle the event with POPRA to allow the offshore boats the chance to set records,” he said.

Coming off one of the finest years of his racing career—the team won the Miss GEICO Triple Crown, the Offshore Super Series national championship and the SBI world championship in Key West, Fla.—Teague didn’t care how the Kilo Run record was recognized, he called it “icing on the cake.”

“Being able to top the year off with a kilo record is a nice deal for AMSOIL and for Mercury Racing,” said Teague, who returned to the Salton Sea for the first time since he was a part of Bob Nordskog’s diesel speed record attempts in the early 1980s. “It’s hard to believe you have a 36-foot boat with a pair of stock, sealed HP525EFIs running that fast. That’s definitely a tribute to our team, first off, and second to Douglas Marine. They build a fine boat. Not only is this a fast and great-handling race boat, but it’s safe.”

Running the In the Red Racing Skater, the old Peppers race boat, was George Cortez and Troy Juve. The Southern California teammates set a POPRA Performance 1 class record with a 120.414-mph average speed, and they were just as excited to be a part of the event.

“Any opportunity we have to get in the seat of the boat, we take advantage of it,” said Cortez, who drives the 36-footer. “We saw this as an opportunity to participate and be in attendance, and to potentially break a record and be part of history.”

Also establishing POPRA records were a couple of manufacturers—Team Eliminator and Team HTM2. Cale Carder and Thaddeus Finley drove a 24-foot HTM2 catamaran to 109.950 mph in the single-engine catamaran sportsman class, while Eliminator’s Tony Charamonte averaged 143.829 mph—the top speed at the event—in a 28 Daytona Speedster with twin Mercury Racing HP700SCi engines.

The Speedweek also gave Justin Jones and Dave Trauffer a chance to run their 39-foot Extreme, which was formerly the Ettore race boat. Newcomers to racing, Jones and Trauffer decided at the last minute to bring their restored boat to the Salton Sea.

“There’s some history to this boat, and now we own it and we’re putting it back on the water,” said Jones, adding that they plan to campaign the boat on the 2009 POPRA circuit. “We knew we had a boat that could compete in this, so we decided to give it a try. We didn’t know what equipment we needed, but there were a lot of helpful people out here and we got to compete because of their assistance.”

Between first-timers and old-timers, the fact that racing returned to the Salton Sea was good news for the boating community, as well as the lake. Jeff Hays, executive director of the Desert Alliance for Community Empowerment, was extremely excited to see the event come to fruition.

“There’s been nothing on the sea for so long,” Hays said. “This, combined with the restoration of the yacht club, will really help bring some life back to the sea that everyone assumed was forgotten. It is things like this that will start leading to ideas on how we can deal with the Salton Sea.”

Wallach agreed.

“This is a very prestigious body of water that used to hold more records than anywhere else in the country, if not the world,” Wallach said. “This has a lot of potential for the racing world and to revitalize the name of the body of water itself.”

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