By Matt Trulio

For any number of reasons, the Lake Rescue Shootout, which happens in August on Missouri's Lake of the Ozarks, has become the nation's premier high-performance boating event. It's not even debatable. The annual measured-mile speedfest, which will celebrate its 20-year anniversary in 2008, attracts the fastest catamarans and V-bottoms in existence.

On the Saturday during last year's Shootout, a conservatively estimated 30,000 people watched the event from the spectator fleet and the nearby Shooters 21 host venue. And that's just the way Jeff Dorhauer, chief organizer of the two-day Shootout for the last 11 years, likes it. For the 44-year-old Osage Beach Fire Department fire chief, the Shootout and everything that goes with it—including leading 200 volunteers—has become a labor of love. We caught up with him over the phone and he told us that the Shootout recently signed a deal for it to air on the SPEED Channel.

We heard you were retiring as chief organizer after this year's Shootout.

(Laughs) I was thinking about it. But next year is the 20th anniversary, so I think I'll stick around for that. After that, I'll probably be done.

The Shootout raises money for your department as well as three other departments in the area. How did you get involved with it?

I started as a rescue diver. Then I did the patrol boat one year, then T-shirt sales another year, then boat inspections, which was scary, another year. When the event organizer stepped down about 11 years ago, I stepped in.

A lot of work must go into organizing an event of this scale.

Actually, in mid-July I start working on next year's Shootout. There's a whole group of us involved, but it takes me about 14 months. Some weeks, I work on it for eight to 10 hours. Then there are weeks like last week when I do nothing else in my spare time but work on the Shootout. Usually, it works out to about 40 hours a month until July and August. Then it really picks up.

How much money does the Shootout raise for the fire departments in the area?

Last year we grossed $130,000, out of which about $87,000 was profit. Of that, our department received $35,000. That's a very small amount for the department when you consider that our annual operating budget is $2.1 million, but we keep those funds totally for water rescue and $35,000 can buy a lot of water-rescue equipment.

But what's most important about the Shootout is what it brings to our community. It (the Shootout) is considered a fourth holiday weekend down here, so the people who pay our salaries, the taxpayers, benefit from it. It's our way of giving something back to them.

What do you enjoy most about being involved with this event?

Oh, that's easy, it's the people I've met. I've been involved for 18 years now, and I've met some unbelievable people. Some of them are like family to me, people like Brett Becker (former Powerboat editor), Tom Newby (Powerboat photographer) and you. It's a long weekend, but we have a great time. It's people like Dave Callan, John Cosker and David Scott. They are as down-to-earth as anyone you'll ever meet.

There must be some difficult aspects.

Probably, what I find most personally challenging is trying to make the event better each year without changing what it truly is. After 11 or 12 years of coming up with ideas, I have to believe that someone younger and fresher could bring more to the party.

There are like 110 racers and 30,000 fans on the water, and one of my biggest downfalls is that I feel that it's my personal responsibility to make sure they all have a good time.

Describe your best moment during the Shootout.

I think it was in year three or four that Howard Arneson brought his boat here. At the time, I was a volunteer firefighter. He was keeping his boat at the hotel where I worked, and he asked me if I wanted to go for a ride with him. So he strapped me in next to him at 7 or 8 a.m., one morning, and there we were going 178 mph down the lake.

The first year Miss Budweiser ran, seeing the speeds it could produce, that was another great moment. The first year Callan and Cosker came—that was great, too. Scott and Anheuser-Busch have been great for this event, and it was great for Scott to have some competition.

And your worst moment?

Three years ago when a small catamaran flipped. There was also a heart attack happening on the premises when that was going on. Seeing that catamaran go over, I thought there was no way the guy would walk away from it, much less show up at the race the next day.

If there was anything you could change about the Shootout, what would it be?

I think I would go back to the original days before the fire departments received the money from it. We used to donate the money to local charities. I'd like to take the money and give it to a local charity organization where it would have more of an impact.

Where do you think the Shootout will be in another 20 years?

Oh, I don't know. We've seen some drastic changes in the past 10 years. I don't want to say no more changes could happen, it's just getting harder to make these changes and keep the Shootout what it was intended to be—a "run-what-you-brung" event. I see it possibly going to two weekends. One for the bigger offshore boats, the ones running the amazing speeds, and one for the simple guys who brought boats and want to see how fast they'll go.

You run the strongest performance-boating event in the nation, yet you're not a performance-boat nut.

I don't even own a boat (laughs). The only boat I go out in anymore is the fire boat on calls. In fact, until a couple of years ago I never even watched the race. I still don't watch 80 percent of it. There's too much going on.

Do you like to go fast?

I love going fast—I own a Corvette. That's why the ride with Arneson was so memorable. I'd never been that speed. It was more like flying than boating.