Christmas In January

OK, so I know the season of giving was a month ago, but there are some very important gifts, if you will, arriving in mailboxes this week. That’s right, the Speed On The 2019 Year In Review magazine has shipped from the printer in Wisconsin and I know I’m not the only one who can’t wait to get my hands on it.

The Speed On The Water 2019 Year In Review magazine printed last week and is shipping to readers across the country this week.

While I’m certain I think this every year when our annual magazine comes out, this time I really mean it—the Speed On The 2019 Year In Review magazine is the best one yet.

The fifth edition, which you can order here, is another 196-page whopper filled with tons of incredible images and details recapping the year coupled with a generous amount of advertising support from the amazing performance boat community we—my speedonthewater.com colleague and fellow OffshoreOnly.com columnist, Matt Trulio, and I—cover on a daily basis.

In my opinion, the 2019 Year In Review has the most radical lineup of New Models we’ve ever featured thanks to showstoppers such as the six-engine Cigarette Racing Team 59 Tirranna, DCB’s one-of-a-kind M44 Widebody catamaran Bananas XL, a couple of stunning new models from Fountain Powerboats, the brand-new outboard-powered MTI 390X, the incredible 46-foot Outerlimits catamaran Jet owned by Michigan’s Burton and Yvette Kirsten and many others.

A lot of hard work went into the 2019 Year In Review before it was printed in Wisconsin.

Then there are the Events—38 gatherings from around the country, make that the world since the Arendal Poker Run in Norway is included, are highlighted. That includes staples such as the Desert Storm Poker Run, the Tickfaw 200 Poker Run, the Boyne Thunder Poker Run and the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout, plus owner-specific happenings for those with Cigarettes, DCBs, Eliminators, MTIs, Outerlimits and Skaters. Several of the record-setting Florida Powerboat Club poker runs across Florida, and now Alabama, also are featured.

Then there’s the Racing, which we organized a little differently this year by spotlighting season recaps of the APBA Offshore Championship Series produced by OPA and Powerboat P1, the NGK Spark Plugs F1 Powerboat Championship and the F1 H2O World Championship, along with a couple of pages spotlighting the OPA World Championships and the Race World Offshore Key West Championships.

Thanks to the team at Quad for taking good care of the fifth annual Speed On The Water Year In Review magazine.

There also is an In Memoriam spread, which is never easy to put together, especially this year with the loss of Fabio Buzzi, Paul Fiore, Michael Pierce and more, plus an abbreviated version of our under-40 industry standouts feature called Young Guns and the People section where you’re sure to find some familiar faces. Of course the magazine could not have come together without a ton of hard work all year long. The talented photographers, primarily speedonthewater.com chief photographer Pete Boden, provided amazing images this year and our irreplaceable art director Ricky Damien came through in impressive fashion as usual. A special thanks goes to the Quad team for making the digital files come to life and getting them in all of our hands.

When Quad’s Kevin Self sent me images of the magazine being put together last week, I started working on this column with the intention of leaving out an image he supplied that showed the cover since I kind of like it to be a surprise.

I also searched to find the story I wrote five years ago when the 132-page 2015 Year In Review magazine came out. In the column, I pointed out the freshly printed whiff that I so look forward to when the book arrives. What’s funny, is that is the reason I called this column Christmas in January; because, while I know exactly what the magazine is going to look like after pouring through the layouts over and over in writing, captioning and editing mode, the anticipation of peeling open the book to see the vibrant images on paper and smell that hot-off-the-press aroma that comes from a magazine—and not just any magazine, our annual Year In Review—takes me back to that childhood night-before Christmas feeling.

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