Now, from these words of our sponsors, back to the race.

Ron, can you hear me?

“Yes, folks. At 1pm on the dot, the smoke flare is lit and in the drizzle we count down the three minutes to the start. "

"As expected, the P2 boat Firewater, a 41 Apache driven by Bob Oliver and throttled by Herb Stottler, with 1000hp Stottler blower motors, takes to the early lead …”

“ … with the P1 boat Brioschi throttled by Jay Muller and driven by SuperCat world Champion Billy Mauff running about 100 yards back. The other P1 boat Relentless, driven and throttled by the team of Ernie Tretola Sr and Jr, is third overall after the first lap. Lightning Jacks, a 36 Skater pulled an all nighter to swap both motors but failed to make the start.”

"This is Ron Polli, reporting live from the toughest race in the East.

In P3 class, Wazzup talked a lot of trash prior to the race and needed to prove their point to the other P3 teams:

Bad Boy driven by Tony Pacheco and throttled by Kurt Berger, Gecko Tequila, driven by Dave Edelstein and throttled by Val Fiorillo ..."

"... and Xtremely Dangerous, throttled by Vinny Lazzara and driven by Marty "The Pen" Coyle.

Marty's pen must have run out of ink because the boyz never made it off the trailer.

But it looked really good sitting there. Maybe next time, fellas."

"P4 has the best racing of the day as the big 38 Scarab The Delicate Sound of Thunder, driven and throttled by Augie Pensa "The Godfather of OPA" and Kevin Hans as navigator ... "

"... takes on the Coen's in SuperBoat, Mad Dog and Hollywood in Typhoon..."

… and the absolutely insane team of Wild Card.

Rounding out the field in P5 we have a new team called Sonic Boom in a 28' Sonic, Dr Evil and Mini Me in Simply Awesome, and Team Panther in a 30' Scarab Panther.

Many more boats had intended on making this race but the lousy weather forecast kept them from making the trip from several hundred miles away.

That's OK because these dozen or so boats put on a great show of aerial acrobatics for the fans that came out and braved the elements."

looked like a good show thanks for the great pics.

"This is Ron Polli, reporting live from the winner's circle."

"Firewater never missed a beat on their way to the overall win. They had it trimmed way under and landed nose first most of the time but this old war horse was dialed in and the boyz know how to run it in big water.

Brioschi made an attempt to close the gap a few times but Jay and Billy could never come close to Firewater. However they held on to take Relentless to the end. Relentless spent way too much time in the air and not enough in the water to keep up with Brioschi. It was nice to see the P2 class V do it's thing in rough water and beat on the P1 cats that are 20 miles per hours faster in calm water. It was Firewater's day to rule the seas. It must have been a horrible day to be a cat.

After the race, Billy Mauff was heard saying that he had fun but asked Jay Muller to not to call him to race in Point Pleasant again in these types of conditions unless Jay brought out his big 40' motion cat. The little cats really take a beating. "

"This is Ron Polli again, back at the winners circle.

The P3 class had a battle of the mishaps. These are all close friends racing against each other, which of course means that the friendship ends once the green flag flies. Apparently Wazzup ran it so hard down the front straightaway that his navigator's back went out and they needed to stop racing. Now, image the scenario. You've been waiting for this day, all winter long. The boat has been gone through over and over to make sure it will endure 40 miles of sheer torture without failure and now, your day is over. After just a half lap of racing and the engines are still running fine. Well if your anything like the father and son team of Eddie and Anthony Smith, you drive your race boat close to a medical patrol boat and throw your navigator out of the boat so you can go back to racing. Well, they didn't actually throw Kevin into the water, they waited for the boat to come over and helped Kevin out of the boat but that put them out of the hunt for good. Gecko and Bad Boys had a side-by-side race going until the Bad Boy had an engine related failure that stopped their race. Gecko was in their own element and the 36 Cig Gladiator ran like a champ through the big waves. It flew like a piano and near the end of the race landed the wrong way, which snapped a gimble ring. Smitty was the last one standing and still running around in circles when the rain really started to come down, destroying visibility to the point were race control had no choice but red flag the race with 2 of 14 laps to go. Had the race gone to the end, Wazzup would have won, but since Gecko was in the lead at the time of the red flag, they were awarded the win."