I was just leaving a remark on the prop spinning in or out thread and mentioned the time Phil Lipship tried to save me from an awful storm coming back from the Bahamas. I hit waves over 10 feet and was going thru them instead of over. The Coastguard sent out a helicopter with the ladder telling me to abandon ship. Actually if I could have slowed the boat down. Probably doing about 20 just enough to stay on plane and not get swamped I may have climbed up for my 2 passengers sake but felt it better to try and make it. Little did I know my black Merc exhaust risers had twisted from the constant shock and was dumping water in the boat. I hadn’t had a chance to notice. Anyway I did make it in to Governors Cut where two coast guard cutters where waiting. It was so bad I don’t think they wanted to go out. lol. To play it cool and a little cocky after getting thru the impossible I just waved and cruised by like it was just another day until I rounded into the inter coastal and wiped the the **** out of my pants and dropped to my knees in thanks lol. Nah it was the scariest thing I was ever in and I wouldn’t had wanted to be in any other boat under 40 feet and maybe even more than that. When Joe and Pepe saw the exhaust they couldn’t believe how they were twisted and destroyed and told me to not buy the same ugly things and get some stainless marine headers. I told them I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend that much and that’s when Pepe said one of the sayings I have used ever since I first heard it then from him. “Fake it till you make it”. Needless to say I went with the Stainless Marine. The Nunez family was really like our family. When I sent my parents down to Miami to use the boat. Joey first took them out and showed them around so they would have some idea where they were. This was really before gps. No one asked him to do that. They were just that way. I know some things have been said and maybe some are deserving I can’t say but I couldn’t have been treated better. They always freshened the boat up with whatever it needed and if I took a trip for more than a day Joey would take my trailer back to the factory and bring it back when I returned. What other boat company treated their customers like that. I still talk to Pepe and he always is glad to say hi. Even said he would come up for the Pantera rendezvous on the Chesapeake. That saying something. Anybody else have any cool Pantera stories. Let’s get this page going a bit.

Smarty has a good story when his father bought his new 24.