A complicated situation. https://www.speedonthewater.com/xins...-race-boycott/

Don't see how disrupting will help the sport??

Considering there is no money to be made from offshore racing its amazing to me how these things happen every couple years.

Power struggle for a hole in the ground to throw money at.

I have been away from offshore racing for a while now but I do keep up with it and things never change with the egos general lack of understanding by all parties. everyone thinks that the others are making all the money and they are entitled to a part of what usually does not really exist. let me start by saying I built and crewed multiple national and world champion boats from unlimited and Class one to factory one and my late wife worked with APBA and did promo work for multiple teams and produced the Ft Lauderdale race one year so I have seen both sides. racers always want a share of the profits they think the organization are getting even tho many race events rarely break even. organizers think the racers are not doing enough to promote the sport and provide an exiting and marketable experience for the fans. the truth is some where in between it all. if you look at the sport overall, one "we" think of as big in reality it only garners maybe a 100k views when the race is shown on tv and maybe 20 or 30 thousand people show up to the pits to view everything. in perspective the local festival in my little town of 20k people in the mountains draws well over 100k people over two days. point is, this is not a widely popular sport and all the money is out going not incoming as big sponsors need views of their name and towns want "heads and beds" in their towns and a bunch of kids on skate boards bring in more people. back in the day I tried to offer some ideas to improve things but I was meet with "this is the way we do things" on one side and "we do this for fun and I dont want to do what it takes to promote it" on the other. seems that everyone wants things to change but only if the other half does the changing.
as for the "racers taking control because they have the power", it is a stupid arguement. I was there when the super cat teams split off and started OSS saying that it will be great because all the owners have an equal say to make decisions. that never works and I said it then that it would fail in a couple of years and it did. the problem with that many chiefs is simple. what does everybody want? the answer is that they want "their" thing, not everyone elses thing. when you have 10 egos in a room all wanting their thing it all blows up. one person has to be in charge and make the decisions, some will be good, some will be bad but they should listen to everyone and then they have to make the ultimate decision and the teams need to abide by it. it will never happen tho in the this sport because there are too many self grandiosizing individuals involved.
sorry for the long rant but I started in offshore in the '80's and things have yet to change in all this time.

It's a shame. You have a new guy come into this sport. And advertises and sponsors a couple of teams. It's great. But it seems like he wants everything his way. It's like he feels the sport is growing because of him. But , I hate to break it to him, it will be here without his helicopter or not. So maybe x insurance can boycott his 5 boats. But everybody else will be there. Go take your ball and go home. We won't miss you. Cocoa Beach has a contract already for 2025. Deal with it. They are doing the right thing by honoring it. I watched the key west race on tv. The coverage was mediocre at best. Although if you had x insurance on the side of your boat you got alot of airtime!