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Powerboat crashes in racing championship off Key West. At least one hospitalized

At least one person was taken to the hospital after a vessel taking part in an annual powerboat race off Key West crashed Wednesday morning, according to the police.

It was not immediately known if the person was a member of the racing boat’s crew. Key West police spokeswoman Alyson Crean confirmed the person was hospitalized and was being evaluated to possibly be flown to a mainland hospital for treatment.

The boat was participating in the Race World Offshore World Championship, which ends Sunday. Some of the boats can reach speeds of up to 160 mph, according to the Monroe County Tourist Development Council.

“A portion of the challenging 4.4-mile-per-lap course runs through Key West Harbor, meaning smooth water where racers can achieve breathtaking speeds and fans can watch from vantage points that are extraordinarily close to the action,” the TDC said in a press release about the race.

Representatives with Race World Offshore have not returned emailed and phone messages for comment.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Agency, which typically investigates boat crashes, nor the Coast Guard, investigate accidents at league-sanctioned races, sources with those agencies said.

This story will be updated as more information becomes available.

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2 Powerboat Racers Die After High Speed Crash in Key West

Nov. 9, 2011: In this photo, provided by the Florida Keys News Bureau, rescue personnel, right, work on extracting offshore powerboat racers Robert M. Morgan of Sunrise Beach, Mo., and Jeffrey Tillman of Kaiser, Mo., after their 46-foot catamaran was involved in an accident, during the first of three race days at the Key West World Championship in Key West, Fla. (AP/Florida Keys News Bureau)

KEY WEST, Fla. – Two offshore powerboat racers died Wednesday after their catamaran went airborne at high speed and crashed, marring the opening of three days of racing at the Key West World Championship, officials said.

Big Thunder Marine — a 46-foot Skater catamaran with four 1,200 horsepower engines that competed in the Superboat Unlimited Class — came down so hard its right front hull was severely damaged on the third lap of Wednesday's race inside Key West Harbor, organizers said.

Superboat International President John Carbonell said he witnessed the crash, which occurred adjacent to a spectator area.

"He was probably going about 130 mph and the boat's propellers were barely in the water," Carbonell said. "The boat apparently caught some air and went bow (front) up; straight into the air, came down and went backwards."

He identified the dead as Robert M. Morgan, of Sunrise Beach, Mo., and Jeffrey Tillman, of Kaiser, Mo. They were piloting the boat as throttleman and driver respectively.

Carbonell said rescue divers deployed to the accident site in less than a minute. Both men were removed alive from the wreckage of the catamaran and transported to Lower Keys Medical Center, he added.

Tillman died either before or just after arrival at the hospital, and Morgan apparently soon after leaving Key West aboard an air trauma ambulance, according to organizers.

Carbonell said the force of the boat coming down was powerful and crushing.

Morgan had come out of retirement to race with SBI this year, Carbonell said.

"He told me a few days ago that this (Key West) was his last hurrah," he said "He was a helluva of a nice guy and is going to be missed."

Despite the accident and rescue efforts, the race later continued. But Carbonell said he stopped the race before the scheduled seventh lap due to another accident, which stretched medical and safety resources. Scott Roman of Marlton, N.J., and Ron Roman of Lumberton, N.J., escaped injury after their Motley Crew boat overturned.

Carbonell said that the world championship will continue with scheduled races Friday and the finals Sunday.

"This is a very dangerous sport and the racers know that," he said. "You push it to the edge and see how far you go."

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Key West World Powerboat Championship: Racer Jeffrey Tillman Killed By Incompetence (Video)

The crash killed two men It was one of the most spectacular and horrible crashes in South Florida marine history. A powerboat traveling more than 130 miles per hour flipped over backward and two men drowned beneath the hull in a world championship event as rescue workers struggled to reach the site.

Now, a lawsuit filed in Fort Lauderdale charges the pair, Jeffrey Tillman and his 74-year-old throttleman, Bob Morgan, died unnecessarily.

The suit was filed November 7, just as this past weekend's races in Key West started.. More than 40 boats competed against one another to run the 6.2 mile course.

Miami is a powerboating mecca. Its role in the trade was highlighted in 1987, with the gangland style killing of Don Aronow , the greatest powerboat racer of all time. During that era, the boats were often used to transport cocaine to the United States from the Caribbean.

Tillman and Morgan were killed in November 2011 when their boat flipped over. It took rescue workers nine minutes to reach them, charges the lawsuit filed by attorney William Scherer, because race sponsors incorrectly assumed they were killed by blunt trauma,.

The race was later cancelled because a second boat turned over, and rescue workers were stretched too thin to continue.

Three days later, a second driver, Joey Gratton, was killed when his boat flipped over. His widow has also sued race organizers Superboat International Productions and President John Carbonell. That suit is presently scheduled to go to trial early next year.

Autopsies after the accident showed Tillman and Morgan died from drowning. Saltwater was discovered in their lungs.

The suit faults race sponsors for allowing Tillman's boat to continue even though it didn't have a reinforced cockpit or a through-hull escape hatch, which might have saved the men, According to the Associated Press, boat teams now have to share safety plans with race sponsors, which was not required in the past.

Send your story tips to the author, Chuck Strouse.

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The mystery behind the death of powerboat racing champion Don Aronow

Don Aronow, powerboat racing champion and founder of Magnum , Cigarette and Donzi , continues to fascinate – as does his mysterious death, discovers Daniel Pembrey .

When Cigarette founder and powerboat racing champion Don Aronow was shot dead on 3 February 1987 in Miami, the boating world was convulsed, but not everybody was surprised.

Emblematic of both the American dream and a particularly magnetic kind of American masculinity, Aronow was a frontiersman, a real-life Marlboro Man and a fearless racer. He was formidably competitive both on and off the water, brutally handsome and adroit at negotiating the line between the legal and the illicit – at least until the very end. A ruthless businessman, he equally relished a challenge in his personal life; “He’d fuck your wife in a second,” said powerboat Hall of Fame racer and boatbuilder Allan “Brownie” Brown, author of Tales from Thunderboat Row . Celebrated yacht designer Michael Peters , who went to work for Aronow the day before he died, said, “He was an asshole, but he was my asshole – a benefactor for whom I’ll always be grateful.”

On 3 February 1987, Peters was aged 34 and among the last people to speak with Aronow at the office of USA Racing Team, the latest of Aronow’s boat firms. “Don and I had had a meeting to discuss my salary. He gave me a spacious office, and I thought, ‘Finally, I’m starting to feel secure in life after a recent divorce.’ I remember taking a call from a guy named Ben Kramer and telling him that Don had already left his office for the day.”

At that time, NE 188th Street was a weed-strewn, low-rise strip. The sun was lowering in the wintery afternoon yet there was still plenty of warmth and light. There was fibreglass dust in the air and the pungent smell of resin and paint. Saws buzzed and machinery hummed at the various boat shops, most of which Aronow had started at one time or another. Radios blared out the hits of the day. Still riding high in the charts was The Bangles’ recent chart-topper Walk Like an Egyptian , originally inspired by the way people struggle to maintain balance aboard boats, apparently.

There was a jumpiness, an electricity in the air, too – not unusual on the street known locally as Thunderboat Row, Performance Street or Gasoline Alley. You never knew who might show up here, from royalty and high-born celebrity clients to drug-dealing low-lifes, by way of government officials, heads of the various boat firms and a diverse population of workers who earned their livings here.

Leaving his office that afternoon, Aronow was making for his North Bay Road residence, a 1929 Spanish-style waterfront mansion undergoing renovations, 30 minutes’ drive away. Members of the Bee Gees were neighbours on both sides. Aronow was now with his second wife, Lillian Crawford – a model, Palm Beach heiress and ex-girlfriend of King Hussein of Jordan. Seemingly he had everything to live for. “Always laughing” and “full of life” were typical depictions of the man. A five-year non-compete agreement with Cigarette Racing, one of the companies he’d sold, dated to 1982 and was about to expire. Nearly 60, he talked of taking up racing again.

His 193cm, still-athletic frame barely fitted inside the sporty white Mercedes-Benz two-seater in which he drove away from USA Racing Team’s office on Thunderboat Row. Peters recalled a sound like firecrackers – “a pop pop pop , eerie and ominous. I knew they were gunshots”. Little could prepare him for the scene two hundred metres up the street. Half out of his car, Aronow lay slumped, crimson blooming across his shirt. Congregating witnesses spoke of a dark Lincoln Continental having pulled up alongside Aronow’s white Mercedes.

“Who is this guy?” asked an arriving first responder. “That’s the king,” came the response, according to The Washington Post . “He built this entire street.” Airlifted to a nearby hospital, Don Aronow was dead within the hour.

The chaotic crime scene confronting police detectives was mysterious, not least because of the geography. The “Row” was island-like, bounded by water on three sides. The narrow street itself dead-ended to the east, requiring visitors to turn around to exit westbound.  It would be easy to become blocked in here.  The murder fell awkwardly between the sort of extravagant “statement killings” orchestrated by Colombian cocaine kingpins and the kind of professional contract hit carried out by killers keen to hide their tracks, or at least ensure a clean escape. Aronow evidently stopped his car willingly; he was found with his foot pressed fully down on the accelerator, the 5.6-litre Mercedes engine racing wildly – he’d put the car in neutral, almost certainly to engage whoever was inside the Lincoln. Furthermore, there were witnesses – plenty of them, if not always consistent in the details they shared with police. Was it even a planned killing, or some crazed crime of passion?

This was not the first mystery to surround Donald Joel Aronow. He was born in 1927, the son of an affluent taxicab owner whose family had emigrated from Russia and been bankrupted by the Great Depression. Don’s origin story moves around according to who’s telling it. Certainly, young Don became wealthy by building and selling tract houses in New Jersey. By various accounts, he then fled to Florida in 1960 to escape the mob. If true, it was a curious place to hide out from them. More plausibly, he was drawn to the Sunshine State by its warmth, excitement and a different form of escapism, as many tend to be.

In Miami, his head was turned by the nascent offshore powerboating scene and in particular the gruelling Miami-Nassau race that ran for  296 kilometres. Innovations such as fibreglass construction techniques and the drag-reducing deep V hull were taking chunks from the record times, and also from crews in rough seas. Dick Bertram was the man to beat both in terms of boat design and the racing itself. His company, Bertram Yacht , drew worldwide attention.

Aronow set out after Bertram, working with designers on NE 188th Street to create deep V fibreglass Formula boats, notably the seven-metre 233. To finance the development, he sold more civilised versions, with teak decks and sleeping quarters, to the general public. But he knew from Bertram’s experience that the way to promote and build his company was by winning races. Barely had he begun to win before he sold Formula to Thunderbird Boats. “You’re never gonna make a lot of money building boats,” he was quoted as saying. “You make a living doing that. You make real money when you sell the company.”

Next, he started Donzi, named after himself, again on NE 188th Street. He’d retained his key designers. The result was the 8.5-metre 007 , named after the gathering cinematic phenomenon. It was in 007 that he beat Bertram in the Miami-Nassau race in 1965. Again, he sold his company and started a new one, Magnum, evidently named after the double-sized bottles of champagne. He raced his 8.2-metre Maltese Magnum all over the world.

These races were filled with tales of derring-do: engine burnouts and explosions, crew members being knocked unconscious or needing airlifting to hospital – some even left marooned and bleeding amid circling sharks, not to forget the high-speed collisions, including one in rough seas under a hovering press helicopter. Audiences grew. Aronow won the World Powerboat Championship in 1967 (he’d go on to win it once more and the US championship three times), and in 1968, he sold Magnum.

Barely into his forties, Aronow was now a famous, feted and very wealthy man. It was the time of the sexual revolution, and his popularity with women was almost as legendary as his boating exploits, although some women were more circumspect. Marchesa Katrin Theodoli and her husband became the owners of Magnum. “I’ve met some extremely charismatic men, including Sean Connery and Roger Moore,” she said. “Those two managed to make you feel like you were the centre of their world. They conveyed a warmth and a feeling of genuinely liking you. Whereas Don Aronow was more brash, assertive – more resolutely a man’s man. He gave the impression that he felt he could take whatever he wanted.”

Like others who bought a boat company from Aronow, the Theodolis had reason to be wary.  A pattern emerged whereby Aronow would sell his companies and then seek to eclipse them. He would build larger premises next door, on what was now known as Thunderboat Row, putting his erstwhile companies and new-found competitors in the shade. He might also try to buy the companies back, for cents on the dollar. It was testimony to the Theodolis’ diplomatic instincts that this would not become their fate.

“Don would compete with people his size,” said Michael Peters. “He didn’t pick on the little guy. He was an alpha male, like the male lion you see on safari. Don’t challenge him, and you were fine. But if you decided to take him on, don’t expect him to give ground.”

His next project was considered to be his masterpiece: the long lean Cigarette boats named after a vessel used to hijack rum-runners during Prohibition days. The idea of bad guys outracing other bad guys and seizing their fortunes appealed to Aronow reasoned The Washington Post five days after his murder. “Don was to offshore speed boats what Ben Franklin was to electricity,” an admiring Customs official told the newspaper. “I don’t want to make him out to be  the greatest boatbuilder in the world,  but in that particular class of boats, he  was unequalled.”

Again, Peters gave a qualifying view: “Don perfected things already invented: hull shapes, construction techniques and engine setups. Certainly, he added sex appeal to it all.” In 1977, Cigarette introduced the “super sexy new 35 Mistress” (as the advertisement read). “When I started designing for Cigarette in 1978, Halter Marine had just acquired the company and they perpetuated the ethos,” said Peters. “The boss’s wife would lean over my drafting table with her ample bosom and say, ‘Remember, think sex.’”

Alongside the sexual revolution came the growth in the drugs trade. A certain nostalgia colours memories of the 1970s as a time of the “gentlemanly” marijuana business. A certain Ben Kramer, who came from a seemingly good home on the Intracoastal Waterway between Miami and Fort Lauderdale, started smoking pot at school and began selling it. Soon enough, he had his own yellow Cigarette boat with which to smuggle. He admired Aronow and acquired a corner of the Row, obtaining an interest in Apache, which in turn supplied the vessels he raced offshore (his fabled Warpath , based on a deep V Cigarette mould, won him a world championship). With his father, he also founded Fort Apache Marina on the Row, comprising a boat storage facility, waterfront restaurant and patio bar.

Rumours concerning Fort Apache continue to circulate, including one about the dock area, positing that camouflaged metal doors opened into large storage compartments, accessible at low tide – at night, say.

Whatever the truth of such rumours, the way South Florida’s drug business metastasised from marijuana to cocaine smuggling, to vast profits and lawlessness, would sustain five seasons of Miami Vice . In the real-life offshore racing seasons, a majority of the contestants might well turn out to be drug runners – say, George Morales, Sal Magluta and Willie Falcón, all convicted of cocaine trafficking. Race officials found themselves in invidious positions. “During the day we’re asked to patrol their race course during events for emergency rescues,” a Coast Guard official told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel . “But at night, we’re chasing many of the same guys for smuggling.”

Events took a turn towards the surreal when Carlos Lehder, the Medellín Cartel kingpin, started buying up Norman’s Cay, an island in the Bahamas some 330 kilometres off the coast of Florida, for his cocaine transport empire. By November 1981, a Time magazine cover feature was declaring that “an epidemic of violent crime, a plague of illicit drugs and a tidal wave of refugees have slammed into South Florida with the destructive power of a hurricane”. Miami claimed the nation’s highest murder rate at 70 per 100,000 residents, “and this year’s pace has been even higher”.  An estimated “70 per cent of all marijuana and cocaine imported into the US passes through South Florida”, the feature reported.  “Drug smuggling could be the region’s major [largest] industry.”

Much was explained by the state’s southern exposure and geography – its thousands of kilometres of coastline, coves and inlets. Revealingly, the Time feature predicted that Miami would remain, “as the late President Jaime Roldós of Ecuador put it, the ‘capital of Latin America’”. It reported Miami’s Federal Reserve branch to have amassed a currency surplus of $5 billion, “mostly in drug-generated $50 and $100 bills, or more than the nation’s 12 Federal Reserve banks combined.”  The associated crime could strike anyone.

Even local residents the Bee Gees were not immune. Their father, Hugh Gibb, was mugged; Barry Gibb’s wife, Linda, had her purse snatched. “No woman should be alone in this city,” Barry Gibb warned Time . “Or man,” his brother Robin added. Around one-third of the region’s murders were believed to be related to drugs.

The drug money was corrupting banking, real estate and law enforcement. It fuelled an uneasy dynamism. “New hotels and office towers are rising in Miami, and once-sleepy towns nearby are growing skylines of their own,” chronicled Time . In these circumstances, it would have been extraordinary if the drug cash hadn’t found its way into Thunderboat Row and its fabled go-fast boats.

Aronow, it seems, would sell anybody a boat, especially for cash, but if you said you were using it to smuggle drugs, “Don wouldn’t have anything to do with you,” asserted Mike Kandrovicz from USA Racing Team.

It was into this volatile, heady mix that vice president George HW Bush – President Reagan’s lieutenant in the White House’s “war on drugs” – unwittingly stepped. Bush had long been an admirer of Aronow’s sleek vessels and had equally been disarmed by the man himself. He’d bought a Formula and a Cigarette from him, describing Aronow as “a joy to be around”. As director of the CIA, he’d also interacted with Aronow, recalling how “Don came and offered to help our country”. It was just one of the unusual clients Aronow had dealings with: oil-rich Arabs, Princess Caroline of Monaco and the Shah of Iran.

At Bush’s instigation, the US Customs Service took the fateful step in 1985 of placing a $1.7 million order for high-speed pursuit boats with Aronow’s USA Racing Team. Still subject to a non-compete agreement with Cigarette – which he’d bought back, then sold again in 1982 – Aronow was forbidden from producing deep V monohulls. So he commissioned a design from Michael Peters that split a V in two to create a catamaran. Given this unpromising start in life, the seven-ton, 11.9-metre Blue Thunder vessels acquitted themselves well. They were fast (more than 112km/h), good for interdiction activities (stable when boarding intercepted boats) and comparatively easy to drive. Yet deep V monohulls were now reaching 160km/h. Also, said Peters, “the Coast Guard drivers were left drowned in the wake of the offshore racers and the cocaine runners, who just had a different mentality come race time.”

The more problematic aspect was that Aronow additionally arranged to sell USA Racing Team, complete with the Blue Thunder contract, to Ben Kramer, who by now had drug smuggling convictions. It did not take the US Customs Service long to learn of this. They could not countenance procuring drug interdiction boats from a firm owned by a convicted smuggler and predictably moved to cancel the procurement contract. Aronow agreed to buy USA Racing Team back from Kramer, equally predictably for less than the consideration he’d received. Accounts of the dealings vary, but perhaps $2 million had been paid under the table in cash by Kramer when he bought the firm, using drug money. This sum, Aronow did not return. Herein lay the alleged motivation for Aronow’s murder.

The official record shows that, via a tip-off, police identified a mercenary street criminal named Bobby Young as the man who’d shot Aronow. Although witnesses failed to identify him in police line-ups, Young pled no contest to the shooting. Meanwhile, Kramer had been convicted of massive marijuana smuggling and money laundering, receiving multiple prison sentences including life without parole. More tips and leads pointed to Kramer as the man who’d ordered and paid for the hit.

The investigating detectives believed that Kramer was seeking to silence Young in jail, paying his legal bills, even possibly seeking to have Young killed. However, this “consciousness of guilt” made for a weak state’s case. Ultimately, Kramer pled no contest to second-degree murder. By this time – the mid 1990s – he was being kept in an isolation cell without, his lawyer claimed, adequate dental or medical care. “They had me in a cage for three years and nine months, with no daylight, no contact with human beings,” Kramer said.

Besides the state’s weak case, there were other, more fundamental doubts over whether Kramer had arranged to have Aronow shot. Kramer was hot tempered, the argument went; had he been sufficiently enraged by the USA Racing Team misfire to kill Aronow, he would have done so in 1985, whereas Kramer reportedly remained respectful towards Aronow until the end.

Separately, there were rumours that Aronow may have been assisting law enforcement, even becoming an informant – or at least that, in early 1987, he was about to be subpoenaed to give evidence about the USA Racing Team transactions. Five days after his murder, The Washington Post reported that a Customs official described Aronow as “co-operative” when Aronow had been approached for information about one of his clients. If the real motive for Aronow’s murder was him turning informant, surely others (on the wrong side of the law) were potential suspects, too?

Over the years, theories have developed to involve the Chicago mob, Colombian drug kingpins, cuckolded husbands or just a random shooter. Back in 1981, Time quoted a legal researcher living in Miami as saying: “I see people walking down the streets openly carrying guns, some in their hands, others in their holsters. You don’t dare honk your horn at anybody; you could end up dead.”

Certainly it is less difficult now to see how, in 1980s Miami, the murder of a man as magnetic as Aronow could garner 140 suspects at the Metro-Dade Police Department, each with the apparent motive, means and opportunity to have the “King of Thunderboat Row” gunned down in broad daylight. Bobby Young, the convicted shooter and the man who might have provided definitive answers, died in jail in 2009. The murder may forever remain a mystery.

Today, Thunderboat Row is a transformed, gentrified enclave. Only Magnum and a marina (not Fort Apache) are still here. The rest of NE 188th Street is covered with blocks of expensive condos promising comfortable waterside living. The boats tend to be smaller, more sedate, more family-oriented. At the east end of the street is now the Aventura Arts & Cultural Center; further east, across Biscayne Bay, on oceanside Sunny Isles Beach, stands the Porsche Design Tower. It lets you transport your luxury car up  to the safety of your own unit, even as crime rates have dropped.

Cigarette, Donzi and other Aronow-conceived brands live on, as do the Miami to Key West race and offshore poker runs. But nothing compares with the go-fast scenes of the 1960s, 1970s and climatic 1980s. Those times can only be likened to the Old West: the Marlboro Man; the weed-strewn strip with its pioneers and settlers; the freebooters from south of the border bringing their lawlessness and loot and the law of the gun.

Michael Peters concludes, “If you want to find anything comparable today, you need to look elsewhere, maybe to the ‘ final frontier’ – Blue Origin, SpaceX, Bezos and Musk.” He pauses.  “In the boating world, we won’t see the likes of Don Aronow again.”

First published in the October 2022 issue of BOAT International. Get this magazine sent straight to your door, or subscribe and never miss an issue. 

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Third Power Boat Racer Dies In Key West Race

November 12, 2011 / 3:52 PM EST / CBS Miami

KEY WEST (CBS4)- A third Florida offshore powerboat racer died from injuries during the 31st annual Key West World Championships, Super Boat International reported.

Meanwhile, his teammate is in good condition following a Friday accident at the championship event.

Joey Gratton, of Sarasota, was airlifted to Ryder Trauma Center in Miami in critical condition and later died, according to officials with Super Boat International, the event's sanctioning body.

Super Boat International released a statement Saturday announcing Gratton's death.

"Gratton, a veteran throttleman of offshore racing will be greatly missed," the release read. "Our prayers are with the entire Gratton family and racing community."

Gratton's death marks the third power boat racer death since the championship race began Wednesday.

Big Thunder Marine, a 46-foot Skater catamaran (#100) with four 1,200 hp engines, crashed during the third lap of Wednesday's race inside Key West Harbor. Robert M. Morgan of Sunrise Beach, Mo., and Jeffrey Tillman of Kaiser, Mo., were the throttleman and driver respectively piloting the boat.

Story: Deadly Crash On 1st Day Of Keys Power Boat Races

Rescue divers were deployed within a minute of the accident and the crew members were transferred to Lower Keys Medical Center. Both died later, according to Rodrick Cox, public relations director for Superboat International, the world championship's public relations director.

Gratton and teammate Stephen Page, owner and driver of Page Motorsports, rolled over during the final lap of Friday's race at checkpoint 1. The 38-foot Superboat 850-class Skater catamaran, rolled over twice in turn 1 of the 6.5-mile course Friday. No other boats were involved in the accident.

Page, a Fort Myers resident, was admitted in good condition to Lower Keys Medical Center, officials said. He has since been released from the hospital.

The Page Motorsports facebook page posted was filled with condolence messages from fans. A photo of Gratton and his partner, Priscilla, was also posted with a comment that read:

"Joey and Priscilla in happier times.....We are deeply saddened and stunned by the tragic sudden loss of Joey.....Our heartfelt thoughts and prayers are with the Gratton family especially Priscilla, Brock and Blake, as well as Steve and Maisey Page....You will be missed Joey.....Our deepest sympathies, Terrie & Ron."

A memorial was held Saturday afternoon for Gratton.

For more on the Key West World Championship visit http://www.superboat.com

(©2011 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Andy Newman of the Florida Keys News Bureau contributed material for this report)

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Fla. paramedic dies in powerboat race crash

Mike salber, a 22-year veteran of the sanford fire department, died after a collision involving a second powerboat that also injured three others.

By Teresa Stepzinski The Florida Times-Union

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The driver of a racing powerboat has died following a collision involving a second powerboat Saturday that also injured three other racers on the St. Johns River during the Jacksonville Grand Prix of the Sea early Saturday afternoon

Mike Salber, 56, died in the crash offshore of Memorial Park involving the Rapid Building Solutions and Frank & Al’s Pizza powerboats during the race, which is part of the Powerboat P1 SuperStock USA Series.

“Our thoughts are with Mike’s family, friends, colleagues and the powerboat racing community as a whole at this difficult time,” said Powerboat P1 SuperStock USA officials on its website Sunday.

Salber was identified as the driver of the Rapid Building Solutions racing power boat, according to the Powerboat P1 website. His son, Zane Salber, 22, was listed as the boat’s navigator.

Authorities haven’t released the names of the injured racers. All were taken to UF Health Jacksonville following the collision. Information wasn’t available whether the younger Salber was among the injured.

Mike Salber served as a lieutenant/ paramedic with the Sanford Fire Department, where he was a 22-year veteran. Fellow firefighters along with friends and many in the powerboat racing community mourned Salber — offering condolences to his family — in public Facebook posts.

“It is with deep sadness and with a heavy heart that we inform you that Sanford Fire Department Tower Lieutenant Mike Salber has passed away this afternoon from injuries sustained during a boating accident. Please keep Mike’s family in your thoughts and prayers,” Sanford fire officials posted on the department’s Facebook page.

Public social media posts show Salber was an avid powerboat racer and water sport enthusiast.

“He died doing what he loved...racing. I have never met anyone that had such a hunger for life. ... Michael Joseph Salber was one of a kind. He was larger than Life,” one post read.

Witnesses told the Times-Union the two power boats collided in the first turn during the third race Saturday.

Azam Rangoonwala, managing director of Powerboat P1, said the Rapid Building boat turned over and collided with the Frank and Al’s Pizza boat. The Rapid Building boat is from Orlando, while the Frank & Al’s Pizza boat is from Port St. Luice, he said.

The accident remains under investigation.

Copyright 2018 The Florida Times-Union

https://www.facebook.com/SanfordFireDept/posts/1633369040112900 https://www.facebook.com/HammerDownBoating/videos/1695519527164270/

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Outerlimits President Joe Sgro Dies In Florida Keys Boat Accident

• By Boating Staff
• Updated: November 21, 2017

Joe Sgro, the president of Outerlimits Offshore Powerboats in Bristol, Rhode Island, died from injuries following a single-boat crash of a new 50-foot Outerlimits boat on November 9 during the Florida Powerboat Club Key West Poker Run, said Carol Lyn Parrish, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission public information coordinator. There were four other men, all from New York, on the boat with Sgro just before noon about a quarter-mile offshore near the 33rd Street boat ramp, Mile Marker 48.5, near Faro Blanco Resort and Yacht Club in Marathon, Florida.

Parrish said Joseph Cibellis, 52, was at the helm while Sgro was operating the throttles. Joseph Nestola, 56, Joseph Latona, 60, and Steven Kropp, 60, were passengers. Nestola and Latona were taken to Fishermen’s Community Hospital in Marathon for treatment while Cibellis and Krupp were not hurt.

Sgro, 63, is survived by his wife, Eileen, and six children ranging in age from 15 to 38.

“We’re all longtime friends, all five of us,” Nestola told Newsday from his hospital bed at a Miami trauma center. Sgro, he said, “was a great guy and a great family man. … He was a good friend to everybody and a hardworking entrepreneur.”

Mercury Racing worked closely with Sgro over the years in support of his offshore powerboat competition and poker-run efforts. Sgro recently supported a Mercury Marine media event in New York City by supplying members of the media with quick spins down the Hudson River in his record-setting SV43 Outerlimits hull.

On April 29, 2014, Sgro and Brian Forehand made back-to-back passes of 179.5 mph and 181.42 mph for an American Power Boat Association Unlimited V-bottom kilo speed record of 180.47 mph. The record still stands.

“An event like this reinforces how fragile life really is,” said Mercury Racing General Manager Erik Christiansen. “Joe was not only a friend and partner of Mercury Racing, he was also a successful and devoted family man who loved to help others. He had a passion for life and will be missed.”

In a 2009 profile in Newsday , Sgro called himself “an adrenaline junkie.”

Sgro, who grew up in the Bensonhurst neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, told Newsday he got his sea legs during summers spent in Hampton Bays, where his parents had a house when he was a kid.

“I’d come home from the last day of school, and my dad would be packing up the car,” Sgro said. He would spend all summer out on the water, fishing, crabbing and, eventually, boating.

He says his powerboat racing was a natural progression, a way to stay out of trouble, really.

“Around 1985, my friend Joe Latona moved to Long Island. He bought an old race boat. It was loud, fast, annoying,” Sgro said. “We had a lot of problems with the bay constable, with the marine police, the Coast Guard.

“After getting a handful of tickets,” he said, they began racing in the Northeast, taking their 28-foot Manta Fever boat to second place in their first race in 1986.

By midsummer of 2009, Sgro was racing in the Powerboat P1 World Championship, piloting a 43-foot, 8,000-pound V-bottom boat against international teams at Grand Prix of the Sea events across Europe and the Middle East. Sgro bought the assets of Outerlimits Offshore Powerboats in 2015 after his longtime friend and founder of the company, Mike Fiore, died in a high-speed powerboat crash during the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout the year prior.

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Chuck Thompson’s fateful run 50 years later

Beloved detroit racer remembered for great skills, fine character.

He was blue collar from top to bottom, his courage and determination in a powerboat hailed by thousands of Detroiters.

Fifty years ago last Sunday, Chuck Thompson lost his life racing on the Detroit River on July 3, 1966, when his “Miss Smirnoff” unlimited hydroplane was blown to pieces in Heat 3 of the ABPA Gold Cup race held over the Fourth of July weekend.

Thompson, who owned Thompson Electrical Co. on Grand River and Southfield, never did officially win the Cup, but he was no less loved by fans than Detroit legend Bill Muncey, who won eight.

Thompson was 54 when his hydroplane hit a hole and bump on the river, took a big hop and crashed at better than 100 m.p.h. approaching the Belle Isle Bridge turn, his boat disintegrating.

He left behind his wife, Christine, and son, Chuck Thompson Jr., who was racing his own powerboat on Ford Lake in Ypsilanti when he was informed of his father’s fatal accident.

“Some people were watching a small portable TV at our race and told me my dad had just flipped the boat,” recalled 78-year-old Chuck Thompson Jr. on Wednesday from his home in Farmington Hills. “I started out for the river but they announced my father had died.”

Thompson didn’t race for two months after his father’s death.

“I missed the people associated with racing, so I decided to return,” said Thompson, who continued his father’s electrical business after the Gold Cup tragedy watched by a crowd estimated at more than 350,000 along the banks of the Detroit River.

“My mother, who died in 1984, never asked me to stop racing.”

Thompson’s death came just a few weeks after what in powerboat racing history is known as “Black Sunday,” when on June 19, 1966, unlimited hydroplane drivers Ron Musson (Miss Bardahl), Rex Manchester (Notre Dame) and Don Wilson (Miss Budweiser) were killed during the running of the President’s Cup regatta on the Potomac River in Washington.

“No one ever put a gun to my father’s head to go racing,” said Thompson, who retired from the sport in 1980. “Last weekend was a bittersweet time. Dad accepted that racing was dangerous, but he loved to do it.”

Tom D’Eath, who grew up on the east side, was motivated by Thompson and would go on to capture three Gold Cups. He remembers sneaking into the pits on the Detroit River as a kid to watch such local heroes as “Wild Bill” Cantrell, Danny Foster and Thompson test and race.

“We hung around the boats and drivers,” said D’Eath, 72. “Thompson was our guy. Nobody can tell me he didn’t win the Gold Cup in 1956.”

In fact, Thompson, driving the Detroit-owned Miss Pepsi entry of Roy Dossin, was initially declared the winner of the 1956 Gold Cup in Detroit on Sept. 1 when Muncey, who was first over the finish line in the Willard Rhodes’ Miss Thriftway boat, was disqualified for hitting and damaging a buoy on the final lap.

“They actually threw dad into the river after winning,” Thompson said. “That was the celebration tradition.”

Team owner Rhodes immediately protested the result and, in November, ABBA officials reversed their decision and awarded the race to Muncey and Miss Thriftway.

“I’ll put that down to politics,” Thompson Jr said.

Chuck Thompson Sr. began racing Thunderboats in 1949, his first unlimited ride being in Miss Pepsi.

He ran his own boats between 1954 and 1962, winning races in Short Circuit and Miss Detroit.

In all, he won 15 major races and two National High Point championships.

“I started following powerboat racing when I was around 12 years old,” recalled former boat racer and longtime Gold Cup volunteer Ray Dong, 62.

“There were certain deaths in motorsports then that were memorable and stinging. Thompson’s probably affected me the most. He was a fan favorite, a blue-collar guy, a real racing giant.”

Thompson remembers his father as being “the best guy in the world,” and “a real practical joker.”

“He was very family-oriented,” said Thompson, who, as a youngster, watched his dad design and build boats in his garage.

“He was a quiet man away from the cockpit, but he could be tough on you. I remember him saying when I got my driver’s license that ‘if ever the police bring you home, your trouble has just started.’”

Thompson says he was 5 years old when his father gave him his first ride in an unlimited hydroplane.

“I was stuffed between his life jacket and the steering wheel,” Thompson said. “That started it all for me.”

Chuck Thompson Jr. attended Cooley High. His famous father was born in St. Clair, raced early in his career against Gar Wood Jr., the son of five-time Gold Cup winner Gar Wood, and moved his family to Southfield.

On the water, Thompson was unrelenting. He had a willingness to intimidate, if necessary, but also liked to have fun.

“Dad loved to tease the other drivers and crews,” Thompson said. “He’d solder a valve or something on to the engine. The other teams wouldn’t know what it was for. He was always having fun with them.”

Former champion hydroplane racer and Gold Cup director Mark Weber of Washington Township is helping head the running of this year’s 2016 UAW-GM Spirit of Detroit HydroFest, which will celebrate 100 years of APBA Gold Cup racing on the Detroit River, Aug. 26-28.

Weber knows loss in racing, his unlimited hydroplane teammate George Stratton being killed in 2000 during a test run for the Bill Muncey Cup on San Diego’s Mission Bay.

“You just hear good stuff about Chuck Thompson,” said Weber, a member of the Michigan Motorsports Hall of Fame.

“He was one of the good guys. He was a highly respected racer. He lost his life in a sport he loved.”

These days, Chuck Thompson Jr., who also worked as a residential home builder, is fully retired. He opts for a bit of walleye fishing on Lake Erie, preferring “to eat my trophies now.”

Thompson misses his father as much now as when he watched him race 50 years ago.

“I beat the grim reaper,” Thompson said. “Dad didn’t, but I know he accepted his fate.”

Contact Mike Brudenell: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @mikebrudenell.

Beloved powerboat racer killed in crash: "Heartbroken over the loss"

by Scott Lawrence, Mya Caleb

Port Neches — The powerboat racing community is mourning the death of a man they call a beloved member of their sport in a collision during the Thunder on the Neches races that are part of RiverFest in Port Neches.

Justice of the Peace Tom Gillam III confirms to KFDM/Fox 4 News that Bobby Briggs, 66, of Toledo, Ohio, died at The Medical Center of Southeast Texas. The judge says he's ordered an autopsy into the death that resulted from a collision. Another powerboat racer, Chris Fairchild, was injured. He was treated and released at a hospital.

The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office Marine Division and Criminal Investigations Division responded to the boating accident. According to S.O., two boats reportedly collided in a turn.

The death investigation is ongoing, with the Texas Parks and Wildlife, Port Neches PD and the U.S. Coast Guard assisting.

The U.S. Coast Guard says Thunder on the Neches is a Coast Guard sanctioned powerboat race.

Briggs was killed in the collision at about 5 p.m. Sunday, during the finals of the Formula 1 Powerboat Championship races.

The races are sanctioned by the American Powerboat Association (APBA) and conducted by S.P.O.R.T. Racing for all racing activities throughout the event.

A number of people in the powerboat racing community posted condolences:

"The RACER H2O crew is heartbroken over the loss of our friend Bobby Briggs. He lost his life in an incident at the F1 Powerboat Championship race at the Port Neches Riverfest in Port Neches, TX this weekend. We have so many great memories of him racing like here in September 2022 in Branson, MO. Please keep Bobby's friends and family in your prayers."

Briggs was part of the Busch Cracklin Racing team. He was in boat #41.

According to a posting, his career highlights include 2005 Champboat Series SST-120 Rookie of the Year, 2022 Powerboat Nationals Formula 2 Rookie of Year.

His hobbies included pleasure boating and fishing.

Port Neches mayor Glenn Johnson cites the incident as a tragedy and hopes the community "can look forward to next year having a successful Riverfest again, without incident."

KFDM/Fox 4's Mya Caleb got reaction from the community.

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Offshore Racing Community Mourning The Loss Of Reindl

Sunday’s unexpected death of 47-year-old Chris Reindl of Reindl Powerboats and Ultimate Boat Racing Experiences, LLC, has been a tough blow for his friends and extended family in the offshore racing community. Reindl, who resided in Las Vegas, reportedly stayed the night at his sister’s home in the Cincinnati area and simply did not wake up. His cause of death has not been released.

Chris Reindl’s raceboat rental program introduced newcomers to offshore powerboat racing. Photo from the 2023 Race World Offshore 7 Mile Grand Prix by Pete Boden copyright Shoot 2 Thrill Pix .

More than an offshore racer in the Bracket-class ranks, Reindl was a pied-piper for the sport itself. With 24-foot canopied “Bat Boats” powered by single Ilmor Marine engines in his fleet, he created a raceboat rental program that enabled newcomers to experience the thrill of offshore racing without having to make a significant investment.

Reindl didn’t get rich in the raceboat-rental business, but his program enriched the sport.

“Chris was always a great promoter and a competitor in offshore—he and I talked weekly,” said Micheal Stancombe, a veteran offshore racer and longtime Reindl friend who lives in Southwest Florida. “On and off the course Chris promoted and brought new people into the sport. He was always kind and giving. We will miss him at the races for a very long time.”

Joe Malich, who raced with Reindl and had boat business dealings with him, agreed.

“Chris was a stand-up guy with a larger-than-life personality,” said the Washington-based competitor and boat broker. “His main passion was introducing people to racing via the ‘Bat Boat,’ a unique style V-bottom that is a blast to drive. Chris brought many people into the race circuit that would never have had the chance.”

Earlier this month, Reindl ran one of his own boats at the Sarasota Powerboat Grand Prix in Sarasota, Fla., alongside driver Mack McKeand. They finished third in what would be Rendl’s final race.

“The last race,” McKeand posted on his Facebook with this picture of Reindl and him together. “This is a photo of my great friend, Chris Reindl. He passed away barely a week after this photo was taken. He was loved by virtually all that crossed his path. He was a giant in the world of offshore powerboat racing making dreams come true for many including myself. He lived large and had a life that was uncompromised. I will miss him dearly. Carpe Diem.”

Reaction to Reindl’s death was widespread in the offshore racing world.

“It was devastating to hear about the passing of my friend, Chris,” said Kurt Jagel, a former offshore racer now living in Las Vegas. “Whether he was racing in the ocean or at the poker tables, Chris was always all in . This is a sad loss for his friends and this sport.”

Perhaps no one in the offshore racing community was more devastated by the loss than Ricky Amos, who had entered the sport through Reindl’s raceboat program and hung out with him at LOTO Powerfest on Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks in early June. The two racers were gearing up for next month’s Lake of the Ozarks Shootout .

“Chris and I were super-good friends; I can’t even think straight right now,” said Amos, “Seriously, Chris taught me everything I know about racing starting with when we did the Shootout with him almost 10 years now. And when we started our own race team, he supported us 100 percent.”

Ilmor Marine’s Paul Ray got to know Reindl through his rental raceboat program as the company supplied power for the 24-footers. He recalled Reindl as an enthusiastic and dedicated member of not just offshore racing, but the close-knit community it fostered.

“Chris was an amazing person with a passion for his family, his team, and most importantly, the boating community,” Ray explained. “His drive and desire to educate others about the joys of boating and especially the performance industry led to a wonderful partnership between Chris and the whole Ilmor team.

“Throughout countless hours of collaboration, challenges, and years of working side by side, Chris’s integrity could be relied upon every time,” he continued. “He had an infectious spirit and enthusiasm that touched the hearts of everyone he encountered.”

Ed Smith, the president of the Offshore Powerboat Association , knew Reindl for more than 20 years. Smith remembered him as one of the sport’s more colorful and passionate characters.

Reindl helped many offshore racers create memories of a lifetime.

“He was always up to something,” he recalled, then chuckled. “I remember Orange Beach (Ala.) in the Super Boat International days. His boat took off running around the wet pits all by itself.  (SBI head) John Carbonell wanted to kill him. In Point Pleasant Beach (N.J.), I had to get the beach patrol and beach crane to get him off the beach. At the East Lake Ohio race he mistook the travel-lift area for a ramp and backed his boat off the edge. The most memorable, though, was his record attempt with his Tesla-powered Bat Boat in Englewood Beach, Fla. It caught fire and sank. I think it’s still down there burning its way to China.

“All and all, his undying love for the sport kept him going,” Smith added. “So many times I wanted to wring his neck. But he had that smile and attitude I could not resist. Rest well, my friend, God’s speed.”

Amos wasn’t sure what to think about life without Reindl.

“We were planning something kind of special for the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout this year so that makes this news even harder to swallow,” Amos said. “Everyone knew Chris and he was the life of the party. I think I’ve met everyone I know in this sport through him.

“And I know I’m not the only one he’s helped guide in this racing world,” he added.

Editor’s note: Reindl’s celebration of life arrangements have been made. A viewing will take place Thursday from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Tufts Schildmeyer, which is located at 129 Riverside Drive in Loveland, Ohio. A mass will be held at Good Shepard —8815 East Kemper Road, Cincinnati, Ohio—on F riday at 10 a.m.

Paul Ray’s comments were added after the original version of this story went live.

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Moment Devon powerboat duo cheat death in 70mph crash

The champion Devon powerboat racing duo walked away unscathed from a 70mph 'rare' flip and will be competing again this weekend

• 16:54, 6 OCT 2023

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A powerboat champion racing duo from Devon will be back out at sea competing this weekend after being involved in an extremely rare' high-speed flip at more than 70mph.

Vastly experienced rough water specialists Malachy Browne, of Exmouth, and Jeremy Gibson, of Salcombe, were competing in North Wales in the Offshore Circuit Racing Drivers Association (OCRDA) Aqua Adrenaline Tour in Caernarfon around eight weeks ago when they suddenly found themselves in particularly challenging conditions.

Malachy, a gas engineer and volunteer harbour master in Exmouth, said: "It was the first race of the day and 65mph had been forecast. On the first straight, 200 metres after the start flag we were hitting speeds of more than 70mph with oncoming winds. It caused the nose of the boat to lift up and spin around in the air and flip over.

"It's very, very rare in a monohull [a single-hulled boat similar to a ski boat]. They don't tend to flip so it's very unusual to do an acrobat in the air like we did.

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"We were both ejected from the boat safely and were assessed by medics. The boat was recovered and brought back to shore and our mechanics managed to get it ready to race again the next day.

"I was fine but Jeremey erred on the side of caution and got checked out in hospital and decided not to race the next day. I took the reigns in the driving seat and got another guy to navigate with me and we won."

Currently, Malachy, the navigator, and Jeremy, the driver, are UIM OCR Formula 1 World Champions.

Adrenalin junkie Malachy, who has been racing for 15 years and has been British Champion in three different classes of powerboat racing, says he is not daunted by being thrown out of a boat at high speed and that the recent incident in Wales has not made him fear racing again.

The 41-year-old said: "I come from a jet skier background and thundercat racing so I am used to doing back flips, being upside down in the water and landing in the water at high speed so it's not new to me.

"I'm always in the water or doing something fun like riding a motorbike or another vehicle."

This weekend, Malachy and Jeremy will be competing in the final round of the Aqua Adrenaline Tour which is being held in Brixham from October 6 to 8. The popular offshore powerboat racing series travels to venues all over the UK with seven race weekends – each weekend comprising of four races.

In Brixham, a fleet of 17 boats and 15 jet ski racers will begin their final battle on Saturday at 12.30pm close to Brixham Breakwater with race control being close by.

The exciting-to-watch circuit racing boats compete in three classes based on engine capacity with the class denoted by the colour of the boats bow; Formula 1 – yellow, Formula 2 – pink, and Formula 3 – red. The boats reach speeds of up to 75mph.

A fleet of 15 jet skis will compete in three classes in four races on a slightly shorter course than that used by the boats. For spectators, there will be excellent viewing along the breakwater.

Each race, both boats and jet skis, will run for a duration of 25 minutes plus one lap. Malachy and Jeremy will be among three teams fighting for the F1 championship win with only a few points between them. The F2 & F3 championships will also be decided this weekend.

Malachy said: "The aim for us is to win this weekend. The sea conditions are predicted to be quite flat; we would normally prefer rougher conditions. It will be very close who wins."

The event is being by the UK’s Offshore Circuit Racing Drivers Association (OCRDA). A live stream will be available on Aqua Adrenaline's social media platforms.

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Video shows racers thrown from powerboat in rough Florida Keys waters

Janine Stanwood , Anchor/Reporter

MARATHON, Fla. – Wild video making the rounds online shows a powerboat spinning out in rough waters in the Florida Keys. In seconds, two people are seen being ejected from the vessel and thrown into the water.

It happened over the weekend in Marathon at Race World Offshore’s 7 Mile Grand Prix, a 5.6-mile course for gas-guzzling, high-energy powerboats.

Rob O’Connell and Ervin Grant were the ones thrown off the 27-foot boat sponsored by Team Farnsworth, based in Pompano Beach.

“We caught a pretty good hit. When we came back on the water, we had a steering ram fail on the outdrive that caused us to hook,” O’Connell said. “We both got thrown out of the boat, far away from the boat. It could have rolled over or pinned us under; thank God it just spun.”

Seconds after the crash, Jack Carlson of Two Conch Charters was there with a private medical team to pluck the pair out of the water.

“We quickly got them to the Coast Guard station in Marathon, and EMS took them away,” Carlson said.

U.S. Coast Guard crews could be seen patrolling the waters but were not involved in the transport, an agency spokesperson told Local 10 News.

O’Connell said he and Grant were shaken but eventually realized they were able to move their extremities. Aside from a bruise and laceration on Grant’s foot, they escaped largely unscathed.

Larry Bliel, organizer of Race World Offshore, told Local 10 the race started late and was called off early because of weather on Sunday.

Team Farnsworth owner Win Farnsworth said racing events are for enjoyment and are largely done on a part-time basis.

“It’s to build camaraderie between our teams,” he said. “The last thing we want is anybody hurt.”

O’Connell said he’s in the process of repairing the boat and getting ready for the next race.

“It wasn’t the most optimal conditions, but if you ask a bunch of powerboat racers: ‘Do you want to go, or do you want to stay in shore?’ Ninety-nine percent are going to say, ‘Let’s go,’” he said.

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About the Author

Janine stanwood.

Janine Stanwood joined Local 10 News in February 2004 as an assignment editor. She is now a general assignment reporter. Before moving to South Florida from her Washington home, Janine was the senior legislative correspondent for a United States senator on Capitol Hill.

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