Atlantic City Weekly

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Just as Atlantic City has proven one of the most ideal vantage points on the East Coast for air shows, it is similarly superior for fans of powerboat racing.

A.C. was once home to the World Championships of offshore powerboat racing (in 1989) and has hosted several other prominent events in past years that drew racers from around the nation and beyond. This Sunday, Sept. 19, another will take place in the ocean off the A.C. Boardwalk. It will be the sixth Offshore Powerboat Association (OPA)-sanctioned event out of eight on the organization’s 2010 schedule, and entitled "Lightning on the Water."

Gunning for its fifth straight Extreme Turbine-Unlimited Class title this year is the twin-hulled, 50-foot Miss Geico, holder of numerous on-water speed records and four World Championships from 2006-’09. The boat is owned by John Haggin and operated by throttleman Scott Begovich and wheelman Marc Granet. Both have been fulltime professional speedboat racers for the past six years. Begovich recently spoke with Atlantic City Weekly by phone.

What powers Miss Geico and how fast can it go?
It’s powered by twin Lycoming T-53s, which are usually used as helicopter motors, and each one cranks out about 2,000 horsepower. In race conditions we hit 194 miles per hour in Biloxi Mississippi [in April 2009] and in testing we’ve done 210 miles per hour.
The first couple of times you [go that fast] it’s very, very scary, but it’s like anything else — you get used to it.

Was there a particular time when powerboat racing peaked in popularity?
There’s been numerous peaks and valleys in the history of powerboat racing. It had a heyday in the 1960s and ’70s and then it flat-lined for a few years. The end of the ’80s, with the whole celebrity influx, it peaked again, then for a while it seemed to fall off the face of the earth. Now is heading back up again.
The last time I raced in Atlantic City was 2002 or 2003 and it wasn’t really that big of a race, but in the early 1990s they had the World Championships there and people from all over the world there, including major stars like Chuck Norris, Don Johnson — a bunch of big-time guys. [Atlantic City’s] a town that appreciates it powerboat racing.

Can you explain how the racing classes are divided?
Basically it’s like a 24-hour Le Mans, where you have a bunch of different classes of boats. There’s class one-through-six, which are more like the weekend warriors. Class-six boats can’t exceed 70 miles-per-hour, class-five 75 (mph), class-four 85, class-three 95, class-two 105 and class-one 115. These classes were basically designed to let guys who have outdated pro-style race boats bring them out and still be able to race competitively.
After that you have your specs classes, which are the same-weight, same-motor classes. You have the V-hull class — called Super V — and two catamaran classes — one called Super Cats, which are about 140 mile-per-hour boats, and then you’ve got Factory Super Cat Light, which is a factory-stocked motor in a catamaran.
Then you’ve got the Extreme Classes, which means anything goes. We liken [Extreme Turbine-Unlimited] to a heavyweight championship — we’ve been on top four times, we’re the four-time World Champion, and anybody who wants to show up and try to knock us off the pedestal, you’re welcome to have at it. 

Why does it take two persons to operate one of these boats — a throttleman and a wheelman?
There’s too much going on for one person to do it alone. As the throttleman, I have to worry about what’s going on 100 yards up ahead, because whatever’s going on right in front of the boat I can’t do anything about. The boat doesn’t have brakes. I have to do the trim, I have to do the throttles, I do the shifting, and I monitor all the gauges. The driver steers and monitors what’s in front of the boat, and he’s also in charge of communications with the crew on land and the spotter crew up in a helicopter. At top speed, when we’re going at 190-plus miles-per-hour, we’re covering about a football field a second, so there’s way too much for one person to do. And offshore racing’s always been that way. You’re not allowed to race with one person in a boat.

Sunday’s course in Atlantic City will be a four-mile oval — is that pretty standard for racing these boats?
It’s similar to NASCAR racing. We recently raced on the St. Clair River in Michigan, which has a bend in it, so the course is different. We race in other places where we might see a dogleg or tighter turns or a triangular course. It depends on the body of water we’re racing on. But generally all the offshore or ocean courses are ovals that are roughly four miles around.