writer: Scott G.
If you're like most car enthusiasts, just the thought of big horsepower and speed likely gets your adrenaline pumping. Putting your foot to the floor and tearing up the tarmac, paving your own route through the desert, or simply sprinting to triple digits speeds - there are few things in life as exhilarating time and time again.
For some, triple digit speeds and big horsepower aren't exclusive to an automobile. If you are 51-year-old real estate investor, Rick Bowling, there are two alternative elements that will do just as well to get your heart racing. Water and a boat! By water, we're not talking about a glassy lake or a large open river; rather the open ocean where massive swells and choppy waters reign. And the boat is not your ordinary day cruiser or ski boat. No, it's a full-blown offshore racer.
So what makes a man want to take to the water to get his adrenalin rush? Could it be insanity? Or is it passion? According to Rick, all it took was one high speed ride in a 30' Scarab race boat nearly 24 years ago. After that he was hooked. If that is all it took, we'd have to refer back to our insanity query... Just kidding.
"Gone Again" is the name of Rick's latest, rather "re-engineered" boat. This is actually the boat he had built back in the early '90's to satisfy his offshore racing addiction. (The originally was made in '94 by Talon Custom Marine.) During its original years of operation, Gone Again and its crew captured many offshore racing championships. Rick also drove this boat to a world speed record of 138.040 MPH under Jelly Belly sponsorship.
Unfortunately, it was just a matter of time before Gone Again's luck began to run thin. During a race in St. Petersburg, Florida back in 2000, the boat flipped over at 120 MPH and was completely destroyed. The remains of the battered boat were recovered, placed on a trailer, and hauled to CK Motorsports (CKM) in Nunica, Michigan. Here, the "re-engineering" of Gone Again took place, basically making it a new "one of a kind" boat.
At CKM, architectural plans were laid out as a new experiment was underway; to take the race boat and create a fully enclosed pleasure craft that would provide a race-like feel without the high-risk. This experiment took nearly two years and some 5,000 hours of labor to complete, but the revamped, custom 37-foot long, 10.5-foot wide catamaran is now ready to go. This time, Rick's "re-engineered" boat incorporated a few new features and amenities. The most significant is a special watertight canopy designed and built by Douglas Marine. This greenhouse fully encapsulates the crew and protects them from the elements, including the noise of the two blower topped, 1000-plus horsepower engines built by Sterling Performance.
The interior layout of the cockpit is straightforward. This is a race boat after all. Up front, a carbon fiber dash is littered with instruments. Immediately to the right of the steering wheel is a standard Horizon Marine Radio, a definite necessity for anyone interested in offshore travel. Clustered around the steering wheel and overflowing to the passenger side of the dash, 20 Auto Meter gauges and a single Gaffrig 180 MPH speedometer monitor nearly every aspect of the boat. Mounted to the left of the gauges are two monitors. The first is a TFT color display connected to a camera mounted in the rear of the boat. This aids Rick in backing up Gone Again since the cockpit does not allow for good rear visibility. The second is a Garmin GPSMAP 215/225. With no reference points in the ocean, this becomes a bit of a requirement to find your way around a race coarse, or to simply find your way home.