Making a Splash : Ventura Revved Up for Powerboat Grand Prix

Laid-back surf city joins the jet set today to briefly become the powerboat capital of the West Coast.

Ventura Harbor Village is awash in checkered flags.

More than 60 garishly colored sleek boats--similar to Indy cars, cost up to $600,000 each and reach speeds of more than 140 mph--await the waves in the dry pits on Anchors Way.

And with the majority of Ventura’s 2,200 motel and hotel rooms booked three weeks ago, municipal officials expect thousands of people to line the beaches to watch the roaring machines kick up rooster tails.

“This is big time for Ventura, big time for the West Coast even,” said Gerry Nordskog, publisher of the Ventura-based magazine Powerboat, who played the leading role in bringing the races here. “We haven’t had a West Coast race with all the teams coming from all over the country in more than a dozen years.”

This is the ninth consecutive year powerboats have raced in Ventura. But the eight previous events were relatively small regional gatherings with 25 to 30 powerboats and a budget of $50,000.

This version boasts a $300,000 budget and is doubly billed as the Ventura Offshore Grand Prix Festival and the North American Championships.

Drivers will compete for a purse of $50,000 in the sixth and final race in a national circuit that has attracted racers and visitors from as far away as Saudi Arabia, Japan and Australia.

Double the customary number of boats will be here, with a festival atmosphere at four locations, including “wet” and “dry” pits that will allow people to mingle with the drivers and see the boats up close.

There will be little solitary communing with the crashing surf on misty beaches this weekend. Instead, it will be glitz, howling engines and madding crowds.

“It’s glamorous, there’s a perception it’s expensive, it’s death defying, it’s exciting, it’s intriguing in the fact that people can build equipment that can endure the rigors of rough water,” said Bob Teague, a Valencia racer, boat and engine builder and West Coast commissioner for the American Power Boat Assn., sanctioning body for the Ventura event.

For years, powerboat racing consisted of aficionados jumping in their powerful boats and zipping into the open ocean for endurance races between, for example, Long Beach and Catalina Island.

But for the past five years, in an attempt to make the sport more spectator and sponsor friendly, races have increasingly been held on circular courses that are largely visible from shore, Teague said.

These days many of the boats have enclosed cockpits salvaged from military surplus F-16 fighter jets. This has prompted race organizers to station paramedic divers at regular intervals along the course to rescue the two- or three-person crews in case of catastrophe.

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But powerboat racing is not like stock car competitions, with all cars pretty much the same.

There are two boat types: a V-bottom, a familiar looking conventional vessel, and a catamaran, which has two hulls joined by a deck that is designed to create less drag in the water.

Then there are nine boat classes, each with different performance capabilities. Somewhat confusingly, boats from different classes often compete in the same race.

At the low end are souped-up pleasure boats available from your local boat dealership with safety features added for racing. They can cost as much as $300,000 and reach 100 mph.

At the high end are ominous-looking monsters that are up to 46 feet long and rocket along at more than 140 mph propelled by two 1,000 horsepower engines, Powerboat editor Eric Colby said. By comparison, a typical pickup truck has one 250 horsepower engine.

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There is even a boat so unique, it’s in a class by itself. Painted an electric blue and yellow, it is nicknamed the “bat boat” because of its winged appearance.

Officials can only guess how many people will turn out to watch the new event.

The Ventura Visitors & Convention Bureau expects 5,000 to 10,000 out-of-town visitors, who they expect to spend enough money to allow the city to recoup its $60,000 promotional budget that has included national television spots on ESPN.

Crowds could reach 50,000 each day, Teague said. Nordskog declines to even guess.

But if the races are the success organizers expect, the event will become an annual fixture on the festival calendar.

“I would like to eventually see 80 to 100 boats here,” Nordskog said. “One hundred thousand people is something to shoot for.”