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Just got off the phone with Scott Begovich of AMF Offshore Racing. Begovich throttles Miss Geico, the turbine-powered 50-foot Mystic catamaran that’s well known to offshore racing fans nationwide. Begovich told me that as of Friday, November 12, AMF Offshore Racing will cease to exist.

“With the retirement of John Haggin, AMF Offshore Racing will be going out of business on Friday,” said Begovich. “As of Monday, November 15, AMF Riviera Beach will open up with five partners to run AMF Offshore Rigging.”

The partners are Begovich and Miss Geico driver Marc Granet, Scott Colton, Gary Stray and Gary Goodell. Each partner has a 20-percent equity share in the new business. The new business will continue to field Miss Geico and will retain its Geico sponsorship, which comes up for renewal/renegotiation in 2012.

“We are pleased and confident in the new leadership of the new Miss Geico racing team and look forward to next year’s extremely busy schedule,” said Vince Giampietro, Geico’s senior marketing manager.

Begovich said that Miss Geico will stick with turbine power for the 2011 season, as the team is expecting three other turbine-powered cats to compete in the class. However, if the class doesn’t materialize, a power change for the 2012 season is likely.

“There are discussions about that,” said Begovich. “It all depends on how the 2011 season goes. We’ll give it one more go-round, but we want competition.”

Caught up with Terry Sobo, the director of sales and marketing for Nor-Tech Hi-Performance Boats in Cape Coral, Fla., this afternoon. Sobo had just returned from the Florida Powerboat Club’s annual Key West Poker Run. The fleet included Nor-Tech’s open- and enclosed-cockpit 80-footers.

“Both the 80s took off on Thursday and cut out at Stiltsville to run on the outside to Key West,” said Sobo. “I know I’m biased, but it was impressive to see both of them running in Biscayne Bay and then, later that day, pull into the harbor at Key West.”

According to Sobo, the open-cockpit 80-footer, dubbed the Super 80 Roadster by Nor-Tech and the Lady Lisa by its owner, proved equally impressive at the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show in late October. The high-performance yacht was an attention-getter that sparked record boat show sales for the company.

“I went into Lauderdale a little pessimistic,” said Sobo. “It was our third Lauderdale show in a row and we hadn’t done much in the other two, so I was wondering if it was worth it.

“I was shocked beyond belief,” Sobo continued. “We sold more boats at that show than I’ve sold in 20 years of boat shows. The primary buyer was for our 39-foot center consoles—we sold four of those plus one quad-engine with contracts and checks, and they were to new buyers who weren’t familiar with Nor-Tech.

Having the 80 there really justified to a lot of people that we kind of know what we’re doing,” he concluded. “There were a lot of skeptics saying, ‘What do they know about building a center console?’ But when they see the 80 and the work that went into it, and then they see the other performance boats on display, they believe we can build a center console. The 80 was a showpiece that really proved our point.”

Heading into yesterday’s Super Boat International Key West Offshore World Championship races, the battles for the Super Cat and Superboat Unlimited class titles were tight. Tied for points with seconds separating them, the Amsoil and Stihl Super Cat teams knew that Sunday’s 10-lap race was in essence a winner-take-all affair. In Superboat Unlimited, Cintron had a slight points advantage over CMS 3 but was more than three minutes behind on time, which could have been a factor in the final decision.

“Our mindset has always been that this is Key West and anything can happen—and that Sunday is going to be a big race,” said Marc Granet, Cintron’s driver after the boat broke a crankshaft and CMS 3 finished first in Friday’s race. “We have a new set of motors coming in, and we’re going to test all day on Saturday and put together the best setup we can for Sunday.”

As it turned out, Granet and his throttleman, Rich Wyatt, didn’t have much to worry about in Sunday’s event, as CMS 3 broke down after five laps. Granet and Wyatt cruised to the title with an average speed of 106.88 mph.

On the flip side, Amsoil throttleman Bob Teague and driver Paul Whittier had plenty to worry about in their Super Cat battle with Stihl, which was the closest race in any class during the SBI Key West Worlds.

“It was a battle,” said Teague, who with Whittier in Amsoil also took the Offshore Powerboat Association World Cat Lite title last month in Orange Beach, Ala. “I think we passed them on the third lap, but they were on our backs the whole way.”

This what I like about the Super Boat International Key West Offshore Championships: The three-race format rewards consistency. At the SBI Key West Worlds, you can’t just have a lucky day. You need to have three lucky—and of course skillful and tactical—days.

In Wednesday’s Super Cat race, Stihl took first place ahead of Amsoil by just four seconds. According to SBI’s unofficial results of today’s race, Amsoil edged out Stihl by six seconds, meaning that in terms of time Amsoil has two seconds on Stihl and in terms of points they are dead even. And that means for all intents and purposes Sunday’s race means everything in the Super Cat class.

Turnabout—of the mechanical kind—appears to have been fair play in today’s Superboat Unlimited class, where yesterday’s winner, Cintron, failed to complete the final two laps and finished second. CMS 3, which broke before it could finish its final lap on Wednesday, completed all seven of its laps today.

By finishing seven minutes ahead of Cintron today, CMS 3 made up Wednesday’s deficit of 3 minutes and 24 seconds and is now 3 minutes and 36 seconds ahead of Cintron. But the boats are close in points, and if today’s race proved anything it’s that no lead is safe in the three-format of SBI’s Key West Worlds.

A power move, so to speak, may have been the key to Cintron’s victory in yesterday’s first round of the Superboat Unlimited class at the Super Boat International 2010 Key West Offshore World Championships. The 50-foot Mystic catamaran is powered by a pair of 1,500-hp Stotler engines built by the cat’s full-time driver Herb Stotler, who has stepped out of the cockpit for the SBI Worlds to focus on his power plants. (Another boat in the event also runs Stotler power.) Replacing him in the cockpit is Marc Granet, the full-time driver of another 50-foot Mystic, the turbine-powered Miss Geico.

“We went into the race with 1,300 hp per side,” said Granet. “We turned down the engines to make sure they were going to last.”

Based on Cintron’s average speed of 114.9 mph over seven laps, you’d have never known it. With a pair of 1,500-hp Sterling engines under its hatches, CMS 3, a 48-foot MTI piloted by Bob Bull and MTI principal Randy Scism, was just slightly faster with an average speed of 114.96 mph. Unfortunately for Bull and Scism, that average speed was over six laps—a mechanical issue knocked them out of the race before they finished the final lap.

“It was good old-fashioned, locking-horns, high-speed racing with no dirty play—it was just whoever had the best racing line,” said Granet regarding Cintron’s six-lap battle with CMS 3. “We were clawing back and forth. Rich performed unbelievably in the cockpit today. He did exactly what we needed to do.”

The failure of CMS to complete all seven laps left open the door to second place for the Superheat cat (the former Cintron boat) throttled by Joey Imprescia, which started strong with a 115.4-mph lap but quickly dropped off the pace with mechanical problems. Still, despite finishing roughly 3-1/2 minutes behind the leader, the boat completed all seven laps and is still in the hunt for the title—as is CMS.

That’s because like the rest of the fleet, the Supercat Unlimited class races tomorrow and Sunday.

“This is Key West, and you cannot let your guard down or you’ll go home disappointed,” said Granet. “Bob and Randy are fierce competitors, and I expect them to come out tomorrow with their guns loaded.”

As anticipated, the battle between a couple of Skater catamarans, Stihl and Amsoil, materialized yesterday in the Super Cat class during the Super Boat International 2010 Key West Offshore World Championships. In a tight seven-lap race from beginning to end, the Stihl team of  Robert "J.R." Noble and Grant Bruggemann finished just four seconds ahead of Bob Teague and Paul Whittier in Amsoil, which recently took the Cat Light title during the Offshore Powerboat Association World Championships in Orange Beach, Ala.

“The conditions were great and I think we hit the setup really well,” said Noble. “Racing against Bob Teague was as exciting as always—it was one of the most exciting races I’ve ever been in. It was really memorable. Of course we want to win, but I don’t really care what happens after that race.”

“They’re fast,” said Teague in reference to the Stihl team. “They were quicker out of the turns, but we were faster in the straights.”

An aggressive cornering move early in the race reportedly gave Stihl the lead, which it never relinquished.

“Once you get behind in Key West, you’re at a real disadvantage,” said Teague.

With two races to go—one tomorrow and one Sunday—and four seconds separating the top-two finishers, the fight for the SBI Super Cat World Championship is anything but over. A little less than a minute behind with a third-place finish, Loriblu Racing/Fastboats.com is still in the hunt, as is fourth-place finisher Infinity, despite being more than two minutes behind Stihl and Amsoil. That’s the beauty of a three-race format: Consistency, durability and luck play major roles.

“From what I hear, it’s supposed to get rougher tomorrow, so that’s going to change everything,” said Noble. “We’ll wait what the conditions are like and see and set up our boat accordingly.

“When it gets rough, you have more to worry about than the next race,” he added. “You have to take care of your equipment to make sure you can finish Sunday’s race as well.”