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Under the leadership of Doug Smith, the founder and former owner of Baja Performance Boats, Checkmate Boats has advanced on several fronts including adding new models and upgrading existing models, as well as enhancing overall product quality—the company even revamped its website earlier this month. With the collapse of the production performance-boat world, Smith has correctly recognized that regional builders such as Checkmate, which is based in Bucyrus, Ohio, offers models from 21 to 35 feet long and has a strong following in the Midwest, can go a long way toward filling the void.

Smith’s take on the market at present? Smaller, outboard-powered models are the way to go, and that will be Checkmate’s focus for the immediate future.

“We are concentrating on several new outboard models,” Smith told me in a recent email. “In the field research I’ve done, it seems that the under-30-foot market is selling but the over-30-foot market is very slow and anything that is being sold is at huge discounts.

“We are surprised that the Mercury Verados are so strong,” Smith added. “We are finding that speed difference between the Mercury OptiMax outboard engines and the Verado engines is only to two to three miles per hour.”

Within the next week or so, a pair of Mercury Racing 1,350-hp engines should arrive at Marine Technology, Inc., in Wentzville, Mo. According to MTI principal Randy Scism, the turbocharged engines will go into a new 48-long pleasure catamaran owned by well-known offshore racer Bob Bull. Scism said his goal is to have the cat, as well as a 36-footer with twin Mercury Racing 700 SCi engines, on display at the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show Oct. 28-Nov. 1

Yesterday, Scism and Bull toured the Mercury Racing factory in Fond Du Lac, Wis., where they saw Bull’s engines being assembly and watched a pair of “mule” 1350s used for validation run on the company’s dynamometers.

“Bob had never been there (to Mercury Racing) before,” Scism told me this morning. “It was impressive.

“We should have the engines here in the next week or two,” he continued. “Our plan is to get them in the boat, do our testing and then get the boat to Fort Lauderdale.”

During the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout late last month, I had a great conversation with a respected offshore racer. We chatted about a bunch of different subjects—he’s a smart and engaging guy—and generally found we agreed on things related to the go-fast powerboat world in general and offshore racing in particular.

But when our talk turned to the Miss Geico turbine-powered 50-foot Mystic catamaran, we couldn’t have been on more opposite sides of the fence. He believes, as some other offshore racers do—he’s far from alone—that Miss Geico is “bad for the sport.” When I asked him why, he explained that Miss Geico running circles around rest of the fleet and essentially racing no one is “confusing for the spectators” and “detracts from the real racing.”

On his first point, I had no argument. I’ve heard countless questions from spectators on why “the green boat” is so much faster than everything else. It is confusing.

But then, I’ve heard countless questions about the countless classes in offshore racing. So it would be a major stretch—and I mean major—to say that Miss Geico is the primary source of spectator confusion, or that the confusion would subside if the boat weren’t running.

On his second point, I had nothing but argument because I don’t understand how creating general spectator interest detracts from “the real racing” Can anyone suggest with a straight face that if Miss Geico disappeared its fans would flock to see the other classes?

David Scott’s multiple Anheuser-Busch-backed boats, which often ran with little or no competition, are long gone from racecourse. So, too, is the Tommy Bahama campaign of Mark and Paul Nemschoff. (Although it should be noted that Tommy Bahama had tons of competition in the Super Cat class.) Both were fan favorites.

Did those fans, once Scott and the Nemschoffs retired from offshore racing, switch allegiances to other classes and other boats? There are no hard numbers one way or another, but I would argue that when those boats stopped competing, their fans stopped watching. And the overall fan base decreased.

Just as it would if the Miss Geico team hung it up now.

Reasonable people can agree to disagree, and that’s what my offshore racing friend and I did during our talk at the Shootout. But this is Friday, and if you follow this column you know much I like to report good news on Fridays. So here it is.

Miss Geico is still with us.

Caught up with Susan Patterson, the vice president of sales and marketing for Concept Boats, for a story I’m writing on the company’s 44’ Sport Yacht. (The article will appear on Boats.com in October). The Opa-Locka, Fla., company has built eight 44-footer’s in a combination of T-top and fully-enclosed cockpit versions, to date. The most popular power choice has been triple 300-hp outboard engines.

Patterson said the company will soon offer the boat with diesel power. That’s a departure for Concept, which has historically gone the outboard-power route with its offerings.

“We’ve had requests for it, so we will build it,” she said. “We’re a semi-custom boat builder, so we’re more than willing to do things like that for our customers.”

The 44’ Sport Yacht was introduced two years ago at the annual Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show.

Growth through acquisition—that definitely seems to be the strategy for Frisini Motorsports in the high-performance powerboat world. Earlier this year, the company bought well-known catamaran builder Spectre Performance Boats and immediately began retooling the line and planning new models. Earlier this month, the New Jersey-based company purchased Sonic Powerboats, a well-established V-bottom line. (Spectre and Sonic models are manufactured in Florida.)

“Our whole thinking is that we want to be a boat company that will offer every kind of boat,” said John Cunningham, director of sales and marketing for Frisini Motorsports. “We don’t want to have to tell you to go down the street to find the boat you want.

“I am in the process of looking at two other boat companies that will expand our horizons even more,” he added. “I think people will be really shocked with what we’ll be offering. We want our dealers to have something for everyone.”

Asked whether Typhoon Service Center in Toms River, N.J., which reportedly is being acquired by company principal Mike Frisina, will be the first Frisini Motorsports dealer to offer the Spectre and Sonic lines, Cunningham said he didn’t know.

“The subject has come up, but I don’t have an answer to that,” he said. “That’s not really a Frisini Motorsports deal, that’s a Tony Frisina deal. I don’t even know where they’re at with it.”

On September 11, 2001, I was in Oakland International Airport at 6 a.m. waiting for a flight to Kansas City that never took off. Along with hundreds of others in the airport that morning, I watched the twin towers of the World Trade Centers fall. I wept with strangers, I waited until noon for luggage—baggage handlers had no experience with sending luggage the other way back then—and went home to hold my family and try to make sense of something that will never make sense.

On September 11, 2007, at around noon, I was sitting in a Florida hospital operating room that had been transformed into a makeshift morgue with Vicki Newton, my publisher at the time time for Powerboat magazine. We sat there together with the body of photographer Tom Newby, who had died a few hours earlier in a helicopter accident near Sarasota Bay, saying goodbye to a man we cherished and trying to make sense of something that will never make sense.

To compare the two tragedies, separated by exactly six years, would be unfair both to those who perished in the September 11 incident and Tom Newby, who perished in the September 11 accident. One was an act of madness and evil. The other was ... I don't know what the other was, beyond a horrible accident.

Both have their anniversary tomorrow.

There is nothing I can say about what happened on September 11, 2001, that many have not said better already. I felt the loss that most Americans felt—I didn't know anyone in particular who died, I just felt great sadness, and more than a little anger, at what had happened to my fellow—and very innocent—Americans.

My fellow Americans. That means something. Really means something. Because as the poet John Donne put it, "No man is an island, unto himself. Every man is a part of the continent, a piece of the main."

As for Tom Newby, my friend and colleague for almost 13 years, I can say this. He was a great photographer and friend. He was even a better father. And he is missed to this day, as if this day were just three years ago, by everyone who knew him.

God's speed, my dear old friend. Your friends love you. And we miss you so.