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Tickets to Paradise

There are a lot of Italian men here. There just are. I guess that’s how stereotypes come to be. Virtually everywhere I look down the docks at Liberty Landing Marina in Jersey City, New Jersey, I see jet-black hair slicked behind dark sunglasses. It’s a sunny summer morning, the kind that brings out the tank tops in women and men alike. I’m not going to lie to you: There are gold chains, too. Not on every neck, of course, but on enough of the thick, masculine ones that you’d notice. There are tattoos, as well, but not as many as you’d think. And none of the skin art is of bare-breasted women, at best as I can tell at 8:45 in the morning.

A few teenage sons weave excitedly down the docks alongside fathers and uncles, but for the most part it’s middle-aged men with tubby bellies downing caffeine to make up for last night’s free passes to Larry Flint’s Hustler Club in New York City. Through bloodshot eyes, everyone checks out the detailing and powerplants aboard the 111 muscle machines about to make the annual New York City Powerboat Poker Run. My Viagra, a Donzi out of Cortland, New York, is a few slips away from Aquaholics, which came from Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire. I spot a Scarab called Bad Habits and an Outerlimits branded No Discipline. Revving engines compete with screaming paint jobs for attention, and I soon learn that flames on the bow are passé. Apparently, orange and purple fangs are all the rage.

Now, I’m going to be honest here: I am the yin to these yangs. Sure, I know who Big Pussy is on The Sopranos and I tend to drive 20 miles an hour over the speed limit on the New Jersey Turnpike, but where boating is concerned, my crowd is more the 50-something couples from Maine who watch the coast go by from a comfortable trawler at 10 knots. On the rare occasions when I’m hung over, it’s from too much Bordeaux, not shots of Jaegermeister. I happen to have a bra size that typically impresses the kinds of guys here today, but I prefer to clad myself in loose T-shirts instead of Spandex push-ups. Which are, by the way, also starting to show up on the docks as the morning wears on. And yes, I do feel self-conscious about my limited use of hairspray.

In the distance I spot Marilyn DeMartini, who handles public relations for Florida-based Cigarette Racing Team. She calls me over to meet Bob Scanlon, who owns Cignificant Other, the 42-foot Tiger that will be my ride for this afternoon’s 75-mile run up the Hudson River to Ossining, New York, then Haverstraw, New York, and back to Liberty Landing Marina across from Manhattan on the river’s New Jersey side.

Thankfully, Bob looks like a nice enough guy, with short blond hair and a broad smile. When he’s not zipping across the water, he’s working full time as a firefighter in Lake George, New York.  I’d put him in his late 30s or early 40s, definitely younger and more apple pie-looking than most of the men at today’s event. He tells me his brother, Rick, will also be aboard, as well as their friends Billy Coon, Charlie Wieman and—I’m not making this up—Safari Slosek. They’ve all got matching blue-and-white racing shirts, sort of like upgraded bowling uniforms. Marilyn will be cruising with us, too, as will Bob’s friend Lucia Maresca, who was the only female skipper at last year’s event. She would have been at the helm again today had her Formula 260SS, Nauti Gal, not been stolen from a New Jersey boatyard a few weeks earlier.

So, I think to myself, let’s do some math: eight people—five of them pretty big dudes—in the cockpit of a 42-foot Cigarette that has two bucket seats and a rear bench probably meant to hold three people comfortably. The plan is to pound upriver at 70 mph, pushed by twin 572-cubic-inch, naturally aspirated Mesa Racing Engines turning 725 horsepower apiece. We’ll be one of the slower boats; the really ripped hulls hit 180 mph. But that’s not my main concern.

“How will we all fit?” I ask first mate Billy.

“We stand,” he answers. “Otherwise, it hurts your back.” He pushes his long, tousled black hair out of his eyes and directs my gaze to the bench seat, adding almost apologetically, “but it’s not too bad back there.”

Then he tells me it took him about two hours to clean the blood off the bench seat in time for my arrival. It seems he was leaning too close to the passenger-side handrail when Cignificant Other took a wave hit during a practice run. One of his buddies squeezed his nose back into place so he could ride again this afternoon.

Greeeaaat.

I step past the purple swim platform and climb aboard.

Never before in my adult life have I so badly wanted my mommy.

 

GETTING IN THE GAME

High-performance powerboats are a unique breed. They can be monohulls or catamarans, and they’re built to literally fly across wavetops at speeds approaching 200 mph. The manufacturers of these boats aren’t as generally well-known as production builders, but at a poker run, the monikers Outerlimits, Eliminator, Formula, Fountain, Spectre and Baja are as easily identified as Sea Ray and Bayliner might be elsewhere. Cigarette, my host for the day, is one of the marquee brands in the niche. Scanlon’s used 42-footer, he says, is worth about $200,000, but a new model the same size would run somewhere in the $500,000 range, depending on the engine configuration and paint job (which can be $60,000 or more on its own).

Cigarette Racing Team flags fly high at poker runs, which are to high-performance powerboating what weekend raft-ups are to everyday cruising. They started back in the mid-1980s and have since become a boating subculture, with more than 100 poker runs taking place every year—and 50 to 150 high-performance powerboats entering each event. The New York City Powerboat Poker Run is but one, with skippers paying an entry fee in exchange for the right to collect playing cards at various stops and then compare five-card hands at the finish line. The National Powerboat Association, which sponsors the New York City event, is careful not to call it a race or give awards to the fastest boats. Instead, trophies go to “Best Poker Hand,” “Best-Looking Crew,” “Best-Looking Boat,” and so forth. The same is true at poker runs all over the country, and a lot of the guys here in New Jersey today attend many of those, as well. Though Scanlon is from Upstate New York, his favorite poker run is a weeklong event down in Key West, Florida. In fact, he and a few of his pals who will ride with us today attend at least two or three poker runs every year.

All the hoopla and flash can mask the serious nature of these machines. They are powerful, to say the least, and at events like this one, the water makes operating them even more challenging. The Hudson River, especially where it runs along the west side of lower Manhattan, becomes an ever-changing obstacle course when dozens of speedboats rip simultaneously up its middle. “It gets like an ocean in here,” Bob’s friend Charlie quips, referring to the wakes bashing into bulwarks on both sides of the river, then back into the channel, into one another and, eventually, into the boats. Six-footers churn in all directions around the narrow, shallow-draft hulls.The speed and conditions can combine to create tragedy, as was the case at last summer’s Smoke on the Water event in Grand Haven, Michigan. There, a 42-footer capsized, ejecting all four crew members. Two survived, one was pronounced dead, and one was lost in the water and presumed dead, as well.

It’s the kind of story that poker run promoters don’t like to see in the papers, which is why they go to great lengths to have safety measures in place. Pace boats typically keep the drivers at slower speeds along crowded waterways, and a veritable army of onlookers are at the ready should anything go awry. “We have marshal boats, police, Coast Guard boats, paramedics at each of the events, helicopters, divers—just in case something happens along the route,” explains Bill Taylor, who owns Poker Runs of America, a company that organizes more than 100 events a year. “You could have an accident, a fire onboard. A broken propeller going 80 mph can cause an accident. Poker Runs of America usually has two paramedic boats that follow to make sure everything is all right.”

I have to say, even though The National Powerboat Association seems to be on top of things, it’s hard for me to believe that every guy registered for today’s New York City event has considered all the safety and seamanship variables (especially the turkey wearing a Sopranos T-shirt who called me “hon” near the refreshment stand).  Still, Scanlon, my host, has a sense of seriousness that calms my nerves.

“I get so worked up, I get the dry heaves,” he says of the days before each poker run. “You’ve got to get the boat ready. You’re responsible for the gauges, for all of your guys. I change every fluid. I get the weight down. I clean everything.”

Just when I begin to think I’m in good hands, when I begin to feel at ease about what we’re preparing to do as we pull out of our slip, Scanlon whips out an American flag bandana and ties it around his head. He slowly nudges the throttles forward. He pulls out a pair of goggles and hands me a spare. A mischievous grin creeps across his lips.

“Then you turn the key, and it’s good,” he says. “It starts to be fun.”

He cranks up the CD player and noses Cignificant Other into line behind today’s other participants. The engine noise is deafening, but not so loud as Scanlon’s Bose speakers, which are reverberating with such force that I can’t tell whether it’s them or the powerplants shaking my butt right up off the back seat. I no longer wonder why some waterfront communities are banning these noise-making machines altogether, and I can tell by the smiles on our team’s faces that they’re like the majority of go-fast boat owners who really couldn’t care less what anybody else thinks of them. (“There’s always someone around who doesn’t like the noise,” Taylor would tell me later, “but then there’s hundreds around who love it. It’s like music to their ears.”)

My goggles squeeze my face as I try to squint over the bow. I wrap my fingers firmly around the handrail. It’s crowded here in the cockpit, but I figure these guys are so big, I can bounce into them like the ropes of a boxing ring instead of out of the boat should the pounding get bad. I also prepare mentally to keep my head high, as I prefer my nose intact and bloodless.

I’m the only one who seems the least bit nervous. Everyone else is listening to Eddie Money scream through the speakers and shouting along with fists pumping toward the horizon: “I’ve got two tickets to paradise…”

 

RIDING WITH THE BOYS

Not ten minutes into the ride, before we even reach the Tappan Zee Bridge and really open up the throttles,  I’m mentally thanking my creator for giving me a nicely cushioned rear end. The pounding is nearly constant, as is the rolling in the churned-up Hudson. A few times, I feel like I’m going to be tossed overboard, but just as I think to yell “Holy Crap!” the boys around me shout “Yee Haw!” I try to steady my rattling teeth enough to fake a smile, and I figure I’m at least better off than the half-dozen kayakers who are swamped to starboard, having stupidly chosen this of all afternoons for a leisurely paddle around Manhattan.

Then we ramp up speed a bit, and I’m surprised I don’t feel seasick. At this velocity, we catch air while flying over a few wave tops, but we’re steady in terms of the rolling that so often leaves me heaving. Then again, the pounding every time we land creates its own issues for my body. I finally know why all those boat babes have fake boobs: They don’t bounce. I swear my nipples hit my kneecaps a few times as I clung to the handrail for dear life.

Just as we leave the Tappan Zee Bridge in our wake, several of the fastest boats are already on their way back to the marina—having zipped up to Ossining and Haverstraw and back again in the time it took me to adjust my goggles. Bob eyes the top-speed go-fast machines with lust and pushes Cignificant Other’s throttles farther forward, launching us at close to our day’s top speed of 75 mph. This must be what astronauts feel like, I think, as hundreds of gallons of fuel explode and force them out of the atmosphere. I’m the only one still sitting, holding on like a first-time roller coaster rider. The rest of our team members are on their feet, crouching like cheetahs and looking for the next wavetop to use as a launch ramp.

I’m wondering just how black and blue one’s backside can get when I hear a loud pop. Cignificant Other’s engines have barely rattled to silence by the time our first mate, Billy, has opened the engine hatch and crawled in. Bob turns around in his skipper’s seat, worry lines spreading across his forehead.

The diagnosis is a blown outdrive. A new one will cost anywhere from $2,500 to $8,500, and it requires a haul-out for installation. With Sing Sing prison ahead in the distance, we realize we’re done for the day before even reaching our first stop.

Several other go-fast boats slow down and idle over to us, asking whether we’re all right and tossing engine oil our way. Mike Kennah and Steve Marini, both from Albany and riding aboard the Formula 280SS Hammertime, pass over a dozen cold beers with a sympathetic smile. We begin limping back toward Liberty Landing Marina at 7 mph, which usually suits me just fine but after this morning feels like crawling through quicksand. The CD player still works, and Bob pops in Toby Keith. The crew don’t seem to mind the leisurely pace, and they set about turning Cignificant Other into a floating pub. Shouting louder than the engines whizzing by, they scream along with the lyrics, something about the U. S. of A. sticking a boot up your ass.

By the time we pull back in at the marina, the barbecue pickins are slim and the awards are about to start. Oddly, all the other drivers still have perfectly slicked-back hair, but their expressions have gone from tough guy to tired out. Looking at them again, I don’t notice the gold chains so much as the relaxed smiles. One 50-something guy aboard the Outerlimits Super Star has such a perfect ’do that you just know it was a pompadour back in the day. By the looks of him, he probably owns a strip-mall store out in Massapequa, gave his daughters nice weddings with frilly gowns, and knows the local pizza guy like a brother. On most sunny Saturday afternoons, he’d be wrestling with a lawn mower in his half-acre yard, but not today. He’s in a bright yellow team shirt, wife nowhere in sight, feeling the sun on his face. He’s not “Daddy the Money Tree” or “Tired Mr. Bossman.” He’s Super Star, with taillights winking as he leaves his life behind at 90 mph.

The same happens to be true of my new friends aboard Cignificant Other. The boat, you see, is named for Bob’s wife—a financial whiz who bought it for him and his fireman buddies to enjoy. I could write a lot of things about their partying ways, their predilection for crazy speeds, their strange amusement at breaking their noses at sea, but that just wouldn’t be the essence of what today’s poker run is about.

“What you should write about,” Bob’s friend Charlie says, “is a bunch of guys making $40,000 a year who get to go out and do this.” He raises his beer bottle in the air and puffs out his chest. “I mean, come on!”  ♦

 

For a $650 entry fee, a hundred bucks per crewman, and a grand in gas money, the buddies aboard Cignificant Other CAn scream upriver for a few hours at the annual New York City Powerboat Poker run.