Thompson's Key West: Super Boat Races

After our week of Fantasy Fest activities it was nice to get back to "reality". We had been told by one of our favorite bar tenders that besides Fantasy Fest one of the neat things one should do when living in K.W. or visiting is watching the Super Boat International Boat Races from either Fort Zach or the Westin Resort balcony. I am not going to claim to know much about any sort of racing nor do I particularly enjoy watching it but I must say this was a pretty neat experience. If you would like to know about the rules, see images, or results this is the website to peruse (superboat.com).

I had the opportunity to go to the Westin for day two of the races. When I parked and locked up my bike I first noticed how loud the boats were. In fact when you sat at our house in the screened in porch you could distinctly hear the races occurring. Approaching the Mallory Square area, all I could see where people lined up along the sea wall. They were standing on light poles and chairs to get a glimpse of the action. Immediately upon entering the crowd I heard and saw a lime green large boat go flying by followed by other boats of similar models and then the team helicopters. The helicopters were my favorite. They followed their boat around the one mile loop, but their purpose I am unsure about. I would imagine they are relaying information back to the pit crew or they were the pit crew chatting with the boat pilots about lap times etc..

All of the below images are from the balcony at the Westin:

Many boats would anchor along the track. It seemed a little scary because if there was a wreck it seems that the boats along the path would be in danger.

Friday night of Super Boat Race week we road our bikes down town to view the boats. All of the race teams lined their boats up along duval street for public viewing. Most of the crew and captains of the boats were there to answer questions and chat with fans. Some of the boats were understated and were there to just be viewed while other teams had large parties surrounding them with music and people dancing on the bow.

This boat party cracked me up because it was all girls dancing and you can not see this in the image but there was just a crowd of men in a semi circle enjoying the show... ha.