I came up with this month’s Fast Blast boat while watching the Super Stock race from the Key West offshore world championships. I watched as Nicholas Dorcich and John Bruno ran as underdogs in their 1992 Skater 28, Risky Business, against a fleet of wide-body 32-foot Doug Wright catamarans and one Skater 30 catamaran. I thought back to the days when the first Skater 24 appeared on the scene. It was so much faster than all the twin-outboard-powered V-bottoms at the time that it caused a complete reassessment of the smaller classes in offshore racing. I never drove one in a race, but I did drive this boat, Ragamuffin, in a fun run from Long Beach, California, to Catalina Island, and the boat was one of the best-riding sub-25-footers I’ve ever been in.
