No one is likely to argue that racing boats at over 100mph is a dangerous activity. In extreme sports such as this, safety and risk management must be integral to every aspect of the event - from equipment, operating procedures, and the human element.

The ‘dunker’ combines all of these aspects into a unified crew training experience which is required of all racers, multiple times per year.

We had the pleasure of watching dunker training this morning and tried to capture the experience in photos and video. We’d like to thank the OSS Safety Team for this fun and informative opportunity.

(more…)

Racers met Monday night for the opening drivers’ meeting amidst a strong wind storm and iffy forecast for tomorrow. The 2006 Offshore Super Series Merrick World Championships are set to begin in earnest tomorrow if weather permits. Today teams finalized set-up in the dry pits and prepared for scheduled test runs tomorrow. We attended the drivers’ and volunteers’ meetings to get a feel for upcoming events. (more…)

As if you needed an excuse to get out on the water? The Offshore Super Series World Championships has additional openings for volunteers to provide race patrol and medical boats. Boats of all types can participate, but be prepared to idle out in the gulf along the race line for 4 -6 hours. Larger boats may be asked to take on medical and dive teams. Experienced boater but don’t have a boat? There are a limited number of openings for boat drivers to help crew donated vessels.

For information or to volunteer, please call Race Operations Director Jon Brunner at 817.846.8198

OSS is also looking for motivated volunteers to help with landside logistics. Call the Merrick World Cup Office at 850.837.9997 for more information.

The Offshore Super Series World Championships comes to Destin this week. The boats have already started to arrive and will begin test runs Tuesday and races on Wednesday. (more…)

See the 2006 Destin World Championship Offshore Super Series race course in Google Earth. We’ve also included placemarks for other areas of interest and activity during this years weeklong event. This map will update throughout our race coverage.

Click HERE to download.

The map requires Google Earth 4 (which is free).

To download Google Earth :

Please visit our Google Earth Marine Maps category for more Free Maps for Google Earth

Weather turned out wonderful for this year’s Emerald Coast Poker Run. We captured the action from the East end of Spectre Island along with a small crowd of other boaters. All told, we took about 1800 pictures between 3 photographers, put down around 18 cans of soda between us and the kids, and had a great time. Sorting this many photos was no easy task, but you can see the results at our 2006 Emerald Coast Poker Run Spectre Island Photo Gallery hosted by SLRsite.com. Photos are organized by boat type. Reprints are available - e-mail reprints@destinsharks.com for ordering information.