TAKE FIVE: Offshore Powerboat Racing

Saturday, Oct. 7, 2006 | 7:57 a.m.

What: Offshore Super Series National Championships and the Pacific Offshore Powerboat Racing Association

When: Today-Sunday

Where: Special Events Beach at Lake Mead

Tickets: Free, although there is a $5 charge for a weekly national park entry permit.

On the Web: www.offshoresuperseries.com and www.pacificoffshore.com

There will be smoke on the water when the Offshore Super Series drops anchor at Lake Mead for its annual national championship races this weekend.

"It's been referred to as the most dangerous form of motor sport," said Dave Scott, driver of the Budweiser Select boat, which has six first-place finishes in nine series starts heading into the supercharged regatta on Lake Mead.

I asked Scott to describe the sensation of running Indy 500 speeds on a racetrack that moves.

"The best way I can describe it is going down the road at 200 mph in a car that has no brakes and no shock absorbers and running over speed bumps that are constantly moving and changing in size," Scott says. "It can be quite violent, and you're always on the edge."

Multiply that by 12, the number of boats that usually qualify for the final, and they start setting an extra place at Davy Jones' Locker.

I asked Scott how close the boats get while speeding around the water like hungry barracudas.

"As close as we have to," he said.

That's why there's usually smoke on the water.

You can rock these boats

Unlike their cousins, the unlimited hydroplanes, a warm breeze won't disrupt the offshore boats when they stick their rudders in Lake Mead. Special Events Beach hosted several hydroplane races during the 1980s and early '90s only to have brisk winds and choppy waters turn the racing fleet into flotsam and jetsam. "We'd prefer it to be calm," Scott said. "But if we have five- and six-footers (waves), that's just part of the game."

All hands (and some feet) on deck

Offshore powerboat racing features two-man crews consisting of the Skipper, or driver, and his Little Buddy. Actually, the little buddy is called the throttleman, and the two work in concert to propel the boat over the water at speeds in excess of 200 mph. The low-tech way to describe the interaction between the two men in the cockpit is that one steers while the other works the pedals.

Twice as Vice

Scott's throttleman is Johnny Tomlinson, who was a technical adviser on the recent "Miami Vice" feature movie. Tomlinson was responsible for teaching actors Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx how to walk on water, or the close as you are going to get to it in this lifetime. In return, the Budweiser Select team was supposed to be featured in the opening scene of the movie, which apparently wound up on the bottom of the sea, next to the Seaview and the Flying Sub. But there's always the DVD and those extra scenes on the bonus disc.

Which one is Dale Jr.?

Offshore racing has been described as "NASCAR on water," and the similarities don't end with the bright colors of the vehicles and the sponsor decals plastered on their sides. Like NASCAR, a sport spawned by daredevils with heavy right feet running moonshine across state lines, offshore racing also has been linked to an illegal activity. The racing boats, hard to detect by radar, are an evolution of those used to smuggle drugs into South Beach before Crockett and Tubbs of Miami Vice, TV division, got wind of it.

Stubble in the cockpit

Speaking of Sonny Crockett, his alter ago, actor Don Johnson, was Super Boat world champion in 1988 and later served as commissioner of the Offshore Professional Tour. The sport has always attracted the rich and famous although not as much now as in the early 1990s, when actors Chuck Norris (who also won a championship) and Kurt Russell joined Johnson in trading fiberglass on the low seas.