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Field Ethos
Guest
By Andrew Court
Speedboats are a fantasy.
Nobody really needs one, they can’t fit the family golden retriever, they require elaborate and expensive maintenance, and sleeping on most is a claustrophobic’s nightmare. They’re a status symbol and a thrill, a dream for a guy who has it all.
If you buy a Cigarette, Donzi, or Magnum, your fantasy is fueled by mythology. The idea of powerboating took off in Italy after World War II, with Italian bon vivants drinking Campari sodas and racing their Rivas on Lago di Como. It then jumped the Atlantic and, as things tend to do, took on serious scope. Don Aronow, like a post-war Gatsby, came onto the scene out of thin air, building the most legendary race boats of all time. His success, wealth, and demise are shrouded in mystery.
The scene gravitated to ’70s South Florida. Marijuana smuggling became a mega business, and the Cocaine Cowboys were on the horizon. For these modern-day outlaws, speedboats served two purposes. First, to outrun the fuzz on moonless nights. Second, to demonstrate success in their illicit trade. Smugglers spent their drug money on racing, winning offshore by day and moving weight by night. The Coast Guard had to commission their own go-fast boats just to keep up.
This high-excitement lifestyle was brought to the masses by “Miami Vice,” Michael Mann’s pastel-colored, MTV music video-esque police procedural. Detective Sonny Crockett is particularly fond of go-fast boats. When I think of the show, I imagine Sonny sitting in his speedboat, lost in thought, firing up a heater, with the blaze-orange sun setting behind him.
Beyond the criminal class, speedboats also spoke to the elite—for better, or for worse. George H.W. Bush was a fan, buying and keeping a cigarette boat at his Kennebunkport compound for decades. Rocky Aoki, the founder of Benihana, almost died in a crash under the Golden Gate Bridge. Stefano Casiraghi, husband of Princess Stephanie of Monaco, wasn’t so lucky. He orphaned three young children at the age of 30, during a race he swore would be his last.
Dreamers and seekers love these boats. As I’ve learned about them and their history, there’s a common thread: people from all over the world desire to become part of the fantasy and the mythology. Rationality is not a welcome virtue in this world, but since when is being rational any fun?
It’s hard to overstate the role of Don Aronow in high-performance powerboating. He’s the man behind the most famous brands, like Magnum and Cigarette. His death proved to be just as dramatic as his rise to high-speed glory.
On February 3, 1987, Aronow was ambushed on Miami’s “Thunderboat Row.” Hitman Bobby Young fired six .45-caliber rounds into his Mercedes 450 SL. Young pleaded no contest to second-degree murder in 1995, allegedly hired by Ben Kramer over a dispute involving the USA Racing Team’s assets, which Kramer had purchased from Aronow.
Kramer was part of the “young anglos” who made a fortune in the drug trade, and he used the money to build the legendary Apache Marine. Krammer pleaded no contest to manslaughter in 1996, but he was already serving a life sentence. Despite the convictions, the case is anything but shut, and remains a Miami underworld mystery.
Does the trail end with Kramer? How did Aronow really make his fortune?
Donald Joel Aronow was born in 1927 in Brooklyn. After serving in the Merchant Marines during World War II, He briefly taught gym class before entering the construction business. Aronow’s company, the Aronow Corporation, made him a millionaire by building tract houses in New Jersey. Many believe that he had mafia ties from this era.
Aronow “retired” to Miami at 33, but in reality, his life was just starting. The Miami-Nassau powerboat race ignited his passion, and he launched his second act as a boating impresario.
In 1962, Aronow founded Formula Marine, designing boats that prioritized speed and structural integrity. His first Formula boat, with a 23-foot fiberglass hull, set the standard for offshore racing. Aronow drove it to a first-in-class victory, second place overall, in the 1963 Miami-Key West race, making his bones as a boat designer and racer. Selling Formula, he launched Donzi Marine with the Donzi 28, which won the 1965 Miami-Nassau race. Donzi attracted a cult following. Aronow sold it for a hefty profit, almost unheard of in the industry.
In 1966, he established Magnum Marine, debuting the Magnum 27, a boat that balanced speed with seaworthiness. Aronow piloted a Magnum to his first world championship and earned the Union Internationale Motonautique’s Gold Medal of Honor.
When a non-compete agreement expired in 1970, he founded the Cigarette Racing Team. Cigarette boats have become the Kleenex of high-performance boating—the name under which the whole category lives.
Aronow’s boats won more than 350 races, and his personal racing style was fearless, navigating giant waves and storms in the constant pursuit of victory. The sport is both physically and mentally tough, but he proved up to the challenge. Aronow embraced fast living and carried himself like a man’s man. His personal life reflected this playboy persona, hobnobbing with the global elite while conducting countless affairs.
While he was never directly connected to drug running, he had many ties in the sphere as well as with more traditional organized crime. In Thomas Burdick & Charlene Mitchell’s book Blue Thunder: How the Mafia Owned and Finally Murdered Cigarette Boat King Donald Aronow, the authors argue that Aronow was tied to Meyer Lansky, and his companies were part of a sophisticated money laundering operation.
Turning a blind eye to Aronow’s darker side, clients like George H.W. Bush, the Shah of Iran, and Frank Sinatra fell in love with these boats. Thanks in large part to Bush, Aronow sold Blue Thunder catamarans to the U.S. Customs Service in 1982, specifically designed to chase Cigarettes used by traffickers.
Once the manufacturing heart of the powerboat industry, Thunderboat Row, located in Aventura, Florida, is mostly high-end condos now. Still, to boating enthusiasts, the Aronow legacy endures. Stu Jones, founder of the Florida Powerboat Club, is one such enthusiast. A dreamer in the vein of Aronow, Jones found his own way to contribute to the sport.
Stu, like many in the industry, was attracted by the lifestyle. At 28, he was already on the edge of “a midlife crisis, freezing my ass off in Canada.” In a story not that dissimilar from Aronow’s, the Canadian had some money saved and headed south.
Looking for a way into the industry, he decided to bring the poker run concept to the boating world. The idea came from motorcycle rallies, where at each stop, participants get a card, and whoever has the best hand wins. These events exist at the nexus of today’s businessmen, hobbyists, and the drug-running racers of yore.
When Stu started the club, he felt a visceral connection to the past. “Right out of the box, most of the people I met were somehow connected to the drug trade and were starting a new life.” he said. When Stu arrived in South Florida in 1992, “a lot of those guys were just getting out of jail, and they had nowhere to go but to the marine industry.” Stu started his club out of a marina previously seized by the DEA.
I met Stu on the Miami Boat Show Poker Run. He generously allowed me to tag along in his Nor-Tech center console. The starting point was the Coconut Grove Marina, ending on Duck Key. As the entrants arrived, it became clear that participants come from all walks of life. We shared our boat with a couple that had a crop-dusting business in Arkansas. A high-speed catamaran traveled all the way from Lake Powell. There were the obligatory Miami Cubans as well as a couple of Norwegians, representing a nation that loves offshore racing. Around 50 boats entered the competition.
After a thorough safety briefing, we hit the water heading into the Keys. The Nor-Tech was flying, but even at 70 miles an hour, it felt silky smooth. We were in the slowest class, with the fastest going 125 miles per hour. This is a real thrill, blasting over the water. After months of looking at pictures and videos online, I finally got it.
While the Poker Run isn’t serious racing, things do go wrong. On a previous run, a 28-year-old girl died when her boat capsized. Even in controlled settings, there’s an element of danger. According to Stu, “If they don’t slow down, bad shit is going to happen, you need to wear life jackets, you need to be on your A game at all times”.
I asked Stu’s opinion on why people get into powerboating, which is very expensive and at least a little dangerous. He responded with a question and an answer, “Who doesn’t like going fast? Everyone likes going fast. Powerboating appeals to so many people because it’s sexy.”
With that, I decided to talk with the biggest, baddest, “sexiest” speedboat maker out there. I went to see Magnum Marine.
Cigarettes are the most iconic speedboats, but there’s a more refined, elevated option.
Aronow raced his Magnum to many international victories, and Europeans began to take notice. Magnums became a fixture on the Riviera. Particularly, the brand caught the eye of Italian Marchese Filippo Theodoli and his wife, Katrin.
Magnum Marine is located in an unassuming industrial building on the historic Thunder Boat Row, where Aronow started his boat companies. Magnum is the last remaining indicator of what once was.
I met with Katrin, the current proprietor of Magnum Marine, who took over after Filippo’s passing in 1990. She has sold boats to, and become friends with, a diverse cast of characters from the King of Spain to Lenny Kravitz. Her office is a shrine to the history of Magnum, and as we began to talk, it became clear how deeply passionate she is about building world-class boats.
My first question for Katrin was why she and her husband would travel from Italy to Aventura to buy the company. “He absolutely had a vision that what Europe needed for the Mediterranean was a high-performance racing-like boat, but with the comforts of a yacht,” she responded. For the 1970s, this was a radical concept, a boat “that could do 60 miles an hour, that you could drive yourself, and down below it had the comforts—you had a bed, you had a bathroom.”
Their first major move into this segment was the Magnum 53. With this boat, jet-setting libertines could finally make it from St. Tropez to Corsica in time for lunch, with a place to take a “nap” with their date after.
Katrin is an elegant woman, but is clearly down-to-earth and has brushed up against the seedier side of the business. When working late in the 80s, she heard “the boats taking off from the canal and going out, there was a lot of exciting activity in those days.” She knew that marijuana and other drugs were being brought in from the Bahamas, but it didn’t concern her. Magnums were too valuable to use; “[the smugglers] looked for the race boats that were also expendable. If you lost one, it wasn’t so tragic.”
Magnum actually helped the good guys in the war on drugs. They supplied various law enforcement agencies with a series of marine patrol boats to catch speedy drug runners.
She remembers sitting at her desk in 1987, and hearing about Aronow’s murder in an unlikely way. She recalled, “I was sitting here, at this desk, and I got a phone call from Bahrain, one of my clients, and he said, ‘Katrin, tell me what happened.’ And I said, ‘What do you mean? What happened?” She paused, remembering the moment. “Don’t you know, Don Aronow was just shot right in front of your office?” asked the Bahraini. Katrin was so buried in work that she didn’t even notice the drama outside Magnum’s front door.
Leaving the past behind, Magnum has continued building bigger, faster, and more luxurious boats with legendary designers like Pininfarina. For their 60th anniversary, they plan to release a Magnum 100, which will surely make a splash from Miami to the Mediterranean.
Despite the international clientele, Magnums are an American-made product. According to Katrin, the level of tech and know-how doesn’t exist anywhere else.
Modern performance powerboats have become practical. They’re having an SUV moment.
If you wanted a Porsche in the past, you had to live with the impracticality of an air-cooled 911. Like a speedboat, this fits a diehard group of enthusiasts. Now, in the interests of a larger audience, Porsche makes SUVs that can hold the family and rip the Nurburgring. Boat builders are following suit.
This gets us to the rise of the center console. They have several advantages, namely a front area to hang out and a roof providing some shade. I experienced this on Stu’s boat, which transported six people in comfort to the Keys. Nor-Tech and other builders are even making boats set up for fishing.
The engines are also more practical. According to Stu, “I would say the biggest changes have been from inboard or sterndrive to outboards. Outboard now is like 70 percent of what’s out there.” Outboard motors are easier to rig on a boat, easier to service, and more reliable. Some of the same spirit of excess lives on. Stu explains, “[owners] used to put three engines, now they put four. Let’s get five on there. Can we get six? Oh, let’s get six. So it’s crazy.”
Even the aristocratic Magnum is planning to join the trend. “We’re building a small outboard-based boat,” says Katrin, “but I think it’s going to be mainly for the American market.”
There is a lot to love about outboard-powered center consoles, but also some downsides. Describing the crash that killed the 28-year-old, Stu said she probably fractured her skull when she hit the roof of the center console as the boat capsized. He mentioned the propensity of these rear-heavy boats to spin with so much weight in the back.
For me, however, the biggest downside is aesthetic.
As I raced along in Stu’s new Nor-Tech center console, I couldn’t help but wish I were on the restomod Cigarette boat trailing us. The line was so sleek, and the sound just so right. I covet one—ease of repair, passenger capacity, and shade be damned.
In the end, it’s all about fun and fantasy. No boat will ever top the silhouette of an Aronow creation on a tropical horizon.
This article originally published in Volume 4, 2025, of Field Ethos Journal. Get your subscription today.
The post Thunderboat appeared first on Field Ethos.
Continue reading...
Speedboats are a fantasy.
Nobody really needs one, they can’t fit the family golden retriever, they require elaborate and expensive maintenance, and sleeping on most is a claustrophobic’s nightmare. They’re a status symbol and a thrill, a dream for a guy who has it all.
If you buy a Cigarette, Donzi, or Magnum, your fantasy is fueled by mythology. The idea of powerboating took off in Italy after World War II, with Italian bon vivants drinking Campari sodas and racing their Rivas on Lago di Como. It then jumped the Atlantic and, as things tend to do, took on serious scope. Don Aronow, like a post-war Gatsby, came onto the scene out of thin air, building the most legendary race boats of all time. His success, wealth, and demise are shrouded in mystery.
The scene gravitated to ’70s South Florida. Marijuana smuggling became a mega business, and the Cocaine Cowboys were on the horizon. For these modern-day outlaws, speedboats served two purposes. First, to outrun the fuzz on moonless nights. Second, to demonstrate success in their illicit trade. Smugglers spent their drug money on racing, winning offshore by day and moving weight by night. The Coast Guard had to commission their own go-fast boats just to keep up.
This high-excitement lifestyle was brought to the masses by “Miami Vice,” Michael Mann’s pastel-colored, MTV music video-esque police procedural. Detective Sonny Crockett is particularly fond of go-fast boats. When I think of the show, I imagine Sonny sitting in his speedboat, lost in thought, firing up a heater, with the blaze-orange sun setting behind him.
Beyond the criminal class, speedboats also spoke to the elite—for better, or for worse. George H.W. Bush was a fan, buying and keeping a cigarette boat at his Kennebunkport compound for decades. Rocky Aoki, the founder of Benihana, almost died in a crash under the Golden Gate Bridge. Stefano Casiraghi, husband of Princess Stephanie of Monaco, wasn’t so lucky. He orphaned three young children at the age of 30, during a race he swore would be his last.
Dreamers and seekers love these boats. As I’ve learned about them and their history, there’s a common thread: people from all over the world desire to become part of the fantasy and the mythology. Rationality is not a welcome virtue in this world, but since when is being rational any fun?
-
Crockett and Tubbs are proof that you need a go-fast boat to be truly happy. NBC photo. 
Miami detectives examine the Mercedes in which Don Aronow was shot to death on Feb. 3, 1987. Bill Crooke/via AP Photo.
The first Magn um, Don Aronow’s Maltese. Magnum Marine photo.
THUNDERBOAT ROW: LEGACY AND ASSASSINATION
It’s hard to overstate the role of Don Aronow in high-performance powerboating. He’s the man behind the most famous brands, like Magnum and Cigarette. His death proved to be just as dramatic as his rise to high-speed glory.
On February 3, 1987, Aronow was ambushed on Miami’s “Thunderboat Row.” Hitman Bobby Young fired six .45-caliber rounds into his Mercedes 450 SL. Young pleaded no contest to second-degree murder in 1995, allegedly hired by Ben Kramer over a dispute involving the USA Racing Team’s assets, which Kramer had purchased from Aronow.
Kramer was part of the “young anglos” who made a fortune in the drug trade, and he used the money to build the legendary Apache Marine. Krammer pleaded no contest to manslaughter in 1996, but he was already serving a life sentence. Despite the convictions, the case is anything but shut, and remains a Miami underworld mystery.
Does the trail end with Kramer? How did Aronow really make his fortune?
Donald Joel Aronow was born in 1927 in Brooklyn. After serving in the Merchant Marines during World War II, He briefly taught gym class before entering the construction business. Aronow’s company, the Aronow Corporation, made him a millionaire by building tract houses in New Jersey. Many believe that he had mafia ties from this era.
Aronow “retired” to Miami at 33, but in reality, his life was just starting. The Miami-Nassau powerboat race ignited his passion, and he launched his second act as a boating impresario.
In 1962, Aronow founded Formula Marine, designing boats that prioritized speed and structural integrity. His first Formula boat, with a 23-foot fiberglass hull, set the standard for offshore racing. Aronow drove it to a first-in-class victory, second place overall, in the 1963 Miami-Key West race, making his bones as a boat designer and racer. Selling Formula, he launched Donzi Marine with the Donzi 28, which won the 1965 Miami-Nassau race. Donzi attracted a cult following. Aronow sold it for a hefty profit, almost unheard of in the industry.
In 1966, he established Magnum Marine, debuting the Magnum 27, a boat that balanced speed with seaworthiness. Aronow piloted a Magnum to his first world championship and earned the Union Internationale Motonautique’s Gold Medal of Honor.
When a non-compete agreement expired in 1970, he founded the Cigarette Racing Team. Cigarette boats have become the Kleenex of high-performance boating—the name under which the whole category lives.
Aronow’s boats won more than 350 races, and his personal racing style was fearless, navigating giant waves and storms in the constant pursuit of victory. The sport is both physically and mentally tough, but he proved up to the challenge. Aronow embraced fast living and carried himself like a man’s man. His personal life reflected this playboy persona, hobnobbing with the global elite while conducting countless affairs.
While he was never directly connected to drug running, he had many ties in the sphere as well as with more traditional organized crime. In Thomas Burdick & Charlene Mitchell’s book Blue Thunder: How the Mafia Owned and Finally Murdered Cigarette Boat King Donald Aronow, the authors argue that Aronow was tied to Meyer Lansky, and his companies were part of a sophisticated money laundering operation.
Turning a blind eye to Aronow’s darker side, clients like George H.W. Bush, the Shah of Iran, and Frank Sinatra fell in love with these boats. Thanks in large part to Bush, Aronow sold Blue Thunder catamarans to the U.S. Customs Service in 1982, specifically designed to chase Cigarettes used by traffickers.
Jimmy Wynne and Don Aronow (right) showing off post-race blisters. Keystone Pictures photo.
Kuwait Coast Guard after taking delivery of their Magnum boats in the mid 1980s. yes, they’re holding hands–it’s a cultural thing. Magnum Marine photo.
Magnum 27 Miami Police boats. Magnum Marine photo.
OCEANBOUND POKER RUN
Once the manufacturing heart of the powerboat industry, Thunderboat Row, located in Aventura, Florida, is mostly high-end condos now. Still, to boating enthusiasts, the Aronow legacy endures. Stu Jones, founder of the Florida Powerboat Club, is one such enthusiast. A dreamer in the vein of Aronow, Jones found his own way to contribute to the sport.
Stu, like many in the industry, was attracted by the lifestyle. At 28, he was already on the edge of “a midlife crisis, freezing my ass off in Canada.” In a story not that dissimilar from Aronow’s, the Canadian had some money saved and headed south.
Looking for a way into the industry, he decided to bring the poker run concept to the boating world. The idea came from motorcycle rallies, where at each stop, participants get a card, and whoever has the best hand wins. These events exist at the nexus of today’s businessmen, hobbyists, and the drug-running racers of yore.
When Stu started the club, he felt a visceral connection to the past. “Right out of the box, most of the people I met were somehow connected to the drug trade and were starting a new life.” he said. When Stu arrived in South Florida in 1992, “a lot of those guys were just getting out of jail, and they had nowhere to go but to the marine industry.” Stu started his club out of a marina previously seized by the DEA.
I met Stu on the Miami Boat Show Poker Run. He generously allowed me to tag along in his Nor-Tech center console. The starting point was the Coconut Grove Marina, ending on Duck Key. As the entrants arrived, it became clear that participants come from all walks of life. We shared our boat with a couple that had a crop-dusting business in Arkansas. A high-speed catamaran traveled all the way from Lake Powell. There were the obligatory Miami Cubans as well as a couple of Norwegians, representing a nation that loves offshore racing. Around 50 boats entered the competition.
After a thorough safety briefing, we hit the water heading into the Keys. The Nor-Tech was flying, but even at 70 miles an hour, it felt silky smooth. We were in the slowest class, with the fastest going 125 miles per hour. This is a real thrill, blasting over the water. After months of looking at pictures and videos online, I finally got it.
While the Poker Run isn’t serious racing, things do go wrong. On a previous run, a 28-year-old girl died when her boat capsized. Even in controlled settings, there’s an element of danger. According to Stu, “If they don’t slow down, bad shit is going to happen, you need to wear life jackets, you need to be on your A game at all times”.
I asked Stu’s opinion on why people get into powerboating, which is very expensive and at least a little dangerous. He responded with a question and an answer, “Who doesn’t like going fast? Everyone likes going fast. Powerboating appeals to so many people because it’s sexy.”
With that, I decided to talk with the biggest, baddest, “sexiest” speedboat maker out there. I went to see Magnum Marine.
Katrin Theodoli ripping around in the 60-foot Magnum she designed. Magnum Marine photo.
The Magnum 63 on test drive by Mr. Filippo Theodoli prior to delivery to Spain. Magnum Marine photo.
MAGNUM CLASS
Cigarettes are the most iconic speedboats, but there’s a more refined, elevated option.
Aronow raced his Magnum to many international victories, and Europeans began to take notice. Magnums became a fixture on the Riviera. Particularly, the brand caught the eye of Italian Marchese Filippo Theodoli and his wife, Katrin.
Magnum Marine is located in an unassuming industrial building on the historic Thunder Boat Row, where Aronow started his boat companies. Magnum is the last remaining indicator of what once was.
I met with Katrin, the current proprietor of Magnum Marine, who took over after Filippo’s passing in 1990. She has sold boats to, and become friends with, a diverse cast of characters from the King of Spain to Lenny Kravitz. Her office is a shrine to the history of Magnum, and as we began to talk, it became clear how deeply passionate she is about building world-class boats.
My first question for Katrin was why she and her husband would travel from Italy to Aventura to buy the company. “He absolutely had a vision that what Europe needed for the Mediterranean was a high-performance racing-like boat, but with the comforts of a yacht,” she responded. For the 1970s, this was a radical concept, a boat “that could do 60 miles an hour, that you could drive yourself, and down below it had the comforts—you had a bed, you had a bathroom.”
Their first major move into this segment was the Magnum 53. With this boat, jet-setting libertines could finally make it from St. Tropez to Corsica in time for lunch, with a place to take a “nap” with their date after.
Katrin is an elegant woman, but is clearly down-to-earth and has brushed up against the seedier side of the business. When working late in the 80s, she heard “the boats taking off from the canal and going out, there was a lot of exciting activity in those days.” She knew that marijuana and other drugs were being brought in from the Bahamas, but it didn’t concern her. Magnums were too valuable to use; “[the smugglers] looked for the race boats that were also expendable. If you lost one, it wasn’t so tragic.”
Magnum actually helped the good guys in the war on drugs. They supplied various law enforcement agencies with a series of marine patrol boats to catch speedy drug runners.
She remembers sitting at her desk in 1987, and hearing about Aronow’s murder in an unlikely way. She recalled, “I was sitting here, at this desk, and I got a phone call from Bahrain, one of my clients, and he said, ‘Katrin, tell me what happened.’ And I said, ‘What do you mean? What happened?” She paused, remembering the moment. “Don’t you know, Don Aronow was just shot right in front of your office?” asked the Bahraini. Katrin was so buried in work that she didn’t even notice the drama outside Magnum’s front door.
Leaving the past behind, Magnum has continued building bigger, faster, and more luxurious boats with legendary designers like Pininfarina. For their 60th anniversary, they plan to release a Magnum 100, which will surely make a splash from Miami to the Mediterranean.
Despite the international clientele, Magnums are an American-made product. According to Katrin, the level of tech and know-how doesn’t exist anywhere else.
Sea trials of Magnum patrol craft for Kuwaiti Coast Guard. Magnum Marine photo.
OSC Racing’s Donzi 38ZR in the Powerboat P1 World Championship, Malta. Bryn Williams photo.
BALANCING PRACTICALITY WITH EXCESS
Modern performance powerboats have become practical. They’re having an SUV moment.
If you wanted a Porsche in the past, you had to live with the impracticality of an air-cooled 911. Like a speedboat, this fits a diehard group of enthusiasts. Now, in the interests of a larger audience, Porsche makes SUVs that can hold the family and rip the Nurburgring. Boat builders are following suit.
This gets us to the rise of the center console. They have several advantages, namely a front area to hang out and a roof providing some shade. I experienced this on Stu’s boat, which transported six people in comfort to the Keys. Nor-Tech and other builders are even making boats set up for fishing.
The engines are also more practical. According to Stu, “I would say the biggest changes have been from inboard or sterndrive to outboards. Outboard now is like 70 percent of what’s out there.” Outboard motors are easier to rig on a boat, easier to service, and more reliable. Some of the same spirit of excess lives on. Stu explains, “[owners] used to put three engines, now they put four. Let’s get five on there. Can we get six? Oh, let’s get six. So it’s crazy.”
Even the aristocratic Magnum is planning to join the trend. “We’re building a small outboard-based boat,” says Katrin, “but I think it’s going to be mainly for the American market.”
There is a lot to love about outboard-powered center consoles, but also some downsides. Describing the crash that killed the 28-year-old, Stu said she probably fractured her skull when she hit the roof of the center console as the boat capsized. He mentioned the propensity of these rear-heavy boats to spin with so much weight in the back.
For me, however, the biggest downside is aesthetic.
As I raced along in Stu’s new Nor-Tech center console, I couldn’t help but wish I were on the restomod Cigarette boat trailing us. The line was so sleek, and the sound just so right. I covet one—ease of repair, passenger capacity, and shade be damned.
In the end, it’s all about fun and fantasy. No boat will ever top the silhouette of an Aronow creation on a tropical horizon.
This article originally published in Volume 4, 2025, of Field Ethos Journal. Get your subscription today.
The post Thunderboat appeared first on Field Ethos.
Continue reading...
