[Image: YouTube]
A wild video from Lake Havasu City, Arizona, is tearing through the internet faster than the boat it features, mainly because that boat launched into the actual sky like it was auditioning for Fast & Furious: Aquatic Drift.
According to Fox 10, the speedboat was absolutely screaming across the lake on Saturday, April 26, when things went sideways – literally. The boat lost control, pulled an aerial gymnastics routine, and crash-landed back into the water.
Miraculously, both racers walked away with only minor injuries, though probably with hearts still lodged somewhere near their backsides.
And why were these daredevils tempting fate? Oh, just your average Saturday goal: break the lake’s speed record. The current mark sits at a face-melting 206 mph, but these two adrenaline junkies topped out at 200.1 mph before their boat said, “Nah, I’m done,” and yeeted itself skyward.
The chaos went down at the Desert Storm Shugrue’s Shootout – a name that honestly sounds like a mix between a high-octane boat race and a cowboy-themed cocktail bar.
Some of these speed demons ride machines capable of “close to 200 mph”, while the beast in question was packing 10,000 horsepower. “It’s a 388 Skater,” Ray Lee of Speedboat Magazine told Fox 10.
“They came to Lake Havasu earlier in the week intending to break the record here for the Desert Storm Shootout… [but the accident happened] on their first pass of the day.”
Talk about going from 0 to holy hell in a heartbeat.
Jeff Clark, another shootout competitor, said, “The last thing you ever want to see is a crash and especially something as horrendous as that.” Yeah, “horrendous” feels about right when a boat becomes a missile.
“At that speed, it doesn’t take much, you know, those tunnel holes are built to pack air so the boat rides on top of the water… if you pack up too much and that nose gets too high it’ll just—at that speed—it’ll take you airborne.”
Clark admitted, “My heart dropped when I saw that boat get airborne.”
“It’s never something you want to look at when you’re out having fun as a driver for sure,” he added.
Ray Lee and Clark speculated that windy conditions might’ve played a double-edged role. Sure, the wind probably caused the launch, but it also may have slowed the descent enough to prevent tragedy.
“Best case scenario, because of the wind, when the boat cut it, it held it up there longer than (if there) had there not been such substantial wind,” said Lee. “You hold your breath and you hold it until you see both racers emerge from the cockpit,” he added.
“For the most part, uninjured.”
And just when you thought this story couldn’t crank up the action-movie energy any higher, the racers go by the pseudonyms John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. Because, of course, they do. They’re with Freedom One Racing, which is also American-core, sounding like a team sponsored by bald eagles and fireworks.
At the end of the day, there’s a wrecked boat, an almost broken record, and spirits, thankfully, very much intact. And judging by the tone of the whole thing, they’ll be back… probably with an even faster boat.
[Source: People]
