Photo Credit: Leigh/Tommy Gunn; seen on speedonthewater.com
This year’s 7th annual MTI Owners Fun Run was a huge success. Continue reading below to hear what a wonderful time attendees had at this year’s event!
When it comes to owner gatherings, whether it be the bar-setting MTI Owners Fun Run from Miami to the Florida Keys, the Cigarette Owners Rendezvous hosted on Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks by former Cigarette dealer Performance Boat Center or the annual DCB Regatta in Lake Havasu City, Ariz., the “stories” are pretty much the same. A great time hanging with like-minded friends and making new ones while boating in and around a favorite destination.
This year’s seventh annual MTI Owners Fun Run, which left Miami last Thursday for Hawks Cay Resort on Duck Key and saw 59 boat owners and their friends and family stay through Sunday and Monday, falls into that same category, which makes writing a story about the event slightly challenging because the news isn’t breaking nor is there much of a conflict or resolution.
So the easy way to do so in this case is to let the attendees explain what they enjoyed about the event and let ace photographer Tom Leigh’s images help tell the story. There was, of course, the news that MTI delivered six new boats in time for the fun run, and that was reported on Thursday.
Leigh, who hails from Lake Havasu City and has shot the MTI Owners Fun Run the last few years for the Wentzville, Mo.-based company, captured another impressive assortment of images and said he had a lot of fun doing so once again.
New to the “MTI family,” Tennessee’s Chad Collier, who attended the run with his wife, Heather, in their 2018 MTI-V 42 they purchased last summer, said he had fun at his first MTI Owners Fun Run.
“It was great to see everyone,” Collier said. “It was a first-class event by a first-class company!”
Taylor Scism, MTI’s client relations manager (pictured with her mom, Cherell, and dad, Randy, during the white party dinner celebration on Friday night), explained that the casual affair included a stop at Gilbert’s Resort in Key Largo for lunch on Thursday, followed by a variety of lunch stop options in the area on Friday and a white party dinner and awards at Hawks Cay Resort that evening. A sandbar raft-up was planned for Saturday followed by another dinner at the resort. Sunday, Scism said, was a free day as some folks opted to head home with others staying one more night and heading back on Monday.
“That was a great run—it was extremely organized and very well put together,” said Nate Michel, the Louisiana-based owner of a 40-foot MTI he completely revamped a few years back named Cloud IX. “Randy (Scism, MTI’s founder and owner) and his team do an amazing job with the hospitality. The white party was put together very well, the food was decent and the drinks were easily accessible. I won an award for “It’s Not A Race” (laughs). My boat was screaming this weekend. We ran fast. The conditions coming home were a little testy on Sunday but nothing we couldn’t overcome. We made it from Hawks Cay to Miami in 58 minutes.
“I can’t wait to do it next year,” Michel added.
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Original and complete article published on speedonthewater.com