2022 Boyne Thunder

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jimh
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Location: Michigan, Lower Peninsula
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2022 Boyne Thunder

Postby jimh » Sat Jul 09, 2022 8:06 pm

The usually quiet village of Northport, Michigan is disturbed on one Saturday in July every year by being a destination on the Poker Run for the Boyne Thunder event. The Boyne Thunder attracts a fleet of very special boats, very big, very powerful, very fast race or pleasure boats. They came to Northport today beginning about 11:35 a.m. for the second destination on their poker run.

You can hear them coming for quite a while before you can see them. Some of these boats are enclosed cockpit twin inboard engine boats with speed potential of more than 100-MPH. The conditions today were good, as the winds were about 10-knots and wave height was less than one-foot.

These boats are quite interesting to see. I am sure that the cost of the paint job on some of these big 60-footers was much more than my boat is worth.

A popular engine this year was the Mercury Racing division V8 450R engine. They go for about $55,000 to $65,000. Many boats were rigged with five of them--hey that is 2.250-HP and about $300,000 or more in engines alone. Also, most of the VERADO 450R engines have custom cowling paint jobs, so figure about $2,000 each (at least) for another $10,000. Then there are the propellers. I am guessing they are running Lab-finished Mercury propellers with special hubs, so another $2,000 per engine, and another $10,000.

I will say this: the VERADO 450R engines are still quiet, at least in comparison to the big inboard engine with raw exhaust.

BoyneThunderNorthport.jpg
Fig. 1. About 14 to 15 VERADO V8 engines are shown in this view, as three boats round the committee boat at Northport to get their poker card.
BoyneThunderNorthport.jpg (199.19 KiB) Viewed 2937 times


At full throttle with 2,250-HP I would expect the fuel burn rate is about 225-GPH. If they are burning REC90 gasoline at $6.50-per-gallon, that is about $1,500-per-hour in fuel cost.

They are fun boats to watch, but I don't want to own one.

By the way, the entry fee for the Boyne Thunder is $800 for the boat, the driver, and one crew. Additional crew are $200 each. A few boats had eight aboard, so that is $2,000 for the entry fee. For that money you do get some goodies, two dinners, and one breakfast. If your poker hand wins you get $5,000. The money raised goes to charitable organizations.

The little village of Boyne City gets really inundated with all these boats and crews. About 120 boats participate. By about 1 p.m. they were all through Northport, and the village went back to its quiet Saturday-afternoon-in-Summer mode.