2018 Horsepower Fest Recap!
What an incredible weekend!!! We had such a great time hanging out with you all, meeting new people and seeing familiar faces! Thank you to everyone who came and supported The Semper Fi Fund by attending Horsepower Fest 2018!
Horsepower Fest was able to raise $10,000 that will be donated to the Semper Fi Fund this year! This money will be used to benefit veterans of all branches of the US Military who have been wounded in battles post 9/11.
To continue on the theme of celebrating our veterans, all of the items in our online store will be 20% OFF through Monday! That includes all of the Horsepower Fest Shirts, so if you forgot to pick up a shirt at the show, head over to Store.SoCalJetBoats.com and order your shirt today!
The Pre-Party that was held on Friday, October 19th was a great success! A lot of Show N Shine participates loaded in early from 12-5 and then the party went from there! Everyone loved it, played beer pong, giant jenga, corn hole and enjoyed the music from the DJ!
Show N Shine events started at 9am Saturday, October 20th. The DJ played music all day long and we had a few people start their boats and cars through out the day. We had a complementary Photo Booth set up on the grass across from the Raffle Booth, it is a remodeled trailer named Trixie! Did you get your photo taken!? Our friend Andy from Aqua Lilly Pad helped us out by sending out SoCalJetBoats and Horsepower Fest T-Shirts from his potato launcher into the crowd! Children enjoyed the bounce house and families were set up everywhere with lawn chairs and canopies hanging out. Brian Wilcox AKA “Lefty” was set up and throwing down custom CF numbers and names on two different boats. It is pretty neat to see him in action. Big Ricks Texas Tacos food truck was there in full force serving up amazing food, it was absolutely DELICIOUS!!! If you did not get to eat their tacos, you definetly missed out!!!
Thank you to the Avi Resort & Casino for giving us such a beautiful venue and backdrop to host this amazing event! Their staff always goes above and beyond for us!
The vendors were set up through out the grass area, huge thank you to Place Diverter who also brought out their ‘Corporate Cruiser’. American Strong, Xtreme Products, Slide Anchor, and Step Right Up Photo Booth trailer.
We started off with Show N Shine Awards, followed by the Raffle Items and then the Grand Prize Raffle Boat Drawing. For the Raffle boat, we pulled 10 tickets from the pot. All ten people that had their tickets called came up and stood infront of the Raffle Booth, IT WAS AMAZING. We then pulled the one WINNING ticket!! The winner of the restored 1979 Tahiti Jet Boat was Gary, a local to Bull Head City and a Veteran of the US Navy, who was recently looking to purchase a jet boat to rebuild with his son. It was truly heart warming to see everyone come together and congratulate Gary on his lucky winning ticket!!! We look forward to seeing him and his family on the water next season!!
Huge Thank You to our Sponsor for the third year in a row, Battery Connection! They also donated some awesome AO Coolers that were embroidered with Horsepower Fest on them, those raffle items are always popular!
We couldn’t have such a successful fun-filled event with out the help of our supporters, in no particular order:
Battery Connection
Bostick Racing Engines
Khaos Paint
D1 Performance
Place Diverter
CP Performance
Eddie Marine
Concept Powder Coating
C&J Engineering
Famous Tire Co
Moving Violation Racing
Branch Engineering
We would also like to thank a few individuals that really went above & beyond, to help us out. We really appreciate you all so much!!!
Sean Kana
Laura & Chromey Ritter
Mike Buschman
James Rankin
Joe Balakoski
Kelly Buschman
Hal Bloomer
Jason Rouse
Jack Ogle
Bryan Glidewell
Mark Engleman
Stephen Chandler
Ron Gram
Lee Meyer
Bryan Couey
Dale Pickett
Darin Iezzi
Brian Thompson
Brian & Amanda Stecki
David Ayers
Treasa Winkler
Deb Soucy
Michael Vitale
Brian Wilcox
Andy Trent
Michael Parizo
Brian & Kimbely Joy Anderson
The Avi Resort & Casino Staff including Brittany, Precious, Kurtis and Debbie
We had a great time walking around and checking out all the cars, boats, trucks, dragster, and off-road vehicles and being able to hear the back stories on them. You all put in a lot of hard work and time in these beauties and it really does show! We always recommend to register prior to the event to ensure we have a class for everyone, and in order to order the trophies we need to know all the classes! There were a few super close calls in some classes! Huge thank you to all our participants, we really enjoy seeing your rides! Congratulations to the winners in each of the following categories:
BEST V-DRIVE: Terry Vandeman – 1975 Howard Shovel Nose V-Drive
BEST RIVER CRUISER: John Johnson – 1978 Hallett Mini Day Cruiser
BEST TUNNEL JET: Michael & Dawn Parizo – 2010 Blown Tunnel Bitz
BEST HOT ROD CAR: Steve Clark – 1970 Chevy Chevelle SS 454 LS6
BEST HOT ROD TRUCK: William Finney – 1986 Chevy Pick Up
BEST V-BOTTOM: James Rankin – 1979 Baker Custom Boats
BEST MINI BOAT: Kenny Tonkovich – 2002 Custom Mini
BEST OFFROAD: Zach Dial – 2015 Jeep Wrangler
BEST GULLWING: Camerion Kiernan – 2012 California Performance
BEST OF SHOW: Sam LaBlue – 1923 Bucket T
Check out all of the pictures from Horsepower Fest 2018 by clicking HERE!
