About Florida Powerboat Club
The mission and history of Florida Powerboat Club
Mission Statement
(Content Updated March 2024)
The Florida Powerboat Club was founded in 1993 as a membership-driven organization to promote safe, responsible powerboating in a group setting and assist performance boating enthusiasts in many ways to achieve the maximum enjoyment from their Florida powerboating lifestyles. The club’s primary platform includes a series of year- round powerboating events including poker runs, rallies and rendezvous, where like-minded boating enthusiasts from around the globe, can share this passion, while enjoying the most popular boating destinations throughout Florida, The Bahamas and Florida’s neighboring states.
FPC’s Primary Focus
For over thirty years, FPC remains focused on delivering a turn-key event experience to its members, offering attendees a comprehensive booking process that bundles hospitality and marine logistics programs through an online and/or one-call booking process. With FPC’s professional staff, participants personal preferences and guest profiles are maintained in a private database, resulting in a first-class hospitality management experience and access to a complex network of FPC hotel and marina partners across the Sunshine State and beyond.
President’s Priorities
FPC founder & president Stu Jones remains committed to implementing best practices for on-the-water safety, working with law enforcement and first-responder agencies throughout the Sunshine State to ensure the safety of this recreational sport for its participants and for the general boating public sharing these Florida waterways. Florida Powerboat Club welcomes both beginners to the sport, as well as seasoned veterans, to cultivate an atmosphere where individuals from different socio-economic backgrounds and cultures may interact and share in the pursuit of this exciting recreational sport.
History & Background
Florida Powerboat Club events date back to April 1992!
Originally named Sunny Isles Powerboat Club, the club’s founder Stu Jones partnered with Sunny Isles Marina in North Miami Beach, to stage poker run and cruising events for its 300+ marina customers. In a short span of time, these boating events became popular with a wider population of cruising and performance boating enthusiasts, causing Jones to expand just a year later. In June 1993, Florida Powerboat Club was formally incorporated, offering a wide variety of more than twenty annual boating events. Five years later, as the performance boating sector grew rapidly due to popularity of poker run events, the cruising division was retired from the format, leaving Jones with 100% focus on performance boating events and a wider range of destinations.
During this time, the performance marine industry slowly emerged, as boat builders began to place more focus on larger and faster models, and soon more reliable engines and propulsion products became available. Offshore powerboating as a sport, which was once dominated by sanctioned racing organizations, was now focusing more attention on recreational poker runs, due to the attractive lifestyle advantages where the focus of organizers was more on the fun, less on the competition. A Poker Run is Not a Race, became the 1st commandment among poker run organizers, and while FPC was commanding steady growth in its membership base and size of its Florida events, other organizers were popping up all around the continent. With the growth in the popularity of poker runs, the demand for performance boats nationwide fostered a spike in growth for a number of marine manufacturers, and new companies began to emerge in the late 1990’s and the new millennium.
Today’s Environment
Committed to the Offshore Lifestyle
Fast-forward thirty-plus years, Florida Powerboat Club has evolved with the industry, and changed the event formats to accommodate the wide diversity in hull types and different driving styles of its several hundred active members. By 2010 and over the next several years, FPC adapted its event management practices to focus on more on-water safety, by offering three different speed classes for its poker run events, ranging from 50mph to 125 mph. Today, with three distinct boat styles in the sport, catamarans, performance V-bottoms and multi-engine center consoles, FPC remains committed to a segmenting groups by speed, to limit overtaking and manage the logistics of long poker run courses that can often reach up to 170 miles in length. Mandatory wearing of PFD’s, compulsory liability insurance, zero tolerance of alcohol consumption, and focus on the USCG Inland Navigation “Rules of the Road” remain the pillars of the FPC safety management program.
Year-Round Event Calendars
Multiple Opportunities and Destinations to Visit
There are more than a dozen powerboating club events planned yearly throughout Florida and the Florida Keys as well as the Bahamas. Events range from 1-day to 7-day excursions, including rallies and Poker Runs. Most trips favor the fair-weather, calm-water conditions. Events are rarely postponed and are occasionally re-routed in cases of foul weather. In addition to the poker runs, FPC does plan annual Non-boating activities such as the Miami Boat Show Bash in February, an invitational event that is co-hosted by FPC and Speedonthewater.com. A wide variety of other services are available to FPC members, with more details provided in the “Membership Programs” section of this website. FOR more information, contact the FPC office.
Email: [email protected] Call: 954-545-1414 ( Weekdays Monday – Thursday)