But no fire came. Granet led the turbines with Miss Geico. Through six laps, he passed the petroleum boats one by one, steadily advancing on Seebold. Coming out of the second turn, he closed the distance to about 274m. At the harbor turn, he overtook Seebold and did not look back.
When the race was done, Seebold knew his beer company sponsorship was gone for good.
“For it to be over just like this, it’s a little hard to swallow,” he said in a hotel parking lot after the awards ceremony. “Life goes on. You’ve just got to find something American in this American country, which is hard to find.”
In the harbor, as the cranes waited to lift the boats ashore, Miss Geico floated in a lazy circle beneath the tropical sun, the heat of its turbines making vapor trails that blurred the water and the pier beyond and the grandstands and the portable toilets and the beer vendors and the children and everybody. Granet lifted himself from the cockpit and slapped the boat’s yellow Kevlar hull with an open palm.
“Fastest race boat in the world, baby, right here,” he called across the harbor. “Fastest. Race boat. In. The. World.”
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