I've been told by a Bullet boy that knows his stuff that he's driven an Xpress X19 with a hopped up 200 to 79 mph before. You hear stuff all the time about how fast this is and that is and you're never sure if the guy saying is knows what the crap he's talking about, but when this dude says 79mph, you can take it to the bank. Having said that, put me in the same boat, on the same date, under the same conditions and I doubt I could break 70 in it. Once you get to the ragged edge on performance, it's 1/2 voodoo, 1/2 brass ones the size of DD's mellon head to get that last 5 mph.
Also have another Bullet buddy in Texas that was fishing with another friend of ours. He was headed South on Amistad from a get together and loaping his 21 footer at 63 mph (which is about 70% throttle for his boat) back to the ramp after a days trip in calm water, 6" of chop. Now this guy is a speed demon. His hull and prop are blue printed. His motor is tweaked and he's got hundreds, if not thousands of hours behind the wheel of Bullet hulls and others as well. Well on this day, and he still doesn't know what exactly happened, but with both hands on the wheel, the boat violently hooked and his passenger was ejected, he was thrown into the pasenger seat and suffered a gash to his knee from the passenger console. Both were in PFDs and his kill switch killed the engine.
Point being, running any boat flat out is dangerous and shouldn't be attempted with anything less than 100% of your attention. Even my boat with a 60 will get loose on the top end and is sensitive to trim. Take anyboat at anything above a planing speed and you catch a rogue wave from another boat or hit something submerged and it's Katy Barr the door.
You boys out there looking for the last mph, be careful, wear you PFD and you kill switch (and test that switch at least once a year). As few friends as I have, I can't stand to lose one account of one of ya going off and getting ignert on me.
Wannabe....
