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Part 3: “It’s
just all so surreal. This has been an amazing trip.”
By Jeremy Wallace — Fall 2004
“I was so nervous,” Matt said later. As
much as he had always wanted to pilot a Cigarette, the engines roared
with intimidation that made him hesitate at first.
Decked in a red T-shirt emblazoned with the Cigarette
Racing Team logo, Matt quickly decided not to pass on the chance. He calmly
pushed the throttles. Xntrick moved
into the flat water under a nearly cloudless sky. The 15-mph southeasterly
winds seemed to fade as the boat’s speed crept past 50. Then 60.
Then 70.
At 85 mph, Matt was stoic, looking as though he had
all the experience of Don Aronow, creator of the go-fast boats. Matt had
imagined being plastered to his seat with G-force tugging at his face
and making it impossible to talk. “It wasn’t like that at
all,” he said later. “It was so smooth. It was a lot different
than I thought.”
Piloting the Cigarette was far from the end of Matt’s
Dream Come True. After his ride, Matt got to recount the day with the
company’s chief executive officer over an exquisite meal at Yuca,
a Cuban restaurant on South Beach’s famous Lincoln Road. Matt and
his dad talked to Braver about business with a style that made them seem
like old family friends.
Matt said he was inspired while listening to how Braver
built himself up through hard work and determination, then turned his
love of Cigarettes into more than just recreation.
“He’s a good kid,” Braver said. “Kids
today know so much. They know so much about boats, equipment, and electronics.
They just soak it up.”
In Matt’s eyes, all of this would have been enough
to consider the trip a resounding success, but it still wasn’t over
yet. After a night in the presidential suite of the Courtyard by Marriott
in Miami Lakes, Matt and his dad were driven back to Cigarette’s
manufacturing facility to see how the handcrafted boats are made. They
watched sheets of plywood and fiberglass being turned into speed machines
at the 200,000-square-foot facility Cigarette moved production into in
November 2003.
“I expected something totally different,”
Matt said as he walked through the factory. There were no parts strewn
all over, nor loud factory noise. Instead, Matt was greeted by a space
that Braver said he tried to model after the exotic carmakers of the world.
“It’s just so clean,” Matt said, standing in a hangar-like
area with a dozen nearly complete Cigarette hulls around him. “It’s
just all so surreal. This has been an amazing trip.”
There’s only one problem, Matt lamented as the
Dream Come True settled into his reality. Once back in Connecticut, he
wondered how he would ever be satisfied hitting the water at less than
Cigarette speeds again. Matt said his goals in life now include not only
pushing the limits while riding aboard high-performance powerboats, but
having one himself.
“I’d like to own one someday,” Matt
said. “If I put my mind to it, I can do it.”
What’s your boating
dream? Mail it to Voyaging Dream Come
True, 260 Madison Avenue, 8th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10016.
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Part 2: Randy
still recalls one boat company calling him in an attempt to hire his son,
not knowing Matt was still in high school. Page
1,
2, 3
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