One Fast Kitty! Cat Can Do Throttleman Keith Holmes Talks Lake Race, Ethanol, & Shootout

An unconventional win, but a win nonetheless.

American Ethanol Cat Can Do driver Jamie Sartin and throttleman Keith Holmes took the trophy and the purse at the OPA Lake Race 2017 Extreme Division, thanks to a couple of missed buoys by the only boat left on the course. The 52-mile race on Saturday, June 3, at the Lake of the Ozarks, Mo. was truly about stamina.

American Ethanol Cat Can Do is a 1998 40 ft. Douglas Marine Skater Catamaran with 3400 hp engines, from Nunica, Mi. The team—OPA World Extreme Unlimited Champions in 2014—was declared the winner of the 2017 Lake Race after a little confusion temporarily left Alex and Ani driver Herb Stotler and throttleman Serafino “Jimmy” Cazzanni with the trophy and prize money (for about 48 hours). Alex and Ani is a 40-foot platinum catamaran with 1,800-plus-hp turbocharged Stotler Racing engines and Mercury Racing M8 drives.

“We accepted what happened and congratulated the other guys and went home,” Holmes said. “The officials did their due diligence and discovered Alex and Ani missed a couple of buoys (on the bottom corner of the race course in front of Beavers). It’s not the way I expected to win, especially when we led the last six laps.”

OPA President Ed “Smitty” Smith confirmed that Alex and Ani missed a buoy on the race course. “There was some confusion because when they came down the race course I heard the chief scorer announce over the radio that they missed a buoy, but they went back and went around the buoy correctly. At that point, (according to OPA rules) I disregarded the infraction in the scoring.” But the Alex and Ani team missed at least one more buoy. Holmes says EMS race volunteers told him the team missed the buoy at least five times. 

“It happens,” Holmes commented. “That’s why OPA has the pace boat take you around the course to make sure you understand. It can be confusing. I missed a turn in Cocoa Beach and had to go back. I went from second to sixth place.” He went on to finish that race in second place. 

Smitty said he went back and reviewed the live-stream Lake Race video, saw the infractions, and publicly announced Cat Can Do was the 2017 Lake Race Extreme winner, on Monday, June 5.

This was Jamie Sartin’s first time to race an offshore powerboat (he races grand national hydroplanes). The team went out early on Saturday to test, running four laps on what Holmes considers to be “the fastest course in the nation.” 

“It is a phenomenal high-speed testing course for trying out different combinations because it is such a closed body of water,” Holmes explained.

However, during testing a bad oil pump and a pressure valve that stayed open wouldn’t let the system make adequate oil pressure, so the crew pulled the cat out of the water and made some adjustments.

“I kept it conservative in the first corner (180 mph) since Jamie is a new driver,” said Holmes, who has been racing Cat Can Do for 20 years—17 as a driver and the last three on throttles. He has won 14 combined National and World Offshore Championships and he has set 2-APBA UIM - (Union Of Internationale Motonautique) world kilo speed records.

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“I was watching the MTI guys—Rusty Rahm and Jeff Harris (Wake Effects) and Bob Bull and Randy Scism (CMS-3), (the top two teams in the SBI Unlimited class), keeping them within striking distance. Everything went well and we ran strong for five laps.”

Once into the first half of the race, the cat’s claws came out. “We started attacking. At that point, everything was settled in and the engines were running nice, strong and reliable.”

But it was a rough day on the two leading race boats.

The Lake of the Ozarks hometown team Wake Effects dropped out, with a broken water intake hose. Then two laps later CMS-3 had the same issue. Both boats started taking on water. 

“Then my oil pressure raised its ugly head again, but we were out front, so we decided to go easy and protect it,” Holmes said. 

Cat Can Do maintained a solid half-lap lead over the only remaining competitor, Alex and Ani, but misfortune struck again. “We ran out of fuel on one engine in the last lap, the good one!” Holmes recalled. “The last two miles we kept the boat on plane, with one bad engine and the other with faulty oil pressure.”

Alex and Ani caught up on the last lap. “It looked like we only lost by 100 or 200 ft.,” Holmes said. “That is nothing on the water.”

Initial reports indicated the video review showed Cat Can Do had won by a boat length or two. But later, Alex and Ani’s buoy infractions were confirmed.

Holmes is the owner of CK Motorsports in Michigan, a complete Mercury Offshore Service Center and dealer, devoted to high speed high performance power boating. 

In addition to winning world championships and running CK Motorsports, Holmes has a passion to educate boaters about the benefits of ethanol. 

“There is a lot to like about ethanol,” Holmes said. “It is a cleaner fuel and that is important for our lakes and fish and the water we drink. It doesn’t have the same carbon and smoke so there’s no black soot, it runs the engines cooler, and more.”

The boat has been newly sponsored by the American Ethanol brand. Austin Dabney of Growth Energy, which represents ethanol producers, explained the brand is "a performance motorsports brand that partners with drivers and boaters who utilize ethanol blends in their engines and advocate for the performance benefits of ethanol. American Ethanol sponsors NASCAR Monster Energy Cup Series driver Austin Dillon, Formula Drift Driver Kyle Mohan, Keith Holmes, and Don Onken."

Onken’s 51-foot American Ethanol Mystic catamaran won the 2016 Lake of the Ozarks Shootout with a 217 mph run, and Onken is an outspoken proponent of pure ethanol as the future of boat fuel.

What’s Next for Cat Can Do?

Cat Can Do will continue racing in the 2017 OPA circuit with a new driver. The next race will be in Ohio, then St. Clair, MI and then on to Michigan City.

2017 LOTO Shootout 

Holmes plans to bring some catti-tude (yes, bad pun, but we can’t help it) with Cat Can Do to the 2017 LOTO Shootout. “The Shootout is unique because we can test our speeds on a great course,” he said. 

Holmes purchased his first catamaran from the late Bob Morgan and ran his first Shootout in 1997. He has been coming back ever since. 

“I really enjoy the Shootout. There’s good camaraderie and it’s more laid back since it’s not a points race.” 

He says he is coming up with ideas and making plans since the LOTO Shootout race course is being shortened to 3/4-mile for safety. “That will bring new challenges and we will need to change up some things to increase the RPM of the engines. It is such a short window. We will need to lean on the engines harder and hopefully everything will hold up,” he said. 

Lake of the Ozarks Cat Can Do fans can look forward to cheering the team across the Shootout finish line in August.