Stray On Course | OffshoreOnly.com – Powerboating Online

You’d never know it from a casual conversation with him, but Gary Stray, the soft-spoken chief rigger and team manager for Miss GEICO Offshore Racing in Riviera Beach, Fla., has one of the most serious rigging resumes in the high-performance powerboat world. Between his work for former clients/employers Marine Technology, Inc., in Wentzville, Mo., and the Victory Team in Dubai, the 43-year-British-born Stray has worked at the highest ends of the high-performance pleasure and offshore racing powerboat realms. And if that wasn’t enough, four years ago he signed on as chief rigger and team manager for Miss GEICO Offshore Racing, the most polished outfit in the domestic side of the sport.

A look inside the Miss GEICO Offshore Racing shop.

Since I first met Stray back in the early 2000s after he’d just completed the 44-foot MTI Speed Racer theme catamaran—it’s fair to say that with Speed Racer, Dirty Duck, Mercedes, Looney Tunes and several other MTI creations Stray led the theme-boat movement through the early to late 2000s—I’ve wanted to interview him. Last month while I was at the Miss GEICO shop researching a story for the upcoming July/August issue of Speed On The Water magazine, I got my chance. Stray and I chatted for so long that the rest of Miss GEICO crew was ready to mutiny—the boat was headed for its first sea trial with its new Mercury Racing 1650 engines and the team members needed their leader to answer their questions, not mine.  More; Stray On Course | OffshoreOnly.com – Powerboating Online