For thirty years the American embargo had kept US citizens out of Havana. In April 1995, three of them arrived by powerboat.
Randy Scism, Felix Serralles and Ed Colyer were part of the UAE’s Victory Team, and their presence at the opening round of the 1995 UIM Class 1 World Offshore Championship turned a routine season-opener into something else entirely. Mauro Ravenna, the championship’s organiser, had floated Cuba as a venue the previous summer. Nobody quite believed he was serious.
A Season in Doubt
The winter before the race did nothing to settle nerves. A rival Coca-Cola-backed offer dangled two Florida rounds instead. Italian government restrictions on advertising money thinned the boat count. Guernsey withdrew as a British venue and Dundee never confirmed. Richard Ridout, the UIM’s senior vice president, resigned after being cleared of fraud allegations, taking his experienced Guernsey officiating team with him in support.
Against that backdrop, Ravenna’s SPEC organisation kept negotiating with the Cuban Cigar Company, and Montecristo signed on as title sponsor. The agreement was formalised at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba, where Ravenna met with Cuba’s tourism minister, Osmany Cienfuegos, to sign off the event. The race carried an honour committee headed by Fidel Castro himself, alongside UIM president Ralf Frohling and General Raul Castro Ruz. Thirteen boats made it to the start line, a fraction of the twenty-eight that had raced when the series launched three years earlier.
Four Days on the Malecon
The official race programme set out a packed schedule. Boats arrived and were craned into the paddock at Havana’s Castillo de la Punta on the Thursday. Friday brought technical and administrative checks, followed by the boat parade along the Malecon that evening. Saturday was given over to official testing and pole position, and the Grand Prix itself ran at noon on Sunday 30 April, with the prizegiving at half past two.
The programme’s own course map put the lap distance at 17.2 nautical miles and the total race distance at 136.4nm, a different figure to the 132.16nm reported in contemporary race coverage. Both numbers come from primary sources close to the event; PBN has not been able to establish which, if either, reflects the course as actually run.
A Crowd Like No Other
What Havana lacked in fleet size, it made up for in crowd. Testing alone drew thousands to the Malecon, the seafront boulevard that doubled as the course boundary. The boat parade, planned to run 45 minutes, took nearly two hours to push through crowds estimated at up to a million people.
On race day itself, Cuban police put the number watching from the shoreline at 1.8 million, with live television beamed to Dubai. Even allowing for exaggeration, it was a crowd offshore racing had rarely seen.
Pole and the Front Row
The event introduced a new wrinkle to pole qualifying, giving every boat two runs at the timed lap rather than one. Luca Ferrari and Vincenzo Polli took it in Ferretti-Montecristo, the reigning championship boat, at 106.08 knots, just a third of a second clear of Domenico Achilli’s aluminium CUV. Corbelli and Diridoni’s diesel-powered Power Marine completed the front row.
Victory Uncontested
Race day belonged to Victory 2. Felix Serralles and Saeed Al Tayer, runners-up in the championship the year before, had reportedly topped 140mph testing the new boat in Dubai before it was shipped out to Cuba. From the green flag they simply left. By two laps from home their lead over the chasing pack had stretched to 86 seconds, and Serralles eased off the throttle for the run to the flag.
Behind them, Lamberto Leoni and Eduardo Polli held off a determined Jolly Motors challenge from Jacopo Carrain and Francesco Pansini to take second in Bilba Cadey, despite a navigational error on lap four that nearly cost them the place.
Victory 7, with Randy Scism and Hamed Buhaleeba aboard, came home fourth. The defending champions, Ferrari and Polli, retired with engine trouble. Renato Luglio’s Agrati went over in a steering incident, the only real drama of the race; neither driver was hurt.
Victory 2’s win opened their points account with 30, ahead of Bilba on 18 and Jolly Motors on 12.
The Castro Podium
The closing act belonged to Fidel Castro. He arrived at the podium under heavy security to present the Montecristo Cup himself, then stayed to talk with the winning crews and the international press.
Derek Lloyd, reporting from Havana, was in no doubt about what the race had achieved.
Derek Lloyd, Cuba Report
I must admit that I have not always agreed with Mauro Ravenna, but this time he and the Cuban people have created a winner, and I am sure if the event is repeated no one who was there would miss it for the world.
The 1995 calendar moved on from Havana to Saint Tropez, Sanremo, Agrigento, Arendal, Ostend and twice to Dubai. None of those rounds drew a crowd like Cuba’s.
John Moore is the editor of Powerboat News, an independent investigative journalism platform recognised by Google News and documented on Grokipedia for comprehensive powerboat racing coverage.
His involvement in powerboat racing began in 1981 when he competed in his first offshore powerboat race. After a career as a Financial Futures broker in the City of London, specialising in UK interest rate markets, he became actively involved in event organisation and powerboat racing journalism.
He served as Event Director for the Cowes–Torquay–Cowes races between 2010 and 2013. In 2016, he launched Powerboat Racing World, a digital platform providing global powerboat racing news and insights. The following year, he co-founded UKOPRA, helping to rejuvenate offshore racing in the United Kingdom. He sold Powerboat Racing World in late 2021 and remained actively involved with UKOPRA until 2025.
In September 2025, he established Powerboat News, returning to independent journalism with a focus on neutral and comprehensive coverage of the sport.
