Two Americans will be on the throttles and wheel of a British-owned boat when the Cowes-Torquay-Cowes fleet lines up on Sunday 30 August. Joe Spoloric drives and Cade Wilson throttles 1-125 Notareal, the 41-foot Cougar catamaran owned by Rob Lockyer, for the British Powerboat Racing Club’s headline race.
There’s an engine story inside the entry too. Notareal runs twin Sterling 750s, and Wilson is the new owner of Sterling Engines. Few people have a better feel for what’s behind him than the man who now runs the company that builds it.
From Sterling to the Solent
Wilson bought the business, based in Milford, Michigan, from founder Mike D’Anniballe in May 2026, and has been rebuilding it since under the Sterling Engines name. Introducing himself to the boating community shortly after the sale, he described himself as “a longtime aerospace and autosport guy,” with a background at Rocketdyne, Senior Aerospace and General Motors, and service in both the US Army as an enlisted soldier and the US Navy as a commissioned officer via the Naval Academy in 2000.
He is already a familiar name in US offshore racing through Sterling’s engine programme and, this season, through his own driving. Wilson drives for the Howe2Live Super Cat team alongside Mike Howe.
Now he’s taking that resume across the Atlantic, representing the USA at British offshore racing’s oldest and most demanding event.
Joe Spoloric, Lake Wylie Racing
Spoloric races throttle-and-wheel alongside Garrett Coonrod for Lake Wylie Racing (F-44) on the US offshore circuit, with results across Key West, New Orleans, St Petersburg and the Great Lakes Grand Prix. He knows Key West from the other side of the fence too.
Joe Spoloric, on lining up at the Offshore World Championships for the first time:
A dream come true.
One of his most memorable moments came at Key West last November, when he went from being a longtime spectator to lining up in the milling area alongside the racers he used to watch as a fan.
The Cougar and the record it can’t quite match
Notareal is a 1990 Cougar 41, first raced by by J.P. Mattila from Finland with twin Lightning motors putting out 1,700hp. Under Rob Lockyer’s ownership it now runs the twin Sterling 750s that connect it to Wilson’s own business.
Cougar catamarans hold a particular place in Cowes-Torquay-Cowes history. Yellowdrama III, a wooden 37-foot Cougar driven by Ken Cassir and James Beard, became the first catamaran to win the race in 1977, completing the 229-nautical-mile course at an average of 75.10 mph and setting the Class One speed record in the process. No Cougar cat has won it since. The only other Cougar victory came ten years ago, when Richard Carr, Steve Curtis and Paul Sinclair won in 2016, but that was Cougar US1 46, an aluminium monohull, not a catamaran.
Notareal will not settle that particular score on its own, but it puts an American crew and a Cougar cat back into contention on the race where the type made its name.
If it happened in powerboat racing during the last forty years the chances are that Chris Davies was there either photographing it or writing about it.
During that time, he has travelled the globe covering both offshore and circuit racing for series promotors, race teams, PR companies, and a whole raft of publications.
