Though president of Fort Myers Offshore, Tim Hill is by far the busiest high-performance boating event organizer in Southwest Florida, as he and his wife, Cyndee, have championed the return of the Roar Offshore Fort Myers Beach powerboat race ever since the last one was canceled in 2022 thanks to Hurricane Ian. After securing a commitment from Race World Offshore last month in Key West, Fla., to produce the event, the couple was upbeat about the return of his hometown event next season.
“Obviously, it’s been a tough go of it here in Fort Myers not only for the Roar Offshore race but for Fort Myers Offshore as well,” Tim Hill admitted. “Every time we think we get some traction and we’re moving in the right direction it seems like we get another powerful storm and this year we got three of them. But we were looking forward to a great comeback in 2025. Unfortunately, the teams don’t think the infrastructure is ready for the races to return to Fort Myers Beach and at the end of the day, to be honest, they’re probably correct.”
According to a recent report hill cited, Fort Myers Beach has just 47 percent of the lodging accommodations it had before Hurricane Ian. That also didn’t bode well for bringing back the event in 2025. Other infrastructure required to produce offshore powerboat races in Fort Myers Beach, such as the crane-area docks, has yet to fully recover to pre-Hurricane Ian capacity.
“When we saw the Pro Class 1 schedule come out this year and Fort Myers Beach was not on it, I thought, ‘That’s OK, we may not have the space for all those big boats anyway,’” Hill explained. “Then when the Super Cat schedule came out and Fort Myers Beach was not on it, we started to question if we were doing the right thing. Was it still too soon? The Super Stock-class team owners release their schedule and, once again, our venue was not on it. That was a punch in the gut, but we knew at the end of the day. It was the right thing to postpone the race yet again until 2026…