REAL Exclusive Magazine

Around The Corner With The Niemanns,
Surviving The Phantom 9 Crash One Year Later

By Lee Volpe
Photos Tom MacKnight Post Crash, Rodney Olson Crash Sequence

Many of you already know, and for those of you who don’t, I am a humor writer. Imagine my surprise when Ed Bertha approached me about doing the one year anniversary story of the Phantom 9 Offshore Racing crash during Sarasota’s 2013 Suncoast Offshore Grand Prix? ReaLee?! How a boat crash is funny I have no idea, but…never judge a book by its cover, or the story, before you’ve met its characters.

I met the Niemanns on Dan Lawrence’s (The Hulk – throttles) yacht…in the head (bathroom) to be exact. Mark Niemann, Ed Bertha, and myself spent forty-five minutes talking about the sport of offshore racing, the crash, and safety precautions. Though it’s not football, I must say I was fascinated. I was also fascinated by the size of the bathroom, Dan was right, “Very spacious!”

After the potty talk, and hearing Kim Niemann’s role, I decided I needed to sit down and get the scoop from these two…and preferably somewhere without a toilet as the room’s only seat. After this year’s 30th Annual Suncoast SuperBoat Grand Prix Festival, that’s exactly what I did.

“There is not really that much you can notice, no heads up, that something is going wrong,” Owner/Driver, Mark Neimann recalls. “The only thing I noticed is that we had a perfect day. It was a perfect race, the boat was perfectly balanced, it was really handling good. It was fast…We had a ten second lead on Sunprint for 2nd place – this is a really fast boat, so when you have a chance to beat this guy it tells you your boat is doing really well. The second lap we came down to the turn right in front of the beach. Kimmie was on the radio, she told me, ‘Guys, you got a good lead.’ I told my throttleman, Kurt, it looks like we’re doing pretty good.”

Around the corner with Mark…

Phantom 9 got the swell from the shallow waters of the beach while coming around the corner. Making the left turn, the thirty foot vessel became airborne, coming back down on her port side (throttleman Kurt Jagel’s side) like an explosion, at eighty-seven to ninety miles per hour – with no steering!

“It’s the greatest story,” Mark remembered. “In the air, it turned around one hundred and eighty degrees, upside-down, and this is pretty much how we impacted in the water. At this moment, you’re just trying to hold onto something. You don’t really know what happened, it goes so quick, a split second. Then what I remember is the boat barrel rolled twice after the impact. I saw water, sky, water, sky, and then luckily, the boat came to a stop, right side up. That was the best part of it.”

Only fifteen seconds after the crash, the first rescue boats approached as Mark and Kurt climbed on top of the boat to survey the damage and realized most of the Phantom 9 was missing.

Mark went into the now exposed engine room, fiberglass everywhere, to try and disconnect the batteries; the wires were cooking. He tried to operate the head bilge pump which was useless since the boat was already hanging halfway in the water; there was no chance at keeping up with the water they were bringing into the boat.

The Phantom 9 was tugged out of the race course. Though she was significantly battered, her occupants were no more than bumped and bruised.

Years of racing professionally in Europe with stricter guidelines to adhere to and building boats for a big race team from northern Germany was invaluable training. Mark held positions such as team manager and technical advisor for the mechanic. “I got a lot of knowledge about safety in race boats because we tried different things.” Thanks to his years of experience, when the Phantom 9 was acquired, first rate safety provision and alterations were made. “When we got this boat, we pretty much ripped everything out that was in there.”

Some of the expensive, yet effective upgrades were installing reinforced glass, new harnesses, and special high-performance racing seats, made by Italian auto manufacturer Momo, to help absorb brunt force and keeping the body in place while the boat violently jerks and leaps. Like some of the seats you see in auto racing, they are a full-length chair with big head restrainers. “I like to have these in my boat, even though they hurt your visibility to what’s going on all around you. But we now have rearview cameras and all that kind of stuff, you can pretty much look straight on the monitor instead of trying to turn your head all around and look what’s going on behind you. I think that was a big, big safety issue for us. I shouldn’t say, ‘saved our lives’, but it was for sure a part of what made us walk away without even a single scratch.”

Considering the temperature averages 130 degrees in the cock pit, most American teams are racing in T-shirts, shorts, and flip-flops. A big safety measure Mark and Kurt regularly practice is wearing lightweight, Kevlar layered race suits to prevent cuts. “In Europe, they didn’t let you race without a race suit. Another big point for Kurt and myself, was as we climbed out, there wasall of this shredded fiberglass around us. I am pretty sure it prevented us from getting more cuts and injuries. I think it was a big improvement.”

“So that’s pretty much the story from last year. This year we pretty much repeated the whole thing. Only difference is we didn’t completely trash the boat, we just damaged it.” Mark Neimann concluded.

Around the corner with Kim…

Kim Neimann, Wife/Owner/Team Manager, had just put the binoculars down when Mark was coming around the corner. Hearing the crowd screaming, she looked up, saw all the water, and started screaming herself, and it wasn’tpretty…or printable. However, it wasn’t because she saw her boat crash, it was because she thought the Phantom 9 spun out, and Mark is a professional, he never spins out. So she got on the radio andgave him hell, told him to get back in the race…in so many words.

Once she saw the orange smoke, she knew they were out of the race. That was when her team started tapping her on the shoulder saying, “Your boat is sinking, your boat is sinking!”

“My boat’s not sinking! I guess I was in denial, I’m not sure because my side of the boat looked perfect: I didn’t see the damage to Kurt’s side. I immediately got my crew together. We were on the rocks in front of the Lido Beach Resort, so we had to slowly make our way back over the rocks, and come back to the ramp. It wasn’t until thirty or forty minutes later that Igot a phone call from Mark when he said, ‘the boat sank.”

Until Mark called, Kim honestly didn’t believe anything bad had happened. She really thought they had just spun out. She didn’t think the boat was sinking because she never saw any damage.

“Then I was in shock. I could see the nose of the boat sticking out of the water and at that point they were getting ready to start the second race, so all the big boats were there, loud with their engine’s going. I just went off like ‘ghetto girl’. I was screaming, and hollering, and yelling at everybody to get my boat out of the water, and to get everybody’s boat out of the way, so we could bring our boat in.”

“…And the preacher came and tried to calm me down, and I am like, ‘this is not the time.’” Jim Black, Racing Performance Ministries (RPM), travels to all the races, introducing the offshore racing community to Christ, as well as providing support and counsel to Kim Neimann during her “ghetto fabulous” moment.

Kim’s shock continued. She eventually got to her husband when the boat was finally towed in. Gasoline was still burning Mark’s eye’s and face from the water at the crash site. While Kim and crew tossed Mark water bottles to rinse, it took over two hours to get the boat back on the trailer. Neither remember much more than a simple embrace; they were both in shock and trying to take care of the Phantom 9 and Mark’s irritated face.

“We finally got it up and on the trailer and over to the pit, and everyone was just coming to look at it. I was like, ‘just get it out of here.’ It’s only normal to want to come see a crashed race boat, but when it’s your race boat? She was destroyed, she was completely destroyed. And you know, we don’t have kids. This is the closest thing to a baby we’ll ever have. So, we put everything we have into it, we really do, and we’re not rich people, so it broke both of our hearts…”, Kim confessed.

Phantom 9 was taken to Mark’s building, Marker 1 Marine, and the Neimann’s went home.

The next morning, Kurt Jagel had to catch a flight and he wouldn’t get out of bed. The race organization wanted him to go to the hospital and make sure he didn’t have any internal injuries, so Kim took Kurt and Mark to the emergency room and got them both checked out. As Kim was leaving for the hospital, an ambulance showed up at her dear friend and next-door neighbor’s home, where her friend’s daughter soon emerged with the news, “She died, she just died!”

“It was rough. I just sat down on the hospital floor and cried, and cried, and cried for a while. I didn’t care who saw me.” Fundraisers were held and people helped them rebuild the boat. They rebuilt the engine and then two weeks before Clearwater, they blew up the engine again. “I honestly cried worse. I felt like it was over then. Everybody was a friend of mine, helping us rebuild after the crash, but when we blew the engine up I said, ‘That’s it, we cannot keep taking this financial burden.’ I felt more of a death when we did that than anything. You just couldn’t ask for anymore help. It’s a hobby, people helped us, what do you do now?”

Approaching this year’s race, naturally there was some anxiety for Kim after last year. Almost losing her husband, seeing the Phantom 9, her “baby”, destroyed, and the death of her friend, would be enough for anyone to throw in the towel and call it a day. Yet she’ll tell you she knows the risks and she knows the chances her husband takes. In the four years that they’ve participated in this sport, they’ve watched several racers get killed, and it’s always the big boats, never the small ones. Even though she also understands the chance Mark takes out there racing; that is a gamble they’re both aware of.

“I tell people now, don’t bother me before race time, don’t talk to me. I become really bitchy. People will be like, ‘What’s going on?’, tapping me on the shoulders, and I’m like, ‘When my husband’s on the water, y’all leave me alone, don’t talk to me.’ I watch every move they make; I don’t take my eyes off of them.”

You never know what’s “around the corner”, and the view may sometimes be different, but Mark and Kim were on point when discussing the many misconceptions and the behind the scenes of being a team solely dependent on sponsors.

Many people assume the Neimann’s are wealthy and race boats for a living, which Kim Neimann finds funny. In discussion with the Bravo Network to produce a reality show about women in power boat racing, Kim says, “We, my husband and I, are not wealthy people. It takes everything for us, if we didn’t have sponsors…and my husband, regardless of what I want him to do, will spend every last penny we have so he can race. It is an addiction and a passion, but it has caused many fights, many sleepless nights, slamming the doors…”

Kim’s love for powerboat racing happened later in life, but it was immediate. “It’s a weird thing to love, but really one of the only reasons my husband and I survived this, because many couples break up over it.” Thrill seekers by nature, Kim and Mark met through powerboat racing… and Facebook. “Mark and I met in Key West. We just happened to run into each other, spent twenty minutes together, and I hopped a flight thirty days later and went to Germany and met him. I didn’t even know who he was.” Even though she knew you don’t date men in powerboat racing, she took off to Germany anyway.

Mark and Kim went to lunch, and Mark lit up a cigarette. “Oh crap, I didn’t know you smoked? As long as you don’t have kids, I don’t date men with kids,” she told him. Within ninety days they had moved to Germany, but it was too damn cold for the Floridian, so they moved back to Kim’s hometown of sunny Sarasota, and married sometime in-between. Happily married four years now this August, her initial thought of the union was, “What the hell, marry him.”

Kim works a full-time job as well as managing the race team. Trying to get sponsors, making calls, handling social media, including “keyboard racers” (those who tell you how to race from their computer), mailing T-shirts at eight o’clock in the morning – you name it, Kim’s on it. Very few people realize how much personal money/savings, time, blood, sweat, and tears go into this sport. However, one of the main reasons the Phantom 9 Racing Team runs is Kim Neimann. Most see Mark driving and Kurt on the throttles…and Kim, the pretty, blonde wife in the background. Well, just ask the poor ole preacher Jim Black of Racing Performance Ministries (RPM), he could tell you, first hand, that this woman is not “quietly” in the background. Hallelujah!

We’re just hoping to have a chance to do this as long as we can and to enjoy it for as long as we can. – Mark Neimann

To be a sponsor of the Phantom9 Racing Team contact Kim Neimann at (941) 928.0193 or Phantom9Racing@aol.com.

Do Not Try This At Home

Growing up I’ve always heard, “If it’s going to happen, it will happen to Lee.” True as this statement has proven to be, I believe it all happens to ME, so I can share it with YOU.

I was a slow reader, diagnosed with a learning disability, & by the end of third grade it was suggested I be held back. As part of the remedial tutoring I opted for, I was given the task to write a story. Little did I know that assignment would be the genesis of me, the first taste, the moment that changed everything.

Daisy the Cow was the result of my 8 year old imagination. A cow that was beloved by all the neighborhood children until someone gets a puppy & Daisy loses the spotlight.

In finding the WORDS, I found my VOICE…and I haven’t shut up since.

Lee Volpe www.LeeVolpe.com

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