Slug Hefner's lightning-fast 438 Skater Dirty Duck, which hit a historic 202-mph run during the 2024 Lake of the Ozarks Shootout when piloted by Myrick Coil and Rusty Williams, will be driven by Adam Seraphine later this month, with Williams on the sticks. Coil is reportedly stepping back from Duck duties because of his contractual commitments to his offshore racing sponsor, Monster Energy.
Williams will be joined in the Dirty Duck cockpit by his friend and longtime performance boat enthusiast Seraphine when the Shootout hits LOTO Aug. 23-24 at its new location of Dog Days Bar & Grill, near mile marker 19 in Osage Beach, MO. An owner of numerous performance boats—including his all-red, canopied MTI 390XR powered by twin Mercury Racing 500Rs—Seraphine is the developer of Harper's Cov properties on Lake of the Ozarks.
Williams told Speedboat that the pair have been running the boat the last couple of days together in preparation for the big event. "We tested the last two mornings, just getting the boat dialed in. Testing this morning went really well. We're happy with it. It's good to go."
Earlier this year, Hefner sent Dirty Duck's twin turbocharged Carson Brummett engines back to the shop in Pasadena, CA, for some tweaking. "Carson went through them, installed some bigger turbos and made some slight modifications," Williams explains. "So we're expecting to see numbers a little bit bigger this year, but nothing crazy. It has more on the top end, so we should be able to surpass the 202-mph number. We might test it once more next week when Carson gets here, but we feel comfortable with the boat as it sits now. Now that our testing has been mostly completed, Carson will scan the engines and see if he needs to do anything further. But I think we're pretty well set."
In addition to the bigger turbos on the Skater, Brummett also switched to crash boxes, "we don't have transmissions anymore," Williams says. "It changes the way we get on plane. I can't give it wide open throttle—once the nitrous (Duck Juice) is engaged, you have to get it on plane at half-throttle. It needs to get on plane at around 40 mph before we get to the start buoy. So that's one of the things we've been practicing last couple of days. At first we didn't have it, but today we definitely got it. We've got it figured out."
Williams says Seraphine was naturally a bit nervous about what to expect from Dirty Duck's massive powertrain: "Not many people have driven a boat with that much horsepower and those capabilities," Williams says. "But he handles it well, and he really likes it."
For his part, Seraphine told Speedboat that it didn't take long for him to get used to the Duck. "The boat's very solid," he says. "Obviously, there's gotta be a lot of trust involved, and I've spent a lot of time with Rusty in boats, so I understand his demeanor—he's very calm and collected, and he has allowed me to kind of relax and just get comfortable with the boat. It just sets down and goes—it's eerily fast. The boat accelerates like a street car from a slow roll. It almost doesn't make sense how fast it can accelerate. The crazy part isn't the speed—it's just how fast it gets there."
The Williams-Seraphine partnership originated back in March, during MTI's Fun Run. "It started as kind of a joke," he recalls. "I told him I wanted to go for a ride in the Dirty Duck, and over the course of the season, it started to turn into a serious conversation. Eventually, while having dinner at Scott Rosenbach's house, imagination finally became reality—we looked at each other and said, 'OK, I guess this is real. Um, let's talk about logistics and how to make it happen.'"
Dirty Duck remains the only non-Mystic boat to break the 200-mph barrier in the event’s 37-year history. The 2025 event takes place Aug. 23-24.