First Adrenaline 26 Savage Approaches 110 MPH With Twin Mercury Racing 300R Engines

Written by Jason Johnson

When you get invited—or rather invite yourself—to go check out the new 26 Savage from Adrenaline Custom Boats, the first 26-foot cat from the Phelan, Calif.-based company to hit the water, you make sure you’re on time and ready to go at the docks of Bob and Andrea Teague’s home in Discovery Bay, Calif., as expected. So that’s where I was at 10:30 a.m. on Sunday taking in the reactions of a couple of new owners who appeared to be infatuated with their new outboard-powered sport cat.

Teague Custom Marine’s Josh and Cherilyn Noack are overjoyed with their new ride—an Adrenaline Custom Boats 26 Savage with twin Mercury Racing 300R engines. Photos courtesy Cherilyn Noack

As a general rule, I try to exclude myself from stories, but in this case there’s no way around it being that the news centers around a boat powered by a pair of white-hot Mercury Racing 300R engines “delivered” to a couple of my longtime friends, Josh and Cherilyn Noack of Teague Custom Marine in Valencia, Calif.

Delivered is the key word here, as this was unlike other deliveries I’ve been a part of that normally include a company representative and a customer who was only involved in the decision-making side of the build. This, on the other hand, was Josh Noack, who grew up in Discovery Bay, taking out the first performance boat he’s owned—his dad has had several, including the DCB F29 Pegged that TCM re-rigged—on his home waters for the first time. The boat he rigged, pretty much on his off hours and weekends, and the one he believes could put Adrenaline on the map.

Being that it is the first 26 Savage on the water—it’s actually hull No. 2 as the first one is still being completed by Adrenaline—the story is newsworthy. It’s almost more so though because Bob Teague’s daughter and son-in-law decided to embrace the outboard market and get a boat without TCM power. (Plenty of other Teague components were used, just not the engines.)

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Check out the slideshow above for more images of the 26 Savage being built at the Adrenaline facility in Phelan, Calif. 

It’s not a surprise though because I’ve followed the project since the Noacks decided to build the 26-footer with Dean Brown and the team at Adrenaline (not to be confused with Adrenaline Powerboats in Georgia). I saw on Instagram when the Noacks were sitting at the shop contemplating seat base adjustments, windshield heights and more, and when they picked up the fully assembled boat with their desired gelcoat graphics and brought it to TCM for rigging on a new custom trailer from Extreme Custom Trailers. Their enthusiasm toward the outboard side of the industry grew, as did their desire to display that lesser-known side of the family business.

“We’ve known Dean Brown for many years, well before he started Adrenaline—he had a Howard Sport Deck with TCM power,” Cherilyn said, adding that two of the 28 Savage cats Brown has built since founding the company a few years ago have been powered by TCM engines. “Still, we didn’t know that Dean had purchased the DCB F26 molds though until Josh and I started looking into getting an outboard-powered cat that we thought would be fun with the kids as well as a great opportunity to showcase the outboard side of Teague Custom Marine’s business. We’re a diverse company—we can work on anything.

“We were looking at used sport cats, but there were not a lot out there for what we wanted to spend and the few possibilities we saw were gone right away,” she added. “There were a couple of DCBs we liked but didn’t move on them, so we asked the guys at DCB what happened to the 26 molds and they said Dean bought them.”

The collaboration developed quickly from there, and before the Noacks knew it, the fully capped boat was in Valencia awaiting its power plants and the color-matched interior was coming together via Adrenaline’s upholstery supplier.

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The slideshow above includes pictures of the 26-foot cat throughout the rigging process.

While it took a few months for the new 300-hp 4.6-liter V-8 outboard engines—one of the first sets to ship from the Fond du Lac, Wis., factory—to arrive, they showed up in December and Josh went to work. He had already selected gauges, controls and an LED trim indicator from Livorsi Marine as well as the Mercury VesselView and Simrad displays and JL Audio stereo system used in the cockpit, which seats five people and is very roomy for a 26-foot boat.

He also ordered a set of STR X-ACT adjustable mounting brackets—and an STR X-ACT laser height tool—and went to work with the team at IMCO Marine to help them develop a new steering kit for the 300Rs.

“We do a lot with IMCO Marine and we sell a ton of the company’s steering systems, so we worked together and sent parts back and forth to create a complete steering system for these engines,” Josh said. “Even though an outboard boat is a little simpler to rig, this boat still took a lot of man hours. We tried to hide everything as much as possible—the battery switches and circuit breakers are hidden—and we used a lot of custom components from the battery boxes and fittings to the mounting brackets and bezels. As usual, we got a little carried away. There’s a lot of LED lighting and everything that can be polished is polished.”

Josh said he received some insight about how to set up the boat from the crew at DCB and other people who have a lot of outboard experience. The information he gathered gave him a pretty educated guess of where to mount everything and about how fast the boat should run. He believes 110 mph is achievable, and that it would be even faster with a different gear ratio—1.75 is currently the only gear ratio offered.

Equipped with new Mercury Racing 15 1/4″ x 34”-pitch MAX5 propellers , the boat—named Sweat Equity—reached 107 mph its first day out at wide-open-throttle, which is 6,400 rpm. With a little dialing in and some not-so-sticky conditions, his estimate seems achievable.

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The finished product—the first 26 Savage from Adrenaline to hit the water—is quite impressive as you can see from the pictures above.

“We were on the rev-limiter and the conditions were glass, which isn’t ideal for speed runs but is a good way to see if the boat has any abnormal characteristics,” Josh said, adding that he plans to bring the 26 Savage to the Desert Storm Poker Run in Lake Havasu City, Ariz., in April. “The good news is the boat runs great. It handles great and turns really well at any speed. We went over some cruiser wakes and it feels solid. It has a little hop around 60 mph, but we’re going to get that figured out. I can only imagine how fast it would run if we could pull more rpm.”

I can attest to the boat’s performance after my ride in the 26-footer with the Noacks and their oldest son, Cru. The boat cruises smoothly in the 70- to 90-mph range and you can hold a conversation without shouting. It leaned into turns with ease and got on plane without any issues. I noticed the porpoise Josh was referring to, but it felt pretty normal as he accelerated right through it.

For the fun of it, we did a couple of acceleration drills, and the boat definitely felt lively. It blasted from 40 to 60 mph in 6.1 seconds and took just 11.5 seconds from 40 to 80 mph. Pretty respectable in my book.

Of course the Noacks didn’t build the boat to chase any speed records—it’s a stylish, comfortable, kid-friendly, reliable hot rod built for the family. Because, as the motto goes, “A family who boats together stays together.”

Photos courtesy Cherilyn Noack

As published online from Speed On The Water.
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Former Powerboat editor Jason Johnson was an integral part of the magazine staff from 2005 through 2011, utilizing journalistic integrity and experience in and around performance boats to report on all aspects of the go-fast lifestyle. The award-winning writer resides in Southern California and is the executive editor and co-publisher of speedonthewater.com.

Teague Custom Marine is one of the few CARB (California Air Resources Board) certified high performance engine builders in California at 600-hp and above. For more information about TCM, visit teaguecustommarine.com or give them a call at (661) 295-7000.

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