Photo by Terrence Humphrey
On a Monday evening in June, when my husband and I would normally sit at home and rip through episodes of How to Get Away with Murder to escape the suffocating outdoors, we instead head to Waterfront Park for a sunset cruise on the Ohio River — aboard a twin-engine, 30-foot jet boat called the Scream Machine, which can perform “power slides,” nosedives and 360-degree spins. The Kentucky sunset, with colors and clouds like coral in the sky, glows on the horizon as we hop onto the lime-green vessel, painted with eyes and teeth to make it resemble a giant toy shark. Eddie Brochin, or Captain Extreme, as he calls himself, dons black leather biker gloves, yellow wraparound safety glasses and a visor covered in various pins. He turns up AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” and we speed off, S-curving across the water and charging toward frightened families of ducks and geese that scurry out of the way. The air is refreshing; I pretend that the few sprays of river are actually ocean water. As we assume a moderate speed and head east, admiring the waterfront homes in Southern Indiana, it doesn’t take long for the last shred of daylight to vanish. Brochin stops at a Valero station for some diesel, and the mood changes when Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville” replaces the ’80s hard rock. “It may be a while,” Brochin says as he unscrews the gas cap. “She’s pretty thirsty.”
In April, Brochin came to Louisville from Indianapolis, where he lives with his wife and two sons, to start captaining rides on his Scream Machine, including a sunset cruise, a skyline cruise and thrill rides ($30 to $129). Bronchin will offer those through November, when he plans to take the business down to Siesta Key, Florida.
The boat hums back toward downtown and the skyline glitters on the calm water. My husband and I muse on getting our own boat someday. Sure beats the sofa.
This originally appeared in the July 2018 issue of Louisville Magazine as the Bit to Do. To subscribe to Louisville Magazine, click here. To find us on newsstands, click here.
