IJSBA fell silent yesterday, June 16, in honor of Dean Charrier — a man who played a significant role in many of the in many IJSBA World Final stories, successes and skis. And in closing the website down for the day, IJSBA Executive Director Scott Frazier shared a few memories the his interactions with Charrier over the years.
The IJSBA site will go dark for the next 24 hours to pay respect to the passing of Dean Charrier.
IJSBA was sent the picture posted above from Dean’s family for this occasion. We will be posting how IJSBA will celebrate his life later this week. I was asked to say words about Dean and would like to offer this recounting of my own journey knowing him. I became aware of a set of results being passed around that honored Dean and decided to build my words around it:
My first experience with Dean Charrier was in the final days of IJSBA’s golden era National Tour. There was a guy named Dean Mays who had run an operation building racing PWC and was rather successful at two stroke performance focusing on Sea-Doo PWC. Mays ran his business as Team Dean. In this year of meeting Mr. Charrier, Canadian Corey Rarick was the featured Sea-Doo Pro for Team Dean and Dean Charrier appeared on the tour as the backup quarterback for Dean Mays. I was on a Sea-Doo support package that I have always affectionately called the “Factory B Minus Team.” My PWC went to each tour stop in one of the Sea-Doo rigs and I came in to unload and wash the display watercraft and set them up in the spectator area. I raced on Saturday and did double duty Sunday as a holder for Sea-Doo Pro riders, which included Rarick, before loading the truck. My first bonding moment with Dean Charrier was at the last round of the tour when Mays and Rarick, having ended their contractual agreement, stood on opposite sides of a Runabout profanely expressing their personal opinion of each other. Charrier and I listened and quietly chuckled as to not instigate the situation further. I shook hands and exchanged pleasantries with Charrier not even sure if I would see him again. Mays retired from the business. Rarick manages IJSBA efforts in Western Canada. That is as close as I can come to taking sides. Of course, this minimal acquaintanceship is just the start of Dean’s story in PWC Racing and the beginning of a friendship that I would cherish.
Dean Charrier made an appearance at the 1999 IJSBA World Finals in the newly minted Runabout Stock class. He brought to the line a 1997 silver topped GSX Limited. This particular watercraft, with the white 951 engine, is not well regarded as Sea-Doo’s finest product (please don’t get mad at me Sea-Doo bosses, it is just a historical observation). With an under 50MPH hull design, which was engineered prior to even the famous 781 RAVE engine, this model GSX Limited had a rushed new engine package that seemed to be made for the purposes of a stress test on the Sea-Doo warranty program. Aside from being the absolute worse choice for a race craft, Dean, a very soft spoken person at this time in life, supplemented his presence with this sticker kit that looked like it came from a discount auto parts store. It was about the tackiest thing there (mind you this was the opinion of a few people who were dying our hair in ways that looked like a melted pack of skittles in the goal of attracting women) and had cartoonish print to look like battleship cannons were coming out of the top deck of his watercraft. None of us took Dean seriously- he was much older and clearly didn’t get it and was no threat.
Dean had the fastest watercraft, hands down, in the Amateur Runabout 1200 Stock Class. Not by a little….. by A LOT. He rocketed out of the hole shot like nobody else on the line. What he might not have been able to do in turns, the power of his watercraft made up for it. He was impossible to pass. You could get close to him in turns but he would just pull away on the back stretch. I thought I was closing in on him so I didn’t “blip” the throttle like I was supposed to on the back stretch so I could try to get a few boat lengths closer. I stuck a piston as a result and was just furious someone I had discounted had bested me so bad. Eric Lagopoulos, who was probably best favored to win that year, almost caught him but didn’t. We got schooled pretty good by the old man.
After this triumph, Dean Charrier became the first name to call to get that extra bit of performance out of a 951 engine that was otherwise unable to be found. How he found it was the subject of much debate and gossip as is always the case in this sport. But wherever he did find it, he found it and his riders won and made it through tech without a problem. By Y2K, Dean was running a touring team as good as anyone ever did. His resource management was top tier and his riders maintained regular success. When the sport transitioned from two stroke to four stroke, Dean transitioned and didn’t lose his edge as a top requested tuner. Along the way, he dabbled in distributing Craftsman tools and moved around locations finally settling in Florida to further expand his watercraft performance business. His kids raced, they made it a family affair and the riders that came next were looked after just as his own family. He became the first name in ECU reprograming. The list of Dean backed riders carries through many countries and race programs. This list of Dean’s Team Champions is probably the largest roster in modern racing. Endurance, closed course, and P1- Dean’s name is at the top of every winning list.
Make no mistake, Dean came from the ranks, worked in the trenches, and paid his dues to become one of the first call tuners and top names in our sport. I shared this anecdote because I wanted to make the public aware of it and understand what it was like to get to know him as a person in several different capacities for nearly 30 years and watch him excel in the sport as leader from starting off as a second man. Dean’s accomplishments do not need a back story to be amazing, but when you have the perspective of how he navigated through the sport then you really understand how much he earned the accolades being said about him in the wake of his passing.
As an administrator, I was lucky to have Dean as a friend and colleague. Dean’s incredibly vast technical knowledge was always available when needed. He always provided objective data and was able to offer advice on realistic outcomes if certain rules were to change. I cannot recall a time when Dean offered a rule change that favored only his program. I can recall plenty of times Dean offered a rule change that was solid, well grounded, and benefitted participants in the entire sport. He really did strive for the best of things. His contributions will be missed dearly. PWC Racing competitors and enthusiasts around the world have an impossible void to fill. Most of all, the PWC community has lost a valuable member and friend. We all offer our deepest condolences to the Charrier family.
