“Winner, winner! Chicken dinner! We’ve got a winner!”
In just over a month’s time, we had nearly 200 entries alone enter to be the Grand Prize winner of the first-ever WCJ 2016 Skyway Show Signup Sweepstakes. The contest was easy enough to enter: simply signup for The Watercraft Journal’s weekly newsletter. For those already signed up, they were encouraged to submit their spouse’s email address or a secondary address (such as work or the one they use for their now defunct AshleyMadison.com account). Then, after the month was over, we gathered up all the email addresses, entered them into a database that randomly selected three finalists.
And careful not to pull a Steve Harvey, we contacted each of the finalists to verify that they were entered into the contest (because some folks just wanted to get the newsletter) and to make sure they were US residents (within the lower 48 states – ’cause screw Alaska and Hawaii, right?), and randomly selected our winner! And that honor belongs to Southern Californian Kirk Mauro. As the Grand Prize winner, Kirk will be flown from sunny SoCal to Tampa, Florida, picked up and whisked away to a beachfront hotel in St. Petersburg for two days. There, Kirk will be gifted with oodles of cool swag like JetPilot riding gear, Sea-Spec goggles, and a bunch of other goodies.
But the real reason for Kirk’s presence in Florida is to be a guest judge at the Skyway Ski Show presented by The Watercraft Superstore. Joined by 5 other panelists, Kirk will get to test ride six of the latest and greatest personal watercraft models produced by Kawasaki, Sea-Doo and Yamaha (specifically the Kawasaki 310X, Sea-Doo RXP-X 300 and Yamaha FZR; and the Kawasaki STX-15F, Sea-Doo GTI SE 130, and Yamaha VX Deluxe). Kirk will also be literally wined and dined while in Florida and featured in the WCSS’s annual “magalog” catalog that publishes the results of the annual review. And all for being a loyal reader of The Watercraft Journal!
Congratulations, Kirk! We look forward to seeing you on the sand.
