Phil Hess of Upstate Powerboat in Auburn, N.Y., hasn’t just resurrected high-performance creations from the likes of Fountain, MTI, Outerlimits, Skater and more—he’s turned his passion for powerboat reimagination and transformation into a thriving business. Hess was a confident 23-year-old when he began his journey in 2017. Now 32 years old, he leads a skilled five-person in an 18,000-square-foot facility.
Yarrow is hoping to have set-up complete before the weather turns.
“To me and my team, it’s our art-form really,” Hess said via text message in an interview earlier this week. “There’s a lot of people who attempt to do fiberglass. There’s very few who do it at a high level.”
At present, there are six Skater catamarans from 28 to 46 feet in various stages of restoration in the Upstate Powerboat facility. But among the cats is a recently completed V-bottom project for Upstate New York’s Ryan Yarrow.
An Apple farmer who also owns a snowmobile parts business, Yarrow purchased a 35-foot Fountain offshore raceboat, which ran as Tilted Kilt in the P-3 class, a little more than a year ago from owner Tony Canale in Georgia.
In 2016, the 35-footer was badly damaged when it rolled over during a Super Boat International race in Clearwater, Fla. Now dubbed Show Em To Me Racing, the boat looks new.
Yet the structural repairs were massive.
The project required extensive repair and parts fabrication.
“We reconstructed the whole canopy,” Hess explained. “The port hullside had popped off the bulkhead. We had to make new canopy hatches. We made a mold off the fractured deck piece and vacuum bagged a new fresh part to install. We also replaced a few stringers while it was here.”
From there, Yarrow and his friends Doug Bills and Mike King went to work. Not only did they install new naturally aspirated, 760-hp engines from Bill Lawson at Ateco Engine and Dyno Shop and new IMCO exhaust systems, they replaced the boat’s old Arneson drives with Arneson 7-A units.
Like the rest of boat, the dash had been gutted so they replaced all the gauges—each with its own warning light. They also installed new seats and added fabric to boat’s ceiling and gunwales.
The dash has all new instruments and controls.
They even painted the boat themselves.
“It came out pretty good,” Yarrow said, then chuckled, during a telephone interview yesterday. “It’s like an 8-1/2 or 9 out of 10.”
Yarrow and company are still working with set-up. Their fellow Upstate New York-based performance boat enthusiast Kelly O’Hara loaned them a set of six-blade propellers he ran on a 35-foot Fountain he once owned. O’Hara’s props delivered the strongest results to date. Now Hering Propellers is building a new set of six-blade wheels for Yarrow. He hopes to have them by the end of the month.
But with fall coming and winter likely not far behind it, time for full dial-in is not on their side.
“We had hoped to be done in time to make the Chicken Wing Run, but I don’t see that happening,” Yarrow said.
A longtime offshore racing fan who’s been heading to Key West Offshore World Championships in early November for years, Yarrow originally planned to campaign the boat “in a few races.” To that end, he and his friends equipped the cockpit with full-communication and oxygen systems.
Said Yarrow, “Phil did a great job—and a great job of communicating throughout the project.”
“Once you attend those races, it’s hard to get it out of your system,” he admitted. “But after doing all that work, it’s also hard to see banging it around. We’d still like to check it off the bucket list and do a few races. The plan right now, though, is to use it mostly as a poker-run boat.”
Yarrow added that he was delighted with the work done by Hess and the Upstate Powerboat crew.
“Phil did a great job—and a great job of communicating throughout the project,” he explained. “He and his guys are pretty talented.”
There is still work a bit more work to be done, Yarrow added, in the forward section of the hull. Upstate Powerboat, of course, will handle the job and Hess is looking forward to it.
“All I have to offer the world is boat repair,” he said, then laughed. “If I can’t fix it I’m useless. So I might as well do what I’m good at—at the highest level.”