A few years back, Kentucky-based powerboat-painting wizard Stephen Miles bought an MTI 340X catamaran from a friend. Last year, he had the team at Performance Boat Center’s South Florida location replace its original six-cylinder 400-hp Mercury Racing outboard engines with supercharged 450-hp V-8s from the Fond du Lac, Wis., company. The year before that, MTI renovated the 34-footer’s interior at its Wentzville, Mo., headquarters.

Once dressed in its new graphics, Stephen Miles’ eight-year-old MTI 340X catamaran will be a contemporary stunner. Rendering courtesy Stephen Miles Design.

But there was still something missing—contemporary graphics. The boat still had its original 2017 model-year paintjob, not necessarily a “bad” thing for the average owner, but less-than-ideal for an owner who has made his formidable reputation painting boats.

That’s changing as you read this. Miles and the crew at his Owensboro shop are dressing “the Miles Mobile,” as one of his friends like to call it, in a brand-new paintjob he designed with own hand. It will be finished by the end of the month.

For good reason, open paint-booth time has been scarce—a good problem for any boat-painter to have—for Miles during the past few years. But when a tiny window of opportunity opened this month, he seized it. Now’s he’s well into the project.

“We have to get it done in January, because all hell breaks loose here in February and it’s going to stay like that through the rest of the year,” he said.

The paintjob should be completed by the end of the month.

Asked why he didn’t simply force the 34-footer into his painting rotation years ago—it is his business, after all—Miles laughed.

“I couldn’t delay a paid project for a personal one,” he explained. “So I just ran it and enjoyed. I’m such a damn enthusiast, that my passion for boating far exceeded my pride.

“But pretty soon, this amazing, all-carbon-fiber catamaran will be able to represent Stephen Miles Design properly,” he added.

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