Patience 'Allegedly' Pays Off In MTI 340X Catamaran Renovation

Since the day Stephen Miles purchased his MTI 340X catamaran from his dear friends Donnie and Cara McLeod in 2022, his other friends have been asking him when he is going to repaint it. It wasn’t that the 2017 model-year 34-footer then-powered by six-cylinder Mercury Racing 400R outboard engines desperately needed fresh paint. Its exterior was in decent shape.

Still, it was a natural question. The guy is one of the finest custom powerboat painters on the planet. Dubbed Allegedly, his cat had its original factory paintjob from 2017.

Patience paid off for powerboat painter Stephen Miles, who now owns the catamaran of his dreams.

But Stephen Miles Design of Owensboro, Ky., is a business. Not only would painting his own boat take up a spray booth, it would take his time away from a paying project.

Plus, the optics of a busy painter taking time away from customer projects to paint his own boat would be poor.

Miles and his wife are delighted with the work MTI did to refresh the catamaran’s interior.

So he waited for a window in his schedule, which arrived in January. The job took about a month.

“The opportunity to paint the boat came about because of a situation we had never been in at SMD up to this point—“Miles explained. “We had a couple weeks where there was no work. It made much more sense to go ahead and tackle this project than to layoff what has become a very valuable team So I choose to take a sour lemon and turn it into sweet lemonade.

“As it turned out, negotiations for our latest contract with Spies Hecker/Axalta paint were well-timed,” he continued. “Once we got the percentage discount worked out to where it was agreeable with both parties, at the end I slid in a nice stipulation. It was looking like we would have the window to paint SMD’s billboard, and I told them I would sign the deal if they provided all of the liquid materials for the project. This even included the bottom paint in enough paint to get the raw aluminum MYCO trailer painted black.”

When the paintjob was finished, Miles immediately pushed aside the cat and focused on paintwork that pays the bills. Plus, it was the dead of winter in Kentucky and he wasn’t itching to get on the water. His own boat could wait.

Dubbed Allegedly, the 34-footer is the painter’s first catamaran.

When the time came, Miles sent the cat to MTI in Wentzville, Mo., for another interior update. The work included rewrapping the dash with Cool Touch vinyl and replacing the existing cockpit panels with carbon fiber versions.

Then Miles and his crew re-rigged the cat and reinstalled its Mercury Racing 450R outboards he purchased from Performance Boat Center and had the dealership install in 2003. They also replaced every piece of stainless-steel hardware with all-black pieces from Shaun Torrente Racing. The new hardware matches the boat’s bottom, which Miles and his team painted black. The team even replaced the boats original flat rear hatches with a pair with new versions that incorporate molded steps for easier transom access.

The reborn 34-footer has a season of poker runs ahead.

Minus the generous people who have helped him, Miles said, the project never would have come to life.

“We calculated 1,300 total man hours went into the project from start to finish over roughly two-and-a-half months, Miles said. “A lot of those hours being put in by myself and my amazingly supportive wife, Heather, on Saturdays and Sundays.

“After we got all of the paint-and-finish work completed, our friends at JP Marine in Evansville came down to remove the engines at the beginning of the project came back down to SMD to reinstall the engines,” he added. “But after that, the boat kind of set for a while. We just weren’t in the position to put any more time or money into the project.

A closer look at the catamaran’s port hullside paintwork.

MIles praised MTI company founder/owner Randy Scism for his support throughout the project, as well as Myrick Coil and Brett Manire of Performance Boat Center. All three gentlemen played significant roles helping bring the 34-footer to its current state.

One of the founders of the Kuttawa Cannonball Run, Miles had hoped to show off the reimagined cat during the late May-event. But the project didn’t resume until mid-May so it simply wasn’t read in time.

“That was when a nice conversation with Randy Scism turned into, ‘Get the boat out here, let’s get the rest of the updates done and we will work out the details later,'” he explained. “There are so many people who made it possible for this dream to become a reality, but the most massive part of it has to because of Randy Scism and his amazing team at MTI. They modernized everything from the new step-storage hatches going down the spine of the boat to reinstalling all of the electronics and making some location changes for some certain components in the cockpit. Myrick was on the phone with me helping with setup, which I wouldn’t even be talking about if Brett hadn’t given me such a smoking deal on the 450Rs.”

A great deal from Performance Boat Center enabled Miles to repower the catamaran a couple of years ago.

Miles paused for a moment. “Dude, thanks to all of these people, I have a new ‘2025′ MTI 340X,” he said, then chuckled.”And I can’t forget my friend Jeff Hoefling of Lively Machine Co, in Evansville. “He custom-fabricated a drive-guard and welded it to the back of my trailer.

“And my guys Chris, and Corey and Christian have been incredible throughout the entire project,” he added. “I can’t say enough about all of them.”

An elevated view of the finished product.

The couple ran it for the first time during the July 4 weekend. To celebrate their reimagined prized, they took the cat to Charleston in West Virginia, which is Miles’ home-state, and ran it with his longtime best friend Jason McAllister on the Kawanah River.

“We’re going to use it at Kuttawa a lot this summer, and Heather has been saying she wants to do more poker runs,” he said. “I freaking love it, but the best thing about it? Heather freaking loves it.”

“I probably should’ve named the Boat ‘Gratitude’ because of all of the amazing people and businesses that were a part of it and made it all possible,” he concluded. “And last but not least, none of this would have been possible without the amazing clientele we’ve had over the years.”