‘Permission Slip’ Catamaran Is First-Time Skater Owner’s Dream Ride

Based on his event-participation history during the past four months, Dennis Phillips is not shy about using his new 2026 model-year Skater Powerboats 438 catamaran. He took delivery of the 1350/1100 engine-powered 43-footer dubbed Permission Slip at the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout and proceeded to run the cat—his first creation from the Douglas, Mich., company—all over the Central Missouri waterway.

Owner Dennis Phillips has kept his new 438 Skater catamaran on the water as much as possible since taking delivery of the boat in late August. Photos by Pete Boden copyright Shoot 2 Thrill Pix.

And that was just a warm-up for the St. Petersburg, Fla.-based owner. In September, Phillips ran the boat during the Florida Powerboat Club Emerald Coast Powerboat Week affair. Next up was the club’s early November Key West Powerboat Week, which he tackled with six passengers aboard the eight-seat cat. Later this month he’ll campaign it in the Fort Myers Offshore Turkey Day Run.

“I plan to do every Fort Myers Offshore event I can this season,” he said.

The stunning creation boasts an eight-seat cockpit.

“Working with Peter Hledin and Tony Cutsuries at Skater was just outstanding,” Phillips recalled. “I think I was little bit out-of-the-box for them, but Skater is a custom boat company so they did everything I wanted. I didn’t want angled dash—it would have made reading my 22-inch Garmin monitors in the Southwest Florida glare really difficult. So they built a custom dash. I had them build two lockers on the sponsors, each with a false floor for make access easier, rather than a big locker in the deck so I can still see forward if those hatches are up.

“They ‘don’t do’ electric bucket seats (with fore and aft adjustment) but they did them for this boat,” he added. “They did everything I wanted. But they do everything custom—Skater is not a color-by-numbers operation. It was an incredible experience.”

To facilitate storage of the catamaran, Phillip’s also had Skater build and paint a trailer with a removable cradle for the boat.

Phillips wanted a flat dash rather than an angled version and Skater made it happen.

Yet another imperative for Phillips was that all 14 of the speakers—including their grills—for the cockpit’s powerful JL Audio sound system be hidden from sight. That task fell to Craig Ellis and the crew at Appearance Products, which handles most Skater interior project at its shop in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Ellis and his team “nailed it,” Phillips said.

“This is my first Skater, so it was my first time working with Appearance Products,” Phillips explained. “They did a beautiful jo. They accomplished everything I wanted.

“I started thinking I was going to have them use Alcantara for the upholstery,” he added. “But I eventually decided to go with Cool Touch vinyl.”

But before the eight-seat boat reached Ellis and company, Mark Morris and Visual Imagination team in Peculiar, Mo., painted it. The job took 900 hours.

Morris painted both of Phillips’ MTI catamarans, so there was zero question about who would handle graphics for the 72-inch tunnel, 43-foot beauty.

“I just let Mark do his thing,” Phillips said. “I like asymmetrical paintjobs and Mark knows that. I like to be a little different—I don’t want the same thing everyone else has. Mark got me a rendering and off we went.”

permissioninterior-33

permissioninterior-040

permissioninterior-02

permissioninterior-00

permissioninterior-039

permissioninterior-06

permissioninterior-37

permissioninterior-46

permissioninterior-42

permissioninterior-032

Appearance Products delivered everything the owner asked and more with the 43-footer’s interior and Skater did an impeccable job with engine rigging.

Morris and his team took it from there.

“I’ve always thought asymmetrical paintjobs are really cool, so it was nice to have a client like Dennis who wants them,” Morris explained. “We did something with the blue in the color scheme we’ve never done before. We used a very specific blue underneath a metal flake, and we put a candy layer over that. That really richened up the blue. That was the first time we used that combination and I think it came out really, really nice.”

permissionrunning-05

permissionrunning-09

permissionrunning-04

permissionrunning-026

permissionrunning-07

permissionrunning-08

permissionrunning-28

permissionrunning-06

permissionrunning-043

permissionrunning-00

Viewed from any angle, the Permission Slip Skater is a work of art.

So far, Phillips has run the Skater-rigged catamaran to 150 mph. He expects the boat to top out at 170-plus mph, and he’s planning to run it in the Gulf waters off Punta Gorda, Fla., this weekend.

Other commitments will keep him out of next month’s Fort Myers Offshore holiday lunch run. But he’ll have Permission Slip back on the water for the Florida Powerboat Club’s Naples event in January.

Said Phillips, “I’m going to do all the Florida Powerboat Club runs this winter.”