DCB has just delivered it's latest, and first of it's kind to Mike and Kathy Stevenson.


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Mike an avid performance boat enthusiast is no stranger to DCB having owned an M35 previously that he touts as :

"One of the finest boats he has ever owned."

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I can tell you without a doubt, that nobody is more excited about this boat than the staff at DCB! You can plan, plot, measure until the cows come home, but until you put it in the water for the first time you don't truly know how it's going to turn out.

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The M44 isn't shouldn't be that different than an M41 being that they are cut from the same cloth. The "44" comes from the bustle that extends the 41 another three feet off the transom. (A common practice amongst exotic cat builders) While this might not seem like a big deal up front, this solves one major problem of the 41, namely egress and exit. The rear platform is pretty high out of the water, and speaking only for the first one, that I was on, there wasn't a ladder. I had heard they were going to do a removable carbon fiber ladder for it, but I don't believe that ever did materialize.

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This is one of those rare instances in life where the bustle added form and in the process added function. Not only does this boat look better, it is better. The bustle now puts the transom of the boat just inches above the water line, and makes it considerably safer by pushing it further away from the props.

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So lets get to the photos of this M44, and at least lightly touch on the subject what makes a DCB... Well a DCB! It all starts before the boat even goes into the mold. Many Manufactures still use what are called "Line Drawings." That's where a person will get a sheet of paper with the outline of their boat hull on it. They can then draw their graphics and colors onto the paper. More production orientated manufacturers will often have a rendering of a boat on their website with pre-determined graphics that you can pick from and colors that you can choose. DCB however takes their time and actually works with the customer step by step and has everything "rendered" on a computer. No detail is overlooked, from the gel, to the stitch patterns on the seats, right down to the lifeline life jackets that will come with the boat!

Here are some examples of renderings that were done for this M44.

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You can see they even render the areas that they will be doing the baseball stitching on the dash pads. (In this case it looks like they changed it from the rendering)
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In this first peek into the engine bay you will notice that nothing "jumps out at you" or seems out of place. The fire suppression system is painted to match the gloss black paint job on the Mercury 1100's. If you take a look at the hatch ram on the boat, even the quick release pin and pillow block have been annodized to match the other hardware in the bilge. The tail pipes? In the words of Tony Soprano "Forget about it." Those could have just as easily been polished stainless and matched, but this is again a case of going one step further.


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"The Devil is in the details" as the more you look through the engine bay and other aspects of the boat the more you will find. Note how the wiring looms match the radius of the bulkhead perfectly. The Dry sump tank is matched to the motors, are on are the battery boxes, that have a perfect contrast to the flawless Carbon Fiber floor.

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This particular interior is 100% Alcantara, and was done to have an "exotic" yet "clean" look to it. You can see in the photo's that they didn't use any different colored accent panels, and even the stitching is the same color as the fabric. If you look a little closer though you can see they brought their art to the table in the way of three dimensional shapes throughout. In the pic below you can get a good glimpse of what I'm talking about by looking below the windshield. You can see how they took a hard diamond pattern and gently "fade it away" into smooth Alcantara as it progresses on.

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A lot of manufacturers are capitalizing on the resurgence of the "diamond pattern" in the interiors, but DCB it taking it to a whole different level. The diamonds aren't just squares set on a 45 degree angle. Even their repeating patterns are stretched diamonds to add "flow" and direction to the panels themselves. In the case above you will see the stretched diamonds sitting horizontally on the gunnel, and in the pic below you will see them vertically on the head rest. On the back rest of this seat is where their interior department is shining above just about everyone else in the industry, by taking those same repeating patterns and flowing them out into art. If you look closely, you can see that the design on the front seat is in fact slightly more intricate than the design on the backseats. Note the carpet kit as well!!

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It would be very easy to just create panels with repeating patterns (as most would do), but as you can see on the side panel above hte speaker, they instilled a almost "river" design to help define the curvatures of that panel. Above you can see the diamonds also stretching out to where the panel ends. To step aside from the interior for a moment if you look closely you can see that the billet step plate just below the speaker has a nonskid integrated into it. You will also notice on the edge of the seat the oversized "baseball" stitching on the edges. DCB is the only performance boat mfg that purchased a machine in order to do this unique style stitching!

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Something new on this boat that I haven't seen previously is a custom made billet mount that incorporates two Garmins into the support mount for the windshield. It's a great idea because it's a rigid piece in the boat, and mounts the cameras as high up as you are going to get, but still out of the wind. The Garmin's themselves will not only take video, but will data log GPS Speeds, Altitude, G Forces, Distance, Maps, and all kinds of other functions.

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Even the anti glare matte on the top of the dash has a ton of work in it to complete the look. Again most people would just put a flat panel up there and call it a day.

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Because this part is a retrofit (clamp on), I believe previous boats could purchase this mount and add it to their M Series. I'm not sure, but I think the M41 center brace might be the same as the 35? You'd have to call and check with DCB for that, but if I had an M Series this is something I would definitely invest in.

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The pictures speak for themselves. You're not going to find another boat out on the water and say the words "Wow that's nicer than a DCB." At best you can say "It's as good as" (Which is going to be difficult to find) They truly are setting the bar for what "Exotic" yet "Classy" is when it comes to their Super Cats.


The Owner -

Invariably with high profile boats like this people always ask the "Who and the How." Michael Stevenson is truly an example of the American Dream. Having put himself through night school, he started a company that has grown to employ over 100 people. It's a simple story of "Seeing a hole and filling it". He developed advanced methods of implementing graphics into Roto Molded parts. In laymen terms if you see a large plastic part such as a kayak with a logo that isn't a sticker (it's actually in the plastic), there's some kind of odds his company is responsible for it. His advancements in this field took a job that could take up to six people an hour, and reduced it to one person that could perform the same task in less than a coffee break. For more information on this visit

https://www.moldingraphics.com/

[video=youtube;sF2GNdqFPig]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF2GNdqFPig[/video]