MTI At 25—Meet The Twins
A couple of well-known performance-boat owners, Burton Kirsten and Adam Seraphine also happen to be close friends. Kirsten lives in Michigan and Minnesota is home to Seraphine.
But on any given sunny day, they’d much rather be in Missouri running their boats on the Lake of the Ozarks.
How close are they? Not quite close enough to finish each other’s sentences, but definitely close enough to order the first two canopied MTI 390XR pleasure catamarans equipped with Mercury Racing 450R outboard engines on the same day through Performance Boat Center in Osage Beach, Mo.
Burton Kirsten took delivery of Turbo—captured here during the last Florida Powerboat Club Key West Poker Run—in mid-2022. Photo by Pete Boden copyright Shoot 2 Thrill Pix.
And that’s exactly what happened during the 2021 Lake of the Ozarks Shootout.
“We started bugging (Performance Boat Center salesman) Rusty Williams after having a couple of pops,” Kirsten recalled, then laughed. “He called Randy Scism at MTI for a meeting.
“Rusty is the most amazing sales guy in the world,” he added. “He makes buying a boat fun.”
Kirsten and Seraphine originally bonded as owners of canopied models from Outerlimits Offshore Powerboats. For Kirsten, that meant Max, a 39-foot catamaran that he later sold, and Jet, a 46-foot cat he still owns. Seraphine had a 40-foot V-bottom from the Bristol, R.I., builder, which he also sold.
Seraphine took delivery of his new MTI catamaran last weekend.
Now each has a vibrant canopied 39-footer from MTI, but they’re easy to tell apart. Dubbed Turbo, Kirsten’s cat is dressed in almost-neon green. Seraphine chose smoldering red for his ride, which has no name.
“I am not creative enough to come up with a cool boat name,” Seraphine quipped.
Both cats will be hard to miss on the Lake of the Ozarks this summer, especially if they happen to be running side by side.
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