Skater At 50—Grist For Chris Mills

Few renovation businesses have tackled more Skater Powerboats restoration/renovation projects than Boat Customs of Caledonia, Mich. Company principal Chris Mills and his team have made much of their reputation modernizing older cats from the Douglas, Mich., company.

Revamped by Boat Customs, Freedom is among the best known Skater catamarans in the company’s 50-year history. Action photos by Pete Boden copyright Shoot 2 Thrill Pix.

The best-known of these projects, the 46-foot Freedom catamaran built in the mid-1990s as an Open-class raceboat. The work involved everything from installing a new interior to removing the original boat’s F-16-style quarter canopies to updating and modernizing its color-and-graphics theme. Mills tacked the project for then-owner Tom Borisch, who began working with the Boat Customs reimagining a 50-foot Mystic Powerboats cat. Mills went on to handle multiple projects for the multi-powerboat owning Michigander.

The Tilt Skater is among Boat Customs most fiery work.

Lesser-known but hard to miss thanks to its fiery paintjob is Tilt, a 2003-model-year 40-foot Skater catamaran Mills madeover for Ed Tirakian, another passionate Michigan-based go-fast-boat fan. That project included extensive bodywork, installing a wraparound windshield conversion, re-rigging the engine compartment and, of course, applying a fresh paintjob. Craig Ellis from Appearance Products in Grand Rapids, Mich., handled the cockpit design and production, but beyond that renovation was pure Boat Customs.

Boat Customs played a significant role in the radical makeover of Dale Rayzor’s 30-footer.

A big-time Boat Customs fan, Dale Razor had Mills repaint his 30 Prototype Skater catamaran. The team at Skater handled the body work as it was being converted for outboard-engine use, but Mills applied its paintjob, which transformed the predominantly silver-and-red boat into one with an elegant teal, black and grey color scheme. Mills also dressed Rayzor’s 2009 model-year 36-foot Skater called Relentless in unique asymmetrical blue-and-silver graphics.

The remake of the 36-foot Relentless Skater was Boat Customs’ latest project for loyal client Dale Rayzor.

Does the Boss Lady Skater, a 52-footer built in 2014, ring a bell? Mills did that paintwork on that one for customer Don Doty, while Grant Bruggemann of Grant’s Signature Racing in Bradenton, Fla., tackled the cat’s re-rigging work.

Boat Customs and Grant’s Signature Racing collaborated on Don Doty’s 52-footer.

But Mills’ Skater projects have not been limited to “big” catamarans, or even catamarans for that matter. Boat Customs painted (electric lime-green) and refreshed (removed its quarter canopies and created a new deck) a 28-footer for first-time Skater owner Joe Eger. In 2019, Mills reimagined the 1998-model-year, Skater-built 47-foot Fountain Powerboats V-bottom called Popeye for customer Ryan Retter.

Boat Customs modernized a 47-foot Skater-built Fountain V-bottom called Popeye.

Of course, there are more—many more—Skater catamarans that showcase Mills’ work. We’ve chronicled a slew of them on speedonthewater.com in our Projects department but have far from covered them all.

And we expect to cover many more in the years to come.