Megugorac Going ‘Bananas’ For Incredible New DCB M44 Widebody

For a boat like Dave and Buffie Megugorac’s Bananas—a bright yellow DCB M35 Widebody with turbocharged Mercury Racing 1350 engines that runs 160-plus mph in three quarters of a mile and is as well known on its home lake in Lake Havasu City, Ariz., as it is across the world thanks to social media—one would think it would be hard to build another one to top it.

The third M44 Widebody catamaran from DCB Performance Boats should be finished at the end of this year.

Well leave to Dave Megugorac, better known as “Magoo” to a legion of friends and fans, to try it. The devoted DCB Performance Boats owner who splits time between homes in Southern California and Lake Havasu City—and soon to be Lake Powell thanks to a recent houseboat purchase—is building a nothing-spared new DCB M44 Widebody with twin Mercury Racing 1550/1350 engines that the El Cajon, Calif., company expects to be complete by the end of the year.

“When I first started talking to DCB about another boat I had my eyes on a new 38 they’ve been working on but I got away from that pretty quick when I saw Mike Stevenson’s new M44,” said Megugorac, who is traveling to DCB next week to see the deck, which came out of the mold yesterday, being combined with the hull, which is going to be released this evening. “The M44 is as sexy as it gets. Mike’s boat is beautiful and I’ve been in it so I know it drives phenomenally. My new boat is going to be a lighter layup than Mike’s boat and it would be hard to compare it to the first M44—Craig Hargreaves’ Spooled Up II—because that one is painted and is heavier because of it.

“We’re going all out on this boat with so many cool things,” he continued. “We’re building a Cadillac. The boat is going to have 44,000 BTU worth of air conditioning. We’re going with electric seats with built-in a/c and an ‘eject button’ that raises the cushion up four inches to make it easier to see over the bow. We’re also putting in a concealed front-facing camera in the tunnel that will drop down and have infrared technology for night vision. I have all the confidence in the team at DCB to build the best boat possible. They continue to drive themselves to do things a little better each time.”

Megugorac, who also has tons of confidence in Mercury Racing products, said he doesn’t plan on selling his four-year-old 35-foot cat anytime soon.

“Bananas has been great to me—we put 350 hours on the original ECUs and then Whipple hot-rodded the ECUs and we’ve put more than 180 hours on them since,” Megugorac said. “I love that boat; in fact the thought of it going to someone else makes me want to puke. In reality, I know I’m buying a huge-ass boat and I’m not exactly sure how much effort will be required to take care of it so I might as well keep Bananas to have a more manageable option.”

Check out the images in the slideshow above to see different stages of the 44-foot cat being built.

To accommodate the dual-fuel engine configuration, DCB is installing multiple fuel tanks—a pair of 100-gallon tanks for 91-octane fuel and two 40-gallon tanks for 112-octane fuel. Even though he’s not sure how much, if at all at first, he is going to use the 1,550-hp mode, Megugorac said the ability to switch between horsepower outputs electrically is pretty amazing.

“Boats are getting cooler and more advanced all the time—heck even the battery switches are electronic now, which isn’t the case with my M35,” Megugorac said. “We’re even going as far as having the yellow for the interior hand-dyed to match the gelcoat.”

The interior, which Megugorac said is going to be over the top in typical DCB fashion, is full Alcantara with seating for six people. He expects the dash design, accessories, stereo and other electronics to be out of this world, and of course DCB’s rigging is always at a show-quality level.

Megugorac is also pretty excited about the trailer, which is being built by the team at Douglas Marine/Skater Powerboats.

“Originally we were going to design a new wham-bam, one-off custom tilt trailer, but on second thought we decided that wasn’t the best idea so we called Douglas Marine and they’re building us a nice, proven tilt trailer,” Megugorac explained. “The aluminum cradle on the trailer is going to be yellow with black trim. The tunnel of the boat is black so I think it’s going to look really cool.

“Buffie suggested we call the new boat Big Bananas, and I like that, but we haven’t decided on the name just yet,” he added.

News on the official name is sure to come in one of several follow-up stories on the build planned for speedonthewater.com.

Megugorac Going ‘Bananas’ For Incredible New DCB M44 Widebody

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