Deja Blue’s New Look
The first time I talked to Greg Dutka—the owner of Deja Blue, a cool Sunsation Boats 32 Dominator SS sportboat powered by a pair of MerCruiser 496 Mag HO engines—was for a story I did five years ago on Sunsation owners who embraced the boating lifestyle to the fullest. Dutka was the inspiration for my OffshoreOnly.com column that week at the end of October in 2014 because the Texas native, who is a Colonel in the United States Army, was stationed on the Hawaiian island of Oahu and took advantage of running his 2006 Sunsation around the islands.
Greg Dutka (center) enjoyed working with Mitch Kramer (left) and Andy Imhof of Maryland Offshore Performance Marine Center to paint his Sunsation. Photo courtesy Greg Dutka
Fast forward three and a half years and he and I connected again as he turned to Justin Wagner and the team at Waves and Wheels in Osage Beach, Mo., give the 32-footer a full interior overhaul and stereo system upgrade. What’s wild is that the mid-April column last year was the first time Dutka, who was stationed in Bagram, Afghanistan, at the time and is now back in the States in Maryland, got a glimpse of the finished product.
Obviously being that I write about performance boats and a lot of powerboat projects from Waves and Wheels, Boat Customs and a variety of other cool shops you can take your older boat to be made new, it’s not odd to follow a project like Dutka’s in various stages. And that’s exactly why Deja Blue is the subject of this week’s column.
Several weeks ago Dutka reached out to let me know he had the team at Maryland Offshore Performance Marine Center design and apply a new paintjob.
and then