When asked how many colors exist, some people will count off the familiar ROY G BIV acronym (for red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet). Ask Dean Loucks (left), however, and he’ll tell you there are at least 769.

That’s the number of custom colors he developed, with a paint company, that are being used on some of the fastest speedboats around – as well as motorcycles, helicopters, private planes, and even an Indy racecar. He’s now bringing that same concept to the megayacht market, for everything from the toys they tote to the yachts themselves. But don’t think his designs are just riots of bold colors. They’re cool, and classy. Loucks employs intricate techniques to give the illusion of depth, layered shapes that reveal themselves at just the right angle and lighting, and flake effects that make the paint sparkle brilliantly with even more intensity of color.

Born and raised in Indiana, Loucks jokes that his artistic talents were far greater than his spelling abilities at a young age. As proof, he showed me a drawing he did at age eight, in which his self-portrait, in front of a drawing board, is accompanied by, “When I grow up I would like to be a artist. Because I like to droll.” After high school, he moved to Southern California and met with great success selling custom airbrushed clothing, simultaneously landing illustration work with car-show clients and even Disney. But after a few years, he missed the Midwest, so he moved back to Indiana to embark on new ways to employ airbrushing and other techniques.

Much of the 1990s was spent honing his craft and growing his business. By 1997, offshore racing and pleasureboats were becoming some of his biggest clients, with Cigarette Racing Team, Formula Boats, and Outerlimits among them. In fact, last year he customized Man of Steel, a 50-foot Outerlimits owned by the same person who has the 164-foot Heesen Man of Steel. If you’re familiar with the megayacht, then you know the “Z” emblem, much like that of Superman, adorning the yacht. Loucks emblazoned the same emblem on the powerboat (below), with brilliant tones like red.

Loucks and his business partner, a fellow paint expert, do most of their work in a 15,000-square-foot building, but with the global nature of the yacht business, he’s “working” the docks at events like the recent Yacht & Brokerage Show in Miami. Through those efforts, as well as leveraging existing relationships with helicopter manufacturers, he’s making inroads with superyacht builders, designers, and owners. He’s being asked to present everything from simple stripes that flow gracefully down and forward to the bow, to layered curls and swirls that reveal themselves only as you get closer to the yacht. Then there are circles and other shapes that subtly emerge from a subdued color, only to equally subtly fade down the expanse of the hull.

One of the tag lines of Loucke’s company, The Art of Design, is, “Can you handle the attention?” It’s closely related to a favored saying of his, about how his designs are intended to “steal time.” The points: A one-of-a-kind paint job makes a yacht stand apart, and the visual stimulation will make onlookers take second looks and the time to consider what’s involved. He’s additionally leveraging his relationships with leading helicopter companies to reach their customers who also own yachts. Loucke has customized helicopters to match an owner’s other craft as well as feature designs all their own. One particular helicopter that he painted for a client has simple, classic customization: one or two colors of stripes flowing front to back. Another has wild, barbed-wire designs enveloping the body.

The yachts and their toys aren’t the only things that Loucks paints. Last year he launched the Dean Loucks Fine Art Collection, comprising paintings like the one above (titled "Sad Lilly") that hang in galleries, hotels, and fine homes—and, he soon expects, megayachts. They embrace the same layering of colors and distinctive techniques as his other work, to give “life” to the painting. He’s painted everything from a jazz musician, whose saxophone seems to leap off the canvas, to martini glasses.

Loucks is poised to leap further into the megayacht market. Stay tuned. In the meantime, here's more of his airbrush artistry.

_{SLIDESHOW PHOTOS: DATON O. FULLARD/HOA DIGITAL IMAGES}

When the devastating earthquake hit Haiti a few weeks ago, people and businesses from around the world began mobilizing to donate money and relief supplies. Several yacht companies were among them. Now add a megayacht crew to the list: Capt. Walter Rowan, Jeremy Stevens, Stephen Ward, Tylar Murphy, Clint Walrath, Dean Silva, Julie Scott, Emma Taylor, and Kim Lyle of Major Wager.

The 160-footer was in Panama and “headed for Haiti as soon as we learned of the catastrophe,” according to the yacht’s blog. They encountered serious weather in transit but stayed focused on their mission to bring supplies to an orphanage they were familiar with. According to an interview Scott did with her Scottish hometown newspaper, Harwick Today, Major Wager successfully delivered a ton of rice, 250 gallons of bottled water, 27 cases of canned food, and 15 cases of baby food, among other necessities.

As you can imagine, given the severity of the earthquake and the damage to infrastructure, it wasn’t easy. Here’s an excerpt from Capt. Rowan’s post on the yacht’s blog on January 24:

The security team from Mercy and Sharing are delayed, no surprise, nothing could move fast under these conditions. So we are standing by to offload in the morning. I decided to get underway and head back out of the area we were in today just to be safe. Actually I noticed the Navy and Coast Guard boats repositioning out more to sea and figure they are smarter than me, so I followed. It’s a real comfort to have them here. One of the ships is an Aircraft Carrier, they have been running flight operations nonstop all day. Every few hours we get a call on the VHF from one of the ships asking what our intentions are. They must question why this motor yacht is hanging around…probably think we are lost. When we advise them we are making a private supply drop and are waiting to make this happen with our people on land, they just wish us luck. That surprises me. I thought they would tell us to depart the area.

I sent one of our tenders in to have a look at the intended drop point at Arcahaie and they returned telling me about 300 people were camped on that beach. Families in makeshift shelter along with their goats and cows. We have an alternative location for tomorrow.

We hear some repairs have been made to the main pier in Port au Prince but still only one truck can be on the pier at any time! That’s a huge bottle-neck. It probably takes an hour to off load one container.

The newspaper reports that Major Wager's crew eventually did use the alternative location, due to serious concerns. It quotes Scott as saying, “We were very proud of what we were about to do, but as the emails started to come in about the drop-off point, I certainly started to feel quite anxious.” Once they successfully offloaded the supplies, she says, the crewmembers felt good, though "what we did was a drop in the ocean."

Capt. Rowan adds in his post that he and the crew were trying to help another private boat get medical supplies into Haiti from Miami and needed assistance in making it happen at Arcahaie, the drop-off point Major Wager had originally wanted to use. If anyone has information on how to do so, please post it here, and I will pass it along to him.

A crewmember from Charisma has been missing for more than a week in the British Virgin Islands, and local authorities are trying to piece together what happened.

Pawel Kwiatkowski – known as Pav, according to his bio – is the second engineer aboard the 153-foot charter yacht. According to newspapers in the BVIs, police state that he was reportedly last seen in a tender around 11:30 p.m. on January 29, leaving Willy T, the famed floating bar and restaurant off Norman Island. The police add that Kwiatkowski’s fellow crewmembers realized he was missing the following morning and contacted Virgin Islands Search and Rescue (VISAR). VISAR conducted searches on land and on water through February 2, along with marine police and a team from Blue Water Dive. Phil Aspinall, the president of VISAR, told the BVI Beacon that rescuers even looked in the waters of St. John. VISAR switched to recovery operations on the 3rd.

Aspinall also told the media that information from witnesses who had seen Kwiatkowski at the bar seemed distrustful. “Our enquiries made it all seem a bit suspicious, so we put in a call to the police,” he was quoted as saying. “It’s now a police matter.” The police confirmed the investigation and, as part of the overall investigation, have spoken with Kwiatkowski’s fellow crewmembers.

Police have not yet revealed if they have a suspect in mind or whether they believe they know what happened. Charisma is expected to remain in the area as the investigation continues.

We’ll post a follow up as more information becomes available. In the meantime, his friends have set up a Facebook page for him, open to all comments.

UPDATE, FEBRUARY 10: Sadly, Kwiatkowski's body was found washed ashore on Monday, by local police. Yachting Partners International, which manages Charisma, released the following statement:

Our thoughts at this time go out to the family of Mr. Kwiatkowski, with whom YPI Management has been in daily contact throughout the last nine days -- we will continue to do everything n our power to ensure his mother is properly supported and taken care of. We would also like to thank the captain and crew of M/Y Charisma who, notwithstanding the trauma of the last few days, have been willing and able to provide the maximum support and assistance not only to YPI Management but to the rescue services and police in the course of all our investigations.

For about two weeks now, I’ve been following developments at the renowned Miami-based Merrill-Stevens, which shut its doors just before Christmas. Some reports state no more employees remain, while other say about 20 security and other back-office personnel are still on site. Conflicting information like this is among the reasons why I held off on writing about the situation. Waiting has proven to be a good thing, as the owner of the yacht-repair yard now says he expects it to survive.

The layoff news was broken by The Triton on December 18, subsequently picked up by a few other marine and non-marine media over the following week. Just within the past few days, however, Hugh Westbrook, chairman of Merrill-Stevens, has told both the South Florida Business Journal and the Herald-Tribune new service that he’ll operate the yard as a storage facility and refit yachts on a project-by-project basis. He also says he still believes the company, operating on the Miami River since 1923, can become a bigger contender in the megayacht market. To make that happen, he reveals he needs investors and $12.5 million, or he’ll have to sell the business. He adds that he’s speaking with investment bankers about options.

When Westbrook purchased Merrill-Stevens in 2004, he announced ambitious plans to expand operations. Sixty million dollars would be spent renovating sheds and dock space for yachts up to 250 feet, from the current 155-foot limit. The funds would also create 300 jobs, plus a river walk and exhibits detailing Merrill-Stevens history. (The yard was founded in 1885 in Jacksonville, Florida.) While awaiting government approvals and permits for all of this, two years later Merrill-Stevens acquired Koch, Newton & Partners. This expanded overall offerings further into yacht sales and management, charter, and crew placement. Unfortunately, in 2008 the yacht management, charter, and crew-placement divisions were eliminated in favor of focusing on the pending expansion.

Westbrook blames Merrill-Stevens’ financial problems on a few things, one being approvals getting mired in red tape. The other: the economy. “We have invested more than $5 million in soft costs,” the South Florida Business Journal quotes him as saying. “Just as we were ready to go, the financing opportunity for a project like this dried up and has not come back.” Westbrook also blames customers, saying some have delayed repairs. He tells the Herald-Tribune news service that the owners of two 150-footers in storage, needing $1 million apiece in repairs, laid off their crews and postponed the work.

I’m continuing to follow developments and will post updates accordingly.