So when Dean Wilkes, designer, builder, and owner of Image Boats rocked up on a sunny spring morning to Queenstown’s Kelvin Heights boat ramp with his newest addition to the fleet—a gleaming blue and silver Image 7.08 Pontoon—I was pleasantly surprised. Coming from the deep south and Foveaux Strait’s testing waters, I was expecting hardy and serviceable, and maybe a bit of staunch, and certainly, later it proved to have those qualities in spades, but it gleamed and radiated like a good-looking woman ready for a big night out, sitting snug and square on her tailor-made trailer.