cigarette
 

who is jeff friedman?

craigg?

t2x?

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The Sun Shines on the Kings and Queens of the

NEW YORK CITY POWERBOAT RALLY

It rained for 40 days and almost 40 nights, then on Saturday, June 14th at 11 am, the sky miraculously cleared for just 4 hours…and off went the National Powerboat Association’s infamous NEW YORK CITY POWERBOAT RALLY with 131 contestants from all over the nation competing on the Hudson River.

The 1st segment of the event was the Patriotic Parade from the Statue of Liberty to the George Washington Bridge, which was lead by the Cigarette Racing Team, the Official Paceboat for the 100+ mph class. Then followed the Speedboat Class led by the Sonic Paceboat and finally the Cruiser Class lead by Freedom Marine’s Mustang Express Cruiser. All powerboats took the start at the George Washington Bridge to commence the 2nd segment of the event, the Hi-Speed Run to the Tappan Zee Bridge. After completing this 15 mile leg, all boats navigated the 3rd segment of the event, the Poker Run, which took the fleet to Ossining Boat and Canoe Club, Haverstraw Marina, and finally returning to Liberty Landing Marina, the host marina and headquarters for the show.

Gary Montano’s 46’ Sterling powered Cigarette grabbed the early lead, but was quickly pulled down by Bob Russell and Mike Fiore in their 42’ Outerlimits GTX, until one of their 557” Sterling engines failed. Bob Christie took the lead in his 36’ Nor-Tech Cat until Jim Leonardo “hooked-up” his 50’ Nor-Tech, “Extreme Exhibit” and scorched the fleet, claiming speeds approaching 190 mph. Hard to verify the “King of the Hudson’s” speed, since he pulled away from our Jet Ranger helicopter too. Jim Courtney in his 36’ Nor-Tech was the 3rd cat to the bridge followed by Charlie Amorosi/ProRoc’s 36’Spectre Cat, “Tsunami”.

Scott Applegate’s 42’ Outerlimits GTX, “Jus Truckin”, edged out Oliver Bock’s 123 mph 47’ Outerlimit’s GTX from Canada to be the 1st V-Bottom to the bridge earning him the title, “King of the V-Bottoms”. Brad Benson ran a close 3rd place in the V-Bottom competition in his 42’ Outerlimits, “Pass Blocker”, with 540/900HP Mercs, Herring Props, and Merc #6 speedmasters, at 115+mph.

For the 4th consecutive year, Ron Bender’s, “Wild Thing” from Ohio, won “Best Looking Crew”, all costumed up as the Flintstones. The “Best Looking Boat” Award went to Jeff and Ryan Friedman in their new 38’ Cigarette Top Gun, “Water Damage”…what a pretty boat! Mark Jameson’s Cigarette, “Too Hot” won “Queen of the Show” with its dazzling paint job. Our “Youngest Captain Award” was passed on from Ryan Friedman to Barrett Friedman in his 42’ Cigarette Tiger, “Barenboo”. He is quite a driver at 13 years old! (Can you remember what boat you were driving when you were 13?) Adam Habib earned “Furthest Traveled” by leaving from Santa Ana, California 5 days ago to compete in his Formula . Bob Leach, President of Eliminator Powerboats also came from California with his raceboat and had great support from his newest distributor FASTBOATS, INC., located on Long Island, New York.

The real winner of the day was Tommy Fancher in his 37’ Outerlimits…but speed did not matter. He pulled a straight and won the Five Thousand Dollar Grand Prize. That should help to keep gas in his Fountain, Cigarette, and his Outerlimits.

With support and sponsorship from the Cigarette Racing Team, Offshore Performance, Outerlimits, Ocean Performance, Eliminator by FASTBOATS, INC., Trenton Marine Center, Sonic, Hustler, Formula, Tiger Performance, Livorsi Marine, Skater, Mercury Racing, MRD Motorsports, Huber Marine, Kurt’s Competition Marine, Bravo Shop, Total Dollar Insurance, OffshoreOnly.com, Myco, Cassatto Airbrushing,

S & S Propellers, Double Tree Club Suites, Liberty Landing Marina, Chillybear, ThinkFast Films, and of course FRENZY PERFORMANCE, this event was the epitome of,

FAST BOATS…PRETTY GIRLS…GOOD MUSIC!!!

…the ingredients that make this the greatest powerboat adventure in the world.

THE NEW YORK CITY POWERBOAT RALLY!!!

Make your reservations now. Next year’s date is June 19, 2004.

National Powerboat Assoc.

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Classic Projection
Blown away in a Cigarette 46

06/27/2000
by Chris Caswell

The ton. One C. A century.

Whatever you call it, one hundred miles per hour has always been a magic number ... first on land, then on the sea. In fact, there was a Century Club for those who exceeded one hundred miles per hour on water and the limited membership was made up of daring hydroplane and dragboat drivers until fairly recently.

Today, however, just take your checkbook, loaded and cocked, to 3131 N.E. 188th St. in North Miami Beach, Florida, mark off a few well-chosen items on the options list, and wait for your new Cigarette 46 to be delivered. You're a shoo-in for Century Club membership.

The first of this newest (and biggest) breed of Cigarette ran 106 mph straight out of the factory. One-oh-six. Wow. And, mind you, this is no stripped out race boat with rough edges and a hollow shell for an interior. The Cigarette 46 can be delivered at any level of sumptuous luxury, including a full cabin with king-sized V-berth, enclosed head, and wet bar.

Cigarette, or, more correctly, the Cigarette Racing Team as the company is named, may not have invented the high performance sportboat but the name is certainly synonymous with macho muscleboats and the company has done more than a little to define and refine the breed. Kings, princes, and jetsetters own Cigarettes and even former President George Bush, can often be found with the hammer down on his personal Cigarette 28, Fidelity.

Cigarette's late founder, Don Aronow, remains a legend in the industry, and his magic still adds a mystique to the company. Wealthy from New Jersey construction, Aronow retired to Florida in his early 30s, where he promptly fell under the spell of offshore powerboat racing, which was still in infancy. He promptly founded Formula Boats to build a 23-footer that was both a race and sportboat. Preferring the excitement of starting businesses to running them, he then founded Donzi, so named after one of his many female admirers suggested he call his newest boat Donzi Baby. Tiring of that company, he soon launched Magnum Marine, basing it again on N.E. 188th St., which was now nicknamed Thunderboat Row for all the muscleboat companies Aronow had launched there. After selling Magnum, this time with a non-compete clause, he had a custom 32-foor offshore race boat built for his own amusement.

Naming it The Cigarette after a New Jersey rumrunner with a reputation for uncatchable speed during Prohibition, Aronow promptly won two World Championships and, in one season, won nine of 11 races (he broke down in the other two!). The Cigarette Racing Team was founded by Aronow in 1969 and he sold it to Jeff Friedman in 1984. Sadly enough, Aronow was murdered several years later within sight of the Cigarette factory in a crime that remains unsolved.

When Friedman acquired Cigarette, it was essentially Aronow's private hobby shop, producing race boats that were rock stable and blindingly quick, but rough. Production boats were sold to the public but, as president Bob Gowens points out in an automotive analogy, they were akin to a Shelby Cobra on the street ... a hard-edged product with no refinements.

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Gowens, with vast experience in company turn-arounds, was a quick study on the muscleboat industry and he soon realized there was a market for a boat that brought the superlative Cigarette design, construction, and speed to the public, but using modern technology. "A Cobra is fine, but there are modern cars that are faster and handle better, while still having electric windows and air conditioning. That's what we set out to do with Cigarette," he says.

Gowens' first project was the 35-foot Cafe Racer, which he saw as a boat suitable for a couple rather than just tough-it-out men. Introduced in 1985, it brought the enclosed head to muscleboats, as well as flush deck hatches and recessed cleats for a cleaner look, ergonomic instruments and controls for comfort, and color schemes that were meant to be seen.

Other boats followed, including the 38-foot Top Gun and the Revolution 42 and, like Cigarettes of previous eras, the industry was forced to wallow in their wake. Gowens and his team have managed to maintain that pace with the new 46, but don't expect to see one in every marina. Only 11 of the 46s will be built this year, and three are already gone. The line forms to the right.

We are standing on the seawall at Cigarette's factory, while hull number three hangs in the hoist just inches above the water. It is a typical Florida afternoon, with bright sunshine, a warm 15 knot breeze sweeping in off the Gulf Stream, and my palms are sweaty. Cigarette's Director of Marketing (and in-house racer) Craig Barrie flips a few switches, punches a button, and one of the engines coughs into raucous life. A second pass across the panel and another engine joins the first. Barrie's hands again do their dance and a third engine booms into this cacophony of unmuffled power. A third engine?

Yep, the Cigarette 46 is not just capable but intended to carry three healthy power plants nestled in an engine bay as big as some hotel rooms. Peering down into the shadows, I can see three big Hawk V-8s half hidden under their dual Holley Dominator carbs, surrounded by chrome Stellings exhausts and the dull gleam of braided stainless fuel hoses. This is serious machinery.

It's also evident that this Cigarette is made for running, with the cockpit divided into six heavily padded bolsters designed to hold standing passengers as securely as eggs in a carton. The steering wheel and many of the gauges are to starboard, while the throttles are in the armrest of the portside "hole." You see, the helmsman of this screamer needs both hands to steady the wheel, so a throttleman (in this case, Craig Barrie) handles the throttles.

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Minutes later, we are idling out of the narrow channel and into the bay. The long foredeck seems to stretch endlessly, an illusion heightened by the reverse curve that matches the horizon. Barrie cradles the three Latham aluminum throttle levers and grins evilly at me as he pulls down his ski goggles. I do the same as the throttles go forward and I'm pushed firmly back into the big padded bolsters while the bow rises toward the heavens, blotting out everything in front of us. The sensation is similar to starting the take-off roll in a P-51 Mustang fighter ... all sound and fury, but no visibility forward.

The bow ends its climb and drops gently down again as the 46 climbs easily onto plane, and Barrie's fist moves steadily forward, bringing the three tachs in front of me to 4,000 rpm. The big Gaffrig speedo is rock-solid just under the 80 mark. The wind is trying to find gaps in my goggles, my moustache has turned into a miniature cat o'nine tails, and Barrie is holding up two fingers a few of inches apart to indicate that there's still plenty of throttle left. Uh-oh.

We sweep down the bay to the first speed zone and, pulling back to idle, rumble past a marina area, our exhaust echoing off the condo walls. Heading through an inlet for open ocean, the waters of the Gulf Stream are visible, hundreds of tiny hillocks of blue-green water lumping several feet high. I'm just thinking that it's unfortunate that the sea is too rough for any high-speed running when Barrie's fist goes forward again and the big Cigarette lunges forward.

The first swell is a healthy one and I instinctively bend my knees for the impact, but it passes almost unnoticed. So do the second and third. It soon becomes evident that the 46 loves this kind of lumpy sea, but we're just loping along at 80 or so. An inch or so of helm is all it takes to feed the 46 into a big sweeping turn south into the wind, banking solidly and then lining up to arrow into the waves. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Barrie playing the switches in front of him, and the indicators in front of the wheel show the trim tabs fully up and the stern drives coming up fast. At speed in a big deep-V hull like the 46, the drives are trimmed up for speed and, sure enough, Barrie puts the hammers down.

The acceleration from 80 mph upwards is absolutely amazing, and a landborne equivalent might be an L-88 Corvette in third gear on the open road at 65 ... put the pedal to the metal and you have the same sense of OMIGOD. Perhaps even more astounding was the Cigarette kept wanting to go faster. All three drives were biting solidly and, as the hull lifted on each swell, you felt a tiny surge of acceleration as it pushed ahead, ever faster.

The tachs steadied briefly at 5,000 with the speedo hovering nervously halfway between 90 and 100 and Barrie, spotting smoother water ahead, pushed the throttles to the stops. At 5,700 rpm, the Cigarette 46 was eating up open ocean at 106 mph, 155 feet per second, and neither the boat, the engines, or the crew were breathing hard. It was an experience to be savored.


Back in the bay, even cruising at 3,000 rpm at 55 mph seemed like we were motionless. Believe me, don't go for a sea trial on the 46 if you aren't serious ... it'll ruin you for anything less.

Back at the Cigarette factory, I had a chance to prowl around and through the 46 as the engines were flushed with fresh water and the boat was lifted from the water. The hull on the 46 is, like all Cigarettes, entirely new, unlike some companies that tend to stretch or shrink their successful models.

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The 46 started as a computer design with 3,500 data points that was then carefully analyzed, panel by panel, to determine the specific construction requirements, using a NASA computer at Cape Canaveral. The key to both speed and stability in a deep-vee hull is the deadrise (the angle of the "V") to the bottom which, on the Cigarette, is a healthy 24 degrees. In the real world, a deep-V hull tracks straight and is soft riding because it has no flat surfaces to pound on waves. The Cigarette also has strakes, long horizontal underwater ridges, to further cushion the wave impact at high speed.

I can't tell you much about the actual construction because the exact laminate is a proprietary composite made to Cigarette specifications by Knytex. It combines bi-axial and tri-axial weaving in a Kevlar and fiberglass fabric, plus Baltek balsa coring in the hull bottom, Trevira (a non-woven fiber that prevents "print-thru" of the woven pattern) in the hull sides, and Klegecell foam coring to strengthen the deck.

As to the cockpit and cabin, Bob Gowens is perfectly clear about the 46: "Anything a buyer wants, he can have." Each 46 is custom-built, and the variables are infinite. On our test boat, for example, we had the six-bolster cockpit arrangement, which provides room for four guests plus helmsman and throttleman, but the five-bolster layout gives better access to the cabin. You can add a bench seat, or even move the helm to the center for a racing-style layout.

The cabin is equally flexible. Our test boat had the so-called "Cover Girl" half-cabin that was cushioned with flat padded panels around a central footwell. You can also have a fiberglass lined half-cabin layout with an enclosed head, navigation area, wet bar/galley and double settees, and the full cabin version has a huge V-berth In the bow.

But potential buyers are likely to spend more time considering their engine options than the other amenities and, again, Cigarette is prepared to cater to any customer. The base boat is delivered with triple MerCruiser High Performance 425 engines and Bravo One stern drives, which will give you a 65 mph top end. In addition to the MerCruiser engines, you can specify Seatek diesels or a variety of Hawk engines such as on our test boat. Hawk Marine Power is the largest engine building facility in Florida and is located (where else?) just down the street from Cigarette on NE 188th St. Choose a Hawk engine package and they'll have their mechanics tune and set up the boat before delivery.

Our test boat had the triple 1,000-horsepower Hawks linked by jackshafts to Kiekhaefer Six stern drives with Quicksilver cleaver-style props. Borg-Warner 72-C "crash-box" transmissions are included which are virtually bulletproof but require you to shut down the engine before shifting. You can add hydraulic transmissions, but don't expect a long life from them.

The problem, you see, with high performance marine engines such as the Hawks is not the horsepower, but the torque. Torque is crucial for speed, and our test Hawks put out a solid 1,000 pounds per foot each, which is what gives you that kick in the spine to jump from 80 to 100 mph. The Hawk 1000 starts with an all aluminum Donovan racing block of 698 cubic inches topped by an 8-legged tunnel ram intake under the dual 1350 cfm Holleys. Best of all, this 1,000-horsepower black beauty runs happily on 87 octane unleaded gasoline that you find at any fuel dock.

Fuel, by the way, is carried by a pair of outboard tanks that transfer, via fuel pumps, to a belly tank which then supplies all three engines, eliminating the chances of running one engine dry if you forget to top the tanks. Standard capacity is 370 gallons, which is sufficient even when each engine devours 60 gph at full throttle.

If you like speed, then you're probably addicted to sound as well, and the 46 gives you plenty. The Stellings exhausts that punch through the stern are the size of sewer pipes, and put out around 120 dB at full song, but what a wonderful tune!

Each Cigarette goes through at least two complete sea trials before delivery. The first is by the manufacturing staff that checks everything from engine tune to watertightness of the hull, and this includes radar speed runs at varying rpms. The second sea trial is by the sales department, which double-checks everything previously tested to assure a zero-defect product. Twelve dealers worldwide get less than 200 Cigarettes every year to sell, and each one is perfectly prepared.

This level of quality, not to mention speed, is not exactly inexpensive. The base price for the Cigarette 46 is $360,000 with the triple MerCruiser 465s, and our test boat, with triple Hawk 1000s, custom paint, and the simple cabin, is $770,000.

Not cheap but, on the other hand, where else can you go 100 mph legally? Besides, the Cigarette 46 is unquestionably the new king of the speed mountain, or queen of the high performance seas, if you will.

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Take a 46 anywhere on Biscayne Bay, and you'll set new records for envy and jealousy on the part of normally blase muscleboat owners. Even better, rumble up to the dock at Shooter's, a waterfront bistro in North Miami noted for the hordes of performance boats that raft up to their dock on weekends, and you'll have to chase the crumpets away with a stick. If you want to.

With a boat like the Cigarette 46, you can run over to Bimini for breakfast and be back by noon. How about Block Island for lunch? A quick jaunt from San Diego to Los Angeles? Speed opens your boating world but I'm not sure that my heart could take more than an afternoon at Shooter's broken by a couple of sprints into century land.

Besides, I know I'd always laugh at the sign marking one edge of the Inland Waterway: "Resume Safe Boating Speed." Heh, heh.

Chris Caswell Copyright © 2001 All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast or redistributed.

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wow....