Sailing Photos courtesy of Bob Ross/Australian Sailing

One of the great things about having your own website is that you get to voice your opinion, which as many of you have noticed, I do with alarming regularity. It is then a double pleasure for me when we get to announce our newest advertiser and tell you how much I absolutely love the product (not that I don't love all of our advertiser's products!).

To me the Thompson T870 is like almost no other boat on the market: A fast little sportboat with a very nice interior. I really like the idea of a fun, fast and simple boat that has the ability to be a decent weekender, and the T870 is, by all appearances, exactly that.

The Australian builder of this little rocket is Sportboatz, led by principal Tony Cuschieri. By all accounts they build a very nice product, and the 870 is monocoque built using vacuum-bagging, PVC core, vinylester resin, and comes with carbon fiber foils. But the boat has something extra that can be quite attractive to a number of potential customers: The 870 is now available in kit form. You can chose to get the boat with almost as little or as many features as you wish. There are rig, keel, interior and
equipment options to choose from. These boats are priced very attractively, and if one is handy, you could get a trick little boat and save a bunch of money while screwing it together yourself.

Clearly we are happy to have Sportboatz with us, and truly do hope that if any of you are in the market for a tidy little dual-purpose boat, give the T870 a good look.

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01/30/2003