Inside the Cigarette Difference
For Bob Christie, ordering a new Cigarette 39 GTS (“stock” model shown here) was the best boat-buying experience he’s ever had.
As most folks in the tight-knit high-performance powerboating community know, New Jersey’s Bob Christie has owned a few killer boats. Namely, Speed Racer, a 44-foot cartoon-themed MTI catamaran and Perfect Storm, a 36-foot Nor-Tech cat with — arguably of course — one the most stunning paint jobs ever produced by The Art Of Design.
Most recently, Christie owned a 2011 Cigarette 42X sportboat powered by a pair of Mercury Racing 1100 engines. Before that, he bought the first quad-outboard center console from Statement Marine. The 38-footer replaced Speed Racer until the sportboat bug bit Christie again and he bought the Cigarette and sold the center console.
That’s the thing about having the means and success — and through his own hard work Christie has earned every bit of both — you can boat hop. Hauling the big catamaran between New Jersey and Florida got old and the center console didn’t deliver the thrills he was looking for, so he jumped back into a high-performance V-bottom sportboat. Hey, why not?
But damn if the guy isn’t back to a performance center console again. He and his wife Madelyn spent several hours last Saturday at the Cigarette Racing Team facility in Opa-Locka, Fla., with company owner Skip Braver and ordered a new 39 GTS with quad Mercury Marine Verado 350 outboard engines.
and then