Comments from the Designer
Happy New Year and Welcome to our January Issue of the Tboat newsletter
As you know over the year we have talked a lot about our new little design the T590 and our plans to develop this prototype. We now have the tooling for the T590 currently underway and our first production boat is expected to be ready and complete for delivery in January 2001. We already have orders in place for the T590 and the orders are filling fast so make sure you contact us at enquiry@tboat.com to place your order in time so you don't miss your summer racing season. Mark will assist you with any questions and pricing queries on the T590 production boat.

We are able to build a number of T590's in time for the March 2001 sport boat regatta in Auckland. Anyone wanting to visit Auckland and sail his or her new boat in this regatta should contact us. We will also provide a day of training and supply a training sailor for the regatta if required. After the regatta the boats will be packed up and shipped to the new owner. For more information on the T590 click here to view our design page.

Key West 2001
This year's Key West Race Week was held from the 15th to the 19th of January. We had 5 Tboats competing in the PHRF divisions. With more boats from more countries and more states than ever, the 14th Key West Race Week had a record of 327 boats, from 20 countries and 33 U.S States compared to last years old record of 271 entries. The weather for the week was very consistent with not as much wind as we all would have liked, averagering at around 10knots until the last day where we were luckily to see the breeze kick in with 16knots. During this regatta Steve had the opportunity to sail on Pete Hunters T830, which was sailing with a new rig and sails supplied by Thompson Marine and Kim sailed for the week on the T30 Wairere. The week proved to be very fun depsite the fact that our larger two boats the T30 and T37, which were hit with very low handicaps which made it impossible for them to compete under a fair ruling. However it was great to see our T850 Go Dog Go,(sailing for the week under there sponsors name Warpspeed) take 3rd place in division 1, PHRF 3, and the Viper 830 also taking 3rd place in division 2, PHRF 6. Because both Steve and I were sailing we were unable to take the photos we had planed to include in our newsletter, but we are still hopeful that someone else will provide us with some photos from the regatta. Jay Price has commented on the race below.
For a list of the race results please refer to our race results page or go direct to the Keywest website at www.Premiere-Racing.com

Comments from Jay Price sailing on Viper T830, 93239
On our Viper 830, we had a great week, holding onto third overall in our class for the regatta from the first day onward, crushing three Antrim 27's, a highly-modified Carrera 290 and another Viper apparently being run by a new owner. Part of the credit goes to Steve Thompson who was sailing with us, and also to a New New Zealand-built rig that was supplied by Thompson Marine, had a first-rate finish and a new suit of sails from the Doyle Auckland loft. (Note to other U.S. sailors: check NZ price on these sorts of purchases, and be ready for a damn pleasant shock).

We were consistently strong, despite winds that ranged from a tepid 6 knots one day to 16 knots late in the week. And we beat the Antrims upwind and down in nearly every race, despite their articulating bowsprits.

Steve's tactics were consistent and our starts went particularly well, with one highlight of the week being a port-tack of our fleet at one Wednesday start. The only thing that kept us from first in the class were two much larger race designs that had been misplaced in our class, something that even the rating committee admitted was a problem. They were 33 and 32 feet long and relatively heavy, while the rest of the boats in class all were 27 to 29 feet and were clearly sportboats. Next year we were hoping for an all-sportboat class, or some innovative with-the-class rating adjustments... and something more than our paltry count of three trophies. We've had the Viper for a little under a year  our first racer with an assymetraical sail and in North Carolina, where we sail mostly on wide river mouths, we've been mopping up, with roughly nine outright wins out of about 15 starts. With the experience gained at Key West with target speeds and spinnaker handling, we hope to improve on that this year. We also hope to improve on the amount of food supplied at the T-Boats party we hosted Wednesday night -- one fried turkey fell far short of the mark. But on the plus side, Steve was unable to locate any Greek-made tequila this year.

Sport Boat Articles
Steve has written some fantastic articles about today's sport boats. This month we will feature Steve's second Article - The Design of Sport boats. We will feature an article for the next 4 newsletters and they will be available as a PDF format for you to download and read in your spare time. Our Next Newsletter will feature The Rigging and tuning of modern Sport Boats.
I recommend you check out our sport boat articles page, by clicking on the button at the top of this page or
click here sportboat Articles


Click on the icon to download and print a copy of our second sport boat article.
You will require a PDF reader to print the article.

Tboat Agencies
We now have agencies in the Czech Republic and Japan, their contacts details are below. Please contact Czech Republic, Proyachting at myslik@proyachting.cz or check out their site www.proyachting.cz

Japan our agency is Winds Corporation and they are contactable on info@winds-co.com

Remember our phone and fax numbers in New Zealand have changed to the following:
Phone: (649) 419-0922 Fax: (649) 419-0927

Our newsletter once again is available as a PDF file that allows the user to download the file onto their computer and print the whole document. If you refer to the top left of our newsletter you will see an icon for a PDF file, if you click on this you will be able to download our newsletter. For those unfamiliar with PDF you can go to our links page and download the Adobe PDF reader and this will enable you to read all PDF files links or click on the right hand Get Acrobat Reader icon above.

Boat of the Month
Thompson 37 Rumours owned by Tim Woodhouse in Rhode Island is our boat of the month.
This month we have decided to feature our T37 Rumours as our boat of the month. Rumours had an extremely tough time at Key West this year, racing with a very low rating and racing against much larger boats. They did compete well at Block Island Race Week last June finishing in first place in Division 1, Class B - PHRF1. Then in July finished second at the New York Yacht Club Rolex Race Week in Newport. Rumours is the first of our T37 built in New Zealand and sailing in the US and as Tim has mentioned before she is the fastest 37 footer sailing in the world, this design really is exhilarating upwind and downwind in light conditions and she is very stable and fast in the breeze. For more information on this design check out our design page.

or for more information email us on enquiry@tboat.com

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Race Results
Key West Race Week 2001 January 15-19
I am not going to go to much into this race as this race has been highlighted above with results and comments. Key West Race Week was a fun, frustrating and sucessful week for us. Our larger two boats the T30 and T35 were given extremely low handicaps in the PHRF divisions making it difficult for them to compete on a fair level. The T30 finished with a 5th place after our 3rd place was taken in the last race through a ocs, it was however our best race for the week and we were happy that our place was taken by our other Thompson T850 Warspeed who had a great regatta to finish in 3rd place in division 1, PHRF 3. The Thompson 35, Rumours had a mixture of racing with some great races and not so great races. Being the smallest boat in division 1, PHRF 2 they really had a difficult week, but despite the result of 9th place the team continued to keep there heads high and party hard.
The last division we had boats racing were in division 2, PHRF 6 and this was our Viper 830 a boat which was designed for the states, would have to be voted as our most improved boat, starting from day 1 they were in 3rd place and this never looked like changing. Our other Viper T830 Sea Dragin', finished close behind in 5th place. Refer to race results page for more detailed information.

New Year's Regatta Napier, New Zealand
We had 3 T750 competing in the Napier Sports Boat regatta held every year over the New Years period.
It was a sucessful few days for home based boat, "Smoke Wagon" finishing 1st and Auckland's "Atomic" who placed second overall. I was lucky enough to venture to Napier for New Years and caught the last day of racing, as a spectator watching comfortably from a launch, a ride offered to us by the friendly locals. It was an awesome site to watch, with a spinnaker start the Thompson T750 just picked up and left the other Sport boats lying in there path. I only wish my camera had the lens I needed to capture this spectactular race. I have included my first photo's of many to come of the last days race.

I do apologise if I have missed any boats. Please we need your help to assist us with race results, regatta information and any news as it is not always possible for us to attend each regatta. You can contact us at
enquiry@tboat.com