| YAHOO!!! I aim for the dock, nail the throttle, and WHAM! The Triumph 1700 Skiff just bounces off, so this time I point the bow at the trailer… except that the Triumph rep has already pulled it out of the water. No matter—vrooom, vrooom, SLAM! Yippie, that was fun. Try it with a fiberglass boat and you’ll be picking up the pieces, but this boat is built with Triumph’s proprietary Ropelene, (read: polyethylene) a polymer material that survived the toughest torture tests I could come up with during a day of testing at Sandy Point state park. But don’t just take my word for it. Go to www.toughboats.com and watch videos of a triumph get towed down the road without a trailer, dropped from a crane, and hit with a sledgehammer. Seriously, even if you’re not interested in the boat, it’s worth checking these videos out just for fun. Ropelene is nothing like fiberglass; Triumphs are actually molded in a 500-degree oven. Polymer beads are melted, molded, and baked. Then a computer-controlled system rotates the mold so it distributes and cools the plastic evenly. Foam is injected into the voids between the hull and deck, and stringers are filled with polyurethane foam. Since the foam and the Ropelene are very similar substances—essentially the foam is simply aerated polyurethane—they bond much better then foam and fiberglass do. That means saturation and water migration (problems common to foam-filled fiberglass boats) won’t be issues as the boat ages.Screws used in the 1700 Skiff are serrated and when being driven they build enough heat to actually melt the plastic around the threads, ensuring a good bite. This process results in a boat that’s nearly indestructible and completely unsinkable. Added bonus: they’re also less expensive then most comparable fiberglass boats, and a rigged and ready 1700 goes for between $15,000 and $20,000 depending on power options.Naturally there are some down-sides to this construction technique, the first being weight. The 1700 Skiff I tested weighs 1,400-lbs. Compare that to 800-pounds for a Carolina Skiff 1780 DLX, or 1,050-pounds for a Scout 175 Sportfish. Though that extra beef helps the 1700 Skiff bull through seas, it also means less efficiency and speed then some of these competitors might provide.
Once I’d had my fun ramming stuff, we headed out into the open Chesapeake. There, I discovered the 1700 Skiff comes down from waves softer then you’d expect from a 17’4” long, 8’0” wide boat with a mere seven degrees of transom deadrise. Again credit the Ropelene, which flexes to absorb impacts. On top of that, at 12-mph the hull rises up and breaks over the hump, which means that on very rough, snotty days, you’ll have good slow-speed planning abilities that will get you home. Running at a 4500 RPM cruise, my GPS read 25.6-mph. At this speed the F-75 Yamaha (spinning a 13 ¾” x 17” aluminum prop; going to stainless-steel should boost speed by two or three mph,) sips just four and a half gallons per hour, which means the 1700 Skiff gets about 5.8 miles to the gallon at cruise. Sweet. At wide-open throttle we touched 36.5-mph. Zipping along at that speed was fun, sure. But not half as much fun as ramming stuff—something the Triumph can do all day long, without missing a beat.
Get more info at www.triumphboats.com.
LOA - 17'4"
Beam - 8'0"
Draft - 6"
Weight - 1,400
Fuel Cap - Portable tank; variable
Max. HP - 90
Price - $15,000 - $20,000
Observed performance notes w/ 2 people and half load fuel, single 225-hp Yamaha F225 outboards swinging a 13 3/4” x 21” three bladed stainless steel prop:
| Cruise RPM |
Speed in MPH |
Gallons per hour |
Miles per gallon |
| Slow cruise/3500 |
17.0 |
3.0 |
5.7 |
| Fast cruise/4500 |
25.6 |
4.4 |
5.8 |
| Wide open throttle/5900 |
36.5 |
7.6 |
4.8 |
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| The Triumph is easy to trailer, easy to launch, and hard to break. |
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