Triumph makes 
the best commerdals in boating. Do 
its boats live up to the hype? 
By Pete McDonald 

The boat sat cradled on a pair of steeply inclined greased rails, ready to be 
launched over a cliff. The stump-infested waters of Lake Ouachita, in Mountain 
Harbor, Arkansas, lapped 50' below it. A stout rope linked the transom of the
boat, a Triumph 170 CC, to the business end of a GMC Sierra truck. On the 
director's word the Sierra's driver put pedal to metal, pulling the rope taut until 
it released a clip attached to the Triumph, propelling the boat to certain doom. 
It hit so hard that the splash reached the top of the cliff.

"That was awesome!" said David Smith, creative 
director at the Republik ad agency and the man charged
with trying to make this boat appear unbreakable. On
this day, he was filming a sequel to the famous "Bubba
Test" commercial, a wild send-up involving a redneck
dragging a Triumph to the lake-without its trailer. This
year's edition, "Divine Intervention," is about a boat falling
from the sky. They're both meant to make you laugh, grab
your attention, and push home Triumph's tagline, "The
World's Toughest Boats."
Great entertainment, for certain, and throwing a boat
off a cliff. is pretty impressive. But how do these boats,
built from polyethylene plastic rather than fiberglass, hold
up in the real world, with day-after-day abuse from your
typical non-caring boater?
There was only one way to find out: Trash a Triumph
for an entire season. So we took possession of a 195 CC
and set only two rules: Treat it like a rental car and never
slow down. Writing our own script, we'd determine how 
reality compares to the hype. 

Crash Test 
The Scene: The commercial opens with a boy and his 
grandfather, a minister, fishing from a dock. The boy 
really wants a boat, to which the grandfather replies, 
"God's spiritual gifts are greater." Cut to the boy's 
guardian angel in a Triumph delivery truck. He 
releases a boat off the truck, and it proceeds to bounce 
along the road and collide with a semi, which sends it 
on its way to the aforementioned cliff. 


The Reality: Triumph used no gimmicks. It really dropped 
the boat off the truck and nailed the boat with an 10-wheeler 
going 30 mph. The only manipulation of reality was rigging 
two steel bars to the grill...to protect the truck. The damage 
to the hull after its skid along asphalt and impact with the big 
rig consisted of a few gashes along the keel and a 40' trail 
of plastic shavings. Remarkable, but this is where Triumph 
distinguishes itself from its fiberglass counterparts. 

In truth, most of the boats we buy are plastic. The 
majority are made from FRP-fiberglass reinforced 
plastic- meaning they are built with layers of fiberglass 
suspended in a polyester or vinyl ester (plastic) resin. 

Triumph uses plastic differently. It rotomolds its hulls 
from a thermoplastic, in this case polyethylene, so it 
comes out in one piece-hull and deck together. Triumph 
calls the process Roplene (rotationally molded polyethylene). 
Unlike fiberglass, it can flex without cracking, can be welded 
for repair, and has high impact strength. 

"Would you rather a little kid drop a glass or a plastic cup?" 
asks George Blaisdell, Triumph's VP of operations, trying to 
bring home the real world differences. 

Okay, George, we'll take your words to heart and put a Triumph 
into the hands of some big kids-our editors. 

Over this past season we banged a Triumph 195 CC off every dock 
we could find. We left the fenders at home. We kept it on a mooring 
and got back and forth with a dinghy nicknamed Ben Hur , in honor 
of the movie's spike- wheeled chariots. It had no rubrail and gunwales 
with enough spurs to scratch any gel coat. We beached it at high tide 
and left it dry at low, while we went clamming. We slammed it with 
an errant Danforth when trying to toss out a stern anchor, and left it 
beached on a concrete ramp while we strolled off to get the car and 
trailer. 

All of this would have left hard (and expensive) to repair cracks, 
gashes, or scrapes in a fiberglass boat. But the Triumph, rather than 
having layers of gel coat, skin coat, chop, and fiberglass matting, is 
one piece of 3/8"- thick plastic. Like the Corian in your kitchen, it's 
the same material all the way through. Scratch or bang gel coat and 
there's a good chance you'll see the amber stuff underneath, so the 
damage stands out even more. Not so with polyethylene. 

With this plastic you just use sandpaper to smooth out any scratches 
and then go over the rough spot with a heat gun (not a torch!) until it 
smoothes over. Your wife's hair dryer will also do. 

Deep Impact 
The Scene: The Triumph 170 CC careens off the semi and into the 
woods. It bounces off trees on its way over the cliff where it lands 
with great impact in front of the boy and his grandfather, ready to 
fish. 

The Reality: After the boat splashed down, Triumph engineers 
combed over the traumatized hull like CSI detectives to assess the 
damage. Besides the expected scratches, all they found was a bolt 
that came loose from the captain's chair. 

How did it survive? "The 
material and boat gives a little bit; says Blaisdell. "You can bend it 
back and forth without having to worry about it breaking-like what 
happens to a metal paper clip." 

Polyethylene, by nature, is a springy material. It has high 
energy-absorbing characteristics that allow it to flex and
return to its original shape. With fiberglass, repeated 
significant flexing will eventually cause it to crack. 

So we decided to do some flexing of our own. At every 
opportunity we'd launch our 195 CC over every wake and 
every roller in the inlet. I took the boat airborne several
 times and each time the boat landed with a soft mush. We
 managed to jar a helm seat off its pedestal, but other than 
that, nothing gave way. The flexing that allowed it to survive 
a cliff drop helps soften the landing off a wave, giving it a less 
jarring ride in rough conditions. 

American Idle 
Scene: The Triumph 170 CC floats intact over to the boy, who 
smiles and says, "Thank you, Jesus." The commercial ends 
with a troubled look from the minister. 

What the final scene doesn't show is what happens 
afterward. How the kid, like the rest of us, will leave the boat 
unattended in a slip for weeks, or even months. Most of us 
neglect our boats. The average boater uses his boat only 40 
hours a year. The rest of the time it just sits. So we let ours do 
the same. We moored it in saltwater with no bottom paint, and 
no mercy. 

According to Blaisdell, this shouldn't be a problem: 
"You could leave it in saltwater for the next 200 years and 
nothing would happen." For one, osmotic blistering isn't an 
issue with polyethylene. From a chemical standpoint, 
it doesn't react with saltwater, nor even something as 
corrosive as battery acid. And it doesn't quickly break 
down from UV exposure. 

Still, bottom growth attaches to it just as readily as with 
fiberglass. To get bottom paint to adhere to a Triumph, 
you must first sand it with SO-grit paper and then "flame 
treat" it by quickly blasting it with a propane torch. The 
subsequent oxidation allows the paint to stick. Too much 
work for us, so we just dumped the naked boat in and 
hoped for the best. 

After a season's worth of scum and barnacles adhered 
to the bottom, we had to clean it (maybe we should have 
painted). With a dose of Mary-Kate On-Off hull cleaner 
and a round with a pressure washer, we easily removed 
most growth. We scraped off whatever barnacles remained 
with a paint scraper. After a quick brush with sandpaper, 
you'd never know a barnacle once resided there. And 
because the hull is 3/s"-thick plastic, those little barnacle 
pinpricks don't result in water penetration. 

Critical Acclaim 
We took the 195 CC to task and found that this company 
lived up to the hype of its commercials. Triumph boats are 
tough. They bend but don't break and stand strong in the 
face of neglect and downright abuse. 

So what's the catch? For one, the finish of these boats isn't 
pretty. Polyethylene can't compare to a fiberglass hull's rich, 
lustrous gel coat or paint. Comparatively, a Triumph looks 
dull. But keep in mind that as gel coat fades and gets chalky 
over time, the Triumph remains the same color. You can 
clean it with a mild abrasive such as Softscrub to work out 
ingrained dirt, and give it some luster with a protectant like 
Annor Allor 303. 

Also, for the time being, the use of polyethylene in hull 
construction is strictly for small boats. Triumph initially had 
a difficult time building a 21-footer primarily because of 
molding issues. The largest boat the company now builds 
is a 23. 

As with all boats, a Triumph is subject to wear and tear. 
We had screws loosen and rust. We accrued stains to the 
vinyl cushions and the canvas T -top that proved difficult 
to remove. The electrical system held up just fine over our 
season of use, but in time it will have the same maintenance 
and upkeep issues that every boat faces. It's inevitable. 
It's a boat. 

Finally, we had a few nitpicks about the general layout aboard 
our 195 CC. The console's top swings open, making it awkward 
to tend to the batteries, oil reservoir, and other systems. We also 
found that the inwale rod racks jutted into the cockpit walkways, 
causing several painful encoun- ters with our shins. 

But our overall impression of the Triumph 195 CC can be 
summed up in two words that didn't quite make it into the 
script of its PG-rated commercials: Bad Ass. Just don't 
push yours off a cliff.

Serial Boat Abusers 

The Cartographer 
In its efforts to provide detailed charts for inland lakes, Navionics 
deploys dozens of Triumphs. Each boat averages 1,500 hours 
a year. "We chart lakes up to the I' contour level;' says sales 
mallager Jeff Brodeur. "So we get into areas tllat aren't friendly 
to norn1al hulls. Most of the maintenance is to the lower units, 
not the boats." 

The Tow Boat 
Joe Frohnhoefer III, VP of operations for Sea Tow, uses seven 
215 CCs and seven 195 CCs. "They're like little bumper boats,
" he says. The first models experienced small tears in the plastic 
around the towing supports. All Frohnhoefer had to do ""was heat 
up the plastic to fix the problem. "You can beat it up and reweld it 
back together." 

The Rental 
Ken Beckley, of Beckley Boats in Lake George, New York, has 
22 Triumph 191 Fish-n-Skis in his rental fleet that average 200 
hours a season. "You really can't do much to them," says Beckley. 
"One was left high on the rocks. We sanded it down and it was 
back in service the next day." 

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