8 CENTER CONSOLES
Cigarette 59 Tirranna
The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long,” wrote the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu. Few burned more brilliantly than Don Aronow, the king of Miami’s Thunderboat Row. The dead-end, north Miami boulevard was red hot in the 1970s and 80s with a cadre of go-fast pioneers led by Aronow, a world champion offshore racer, builder and founder of Cigarette Racing.
Both Thunderboat Row and Aronow are long gone, but Cigarette Racing remains under the guidance of Skip Braver, CEO and owner since 2002. Braver’s experience with on-road exotics was an ideal match, leading to high-profile collaborations with Mercedes AMG and Ducati motorcycles that expanded the customer base beyond the poker run crowd. To celebrate their golden anniversary, Cigarette Racing aimed to stick to their guns but also continue to push the bar on aesthetics and performance.
Two years in the making, the 59-foot Tirranna honors 50 years of offshore racing as the largest offering in a line of performance boats and center consoles from 38 to 50 feet. She “had to be a flashy performance boat and look like a Cigarette,” Braver said, and the 59 delivers on both fronts. Powered by a sextet of 400-hp Mercury Verado Racing outboards, she’ll see a top end of 63 knots. And the aggressively raked, carbon fiber hardtop is the perfect complement to a jet-black hull (“It took six weeks to paint the boat,” Braver told me) set off by miles of red leather. There’s no mistaking the 59’s pedigree.
With the goal of making the super console, luxury sport yacht segment even more appealing to customers, care went into the details. Teak soles from stem to stern set off the red and black color scheme with comfortable seating and sunpads everywhere, easily ready to accommodate well more than a dozen guests. I particularly liked the alfresco galley built into the transom, with the wide swim platform (the engines are mounted on a beefy bracket that keeps the platform untouched) serving as an ideal perch for the chef.
I was also impressed with Tirranna’s electronics package. Six Garmin touchscreens are mounted throughout the boat—two 24-inch monitors at the helm and four 9-inch screens in convenient spots—to control onboard networks. I can see my crew using the touchscreens to commandeer the 29-speaker, 5,200-watt JL Audio sound system; yet another way to make a bold first impression.
Belowdecks, Cigarette tapped the iconic Italian design house Poltrona Frau to
