Hunt HBI 30 Center-Console

If you want a boat that is versatile and practical, yet still turns heads and runs 40 knots plus while delivering just about the softest ride you'll ever experience, the new Hunt HBI 30 might be for you. Based on traditional RIB designs, which incorporate an air-filled collar around a rigid running surface, this oversize model rides on a Hunt-designed hull. You can use the Hunt HBI 30 as a sport boat, tender, dive boat or a fast day cruiser. There is a head with 6-foot standing headroom and a small sink and shower built inside the center console, and there's comfortable seating for half a dozen passengers.

Driving the boat wide open in a 2-foot chop on Long Island Sound, I turned the wheel all the way over. The Hunt HBI 30 turned circles within its own wake with the twin 225 hp Yamaha four-strokes maintaining a firm connection with the water. The boat remained dry and the passengers comfortable. "The boat is unusually stable," says Winn Willard, president of C. Raymond Hunt Associates, the designer. The collars add stability, cushion the ride and deflect spray but do not add drag when the hull is up on plane, Willard says.

The Hunt HBI 30 is the first collaboration between Hunt Yachts, the legendary builder of fast, seaworthy deep-V cruising boats in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, and HBI, longtime inflatable builders in New London, Connecticut. "It's an innovative boat," says Bill Reed, president of HBI, as we sped down the sound at 40 knots. "It has all the advantages of a lightweight inflatable combined with the Hunt deep-V hull ? and it has a yacht finish." We jumped some waves and then jumped some more ? each time touching down with a soft landing. "We had the Garmin people on board," Reed says, "and they told us we needed a new instrument." "What's that?" I ask. "A fun-ometer," he replies. "You need a way to measure how much fun you are having."

Hunt Yachts; www.huntyachts.com

Yachtlike touches include teak decks.