Italboats Stingher 380 Fast Rike 2022 Review

Why would you have the best motor yacht in the marina but kit it out with the cheapest tender? That’s where support boats such as the Italboats Stingher 380 Fast Rike step in, providing big-boat levels of head-turning looks with a fun, sporty and surprisingly compact package.

The 3.8-metre Stingher 380 Fast Rike isn’t the smallest dedicated tender in the Italboats range – there is a 3.4-metre 340 Fast Rike that sits below it – but at the moment it is the biggest.

Italboats are not meant to be run-of-the-mill RIBs, and a quick look at this one lying beside the jetty at Sans Souci in Sydney’s south speaks loudly to that.

Package prices for the Italboats Stingher 380 Fast Rike start from around $45,000, and that’s before you fit it with an outboard engine.

But before you baulk at that price, this is no ordinary tender. It’s a premium product with many features you’ll not see on other rigid inflatable boats that double as tenders.

The most interesting feature of the Italboats Stingher 380 Fast Rike is the side console – no reaching behind to use a tiller.  It’s a fixed console fitted with a stainless steel steering wheel and a side-mounted shift and throttle control, and with enough space to either flush- or surface-mount small multifunction touchscreens. It features a low wind deflector that helps to take some sting out of the wind at speed, and can flip forward to reduce the RIB's clearance to the height of the topsides.

The interior is compact, typically long and narrow just like any other RIB, and features a bow that extends further than more traditional small RIB designs. It’s cleverly laid out to have enough seating for up to six people. The seats include two with backrests and sportscar-style rollover hoops at the rear of the tender, an amidship single, a forward-facing jump seat in front of the console with a locking padded backrest that provides secure storage behind it, and a U-shaped bench in the bow.

The space in the bow can convert to a small sunbed using optional infills.

Lidded storage lockers are built into every seat base. Uniquely, the interior of the Italboats Stingher 380 Fast Rike is built up higher than the tube that surrounds it, giving more internal freeboard than if the hull was just built as high as the tubing that surrounds it. High-traffic areas where people are likely to step around the edge of the hull have non-slip surfaces.

Forward of the console, the hull includes a pair of stainless steel handholds on either side. 

The Italboats Stingher 380 Fast Rike’s forepeak, which houses the anchor well, is formed into a small platform with a fold-away cleat at its centre. The platform has an anti-slip diamond pattern moulded into it, meaning you can load or offload people via the bow.

Our test boat included a military green-look finish on the tubes offset against a black hull and white interior, making for a striking combination on the water.

Powering it was a 40hp Mercury FourStroke outboard engine. 

Notable options include lift points if you want to use a davit to hoist the boat onto the foredeck or sedan roof, a boat cover, and a swim ladder. 

Break it down to its basics and the Italboats 380 Fast Rike is a big-boat tender in the traditional sense – an inflatable 460mm diameter tube split into four independent chambers ringing a rigid hull. It measures 3.8 metres long, but at 2.0 meters wide is pretty beamy for its compact length.

The beauty of this design is that the Italboats Stingher 380 Fast Rike is lightweight, durable, easy to lug onboard and into the water, and able to carry much heavier loads than a traditional rigid tender – in our case, it is rated for up to five people.

What sets this tender aside from others, though, is a distinct step aft to a flat planing surface that helps the Italboats Stingher 380 Fast Rike to get up on the plane and stay there. Up front, the tender uses a 22.0-degree variable deadrise hull that you’d find on a typical offshore vessel that can travel fast in a mix of conditions, but particularly the deep vee to cut through waves and swell.

The hull and deck are made from hand-laid fibreglass, with internal walkable surfaces featuring a diamond pattern anti-slip surface. Scuppers create a self-draining deck, although should the worst happen and the Italboats Stingher 380 Fast Rike swamp, it will float level in the water.

Surrounding this are machine-cut and hand-glued Hypalon 1670 dtex tubes reinforced with neoprene fabric, featuring an outer rubbing strake for bumping against objects and Hypalon loops forward that serve as handholds.

The tubes are split into four separate chambers, and are fitted with inflation valves as well as overpressure valves that will release air if the tender is, say, left out in the hot sun all day.

Of note, even though it measures only 3.8 metres from bow to stern, the Italboats Stingher 380 Fast Rike is rated for up to 60hp. The hull only weighs 280kg before the outboard engine is fitted, so with just the skipper onboard it’s a RIB that can get you across the marina fast.

If you’ve ever wondered why you would spend more than $50,000 on a tender for your motor yacht, a quick spin at the helm of the Italboats Stingher 380 Fast Rike will be all the convincing you’ll need. 

Mind you, our test boat was fitted with a 40hp Mercury FourStroke outboard engine, and the option is there to extend that to 60hp. However, even two-up, this thing is fast.

The low profile of the Italboats Stingher 380 Fast Rike makes it feel like a boat you sit on rather than in, leaving you feeling rather exposed. However, this is where the design of the RIB excels.

The wide beam and the extreme outboard flotation from the tubes makes this boat a supremely stable platform. Even with all my physical bulk at the side console, at rest there is almost no lean to starboard.

The tubes carry a fair bit of beam forward and, at speed, act to deflect spray kicked up by the deep-vee hull.

With 40hp pushing it, the Italboats Stingher 380 Fast Rike is a fun little platform. Fast, maneuverable and dry, it’s a boat you can enjoy rather than endure.

The stepped hull design with the flat planing surface aft means the Italboats Stingher 380 Fast Rike has a tendency to pop up on the plane like a cork rather than transform, but once there it sits confidently and comfortably.

At speed, this is a fun little tender. You can have a ball just carving turns in this boat, with the transom sliding more than gripping through turns so that it feels as though you’re pivoting around the front of the hull.

Even when the water chops up, it’s still a fast little boat. The aft planing surface lifts the bow of the Italboats out of the water where the deep vee takes over, slicing through chop and swell so that you barely need to back off on the throttle when taking boat wakes.

Even with two people onboard, the Italboats Stingher 380 Fast Rike is still a fast platform, able to cover ground confidently. Again, anyone sitting forward to balance out the small RIB feels very exposed, although you’re well protected from spray with a confident helmsman behind the console.

Overall, dynamics and performance is exceptional – you can only imagine what it would be like with 60hp on the transom.

The only downside to the package is that the Italboats Stingher 380 Fast Rike is quite heavy for a tender, so if you beach it and the tide ebbs, you’re not going to be hauling it back into the water on your own.

No electronic instruments were mounted to our test boat, so performance data from the 40hp Mercury was not available. However, while testing we managed a good cruising speed of 28.5 knots with two people onboard.

Spending the equivalent of a decent small car on a tender may seem a bit of a stretch, but to those who can afford it, a fast RIB like the Italboats Stingher 380 Fast Rike is more than just ship-to-shore transport.

It’s the ideal sort of platform to suit the discerning motor yacht owner who wants more than a vanilla tender to serve basic transport duties.

Whether it is ducking ashore for provisions, taking the dog to dry land, or heading out for a day on that perfect crescent of sand you can see from your motor yacht but can’t get close to, you’d do a lot worse than to tap this RIB to take you there.

Priced from: POA including bow and stern U-bolts; bow nose with strainless steel rope roller and cleat; stern cleats; console with windshield, stainless steel handrail and steering wheel with mechanical steering; switch panel; anchor locker; bilge pump; battery box and isolation switch; paddles and foot pump; tube repair kit; boat registration; and in-shore safety gear.

Price as tested: POA including custom-coloured tubes, hull and interior colours; 40hp Mercury FourStroke outboard engine