BLUE WATER PERFORMANCE New orders and new designs confirm Nautor’s Swan’s position as one of the world’s leading producers of luxury sailing yachts.
N
autor’s Swan, the Finnish manufacturer of luxury yachts, began 2012 on a very positive note, with six new orders for yachts to be delivered this year and in 2013. Those orders included high performance sailing cruisers across the Swan line – one Swan 80, three Swan 60s, one Swan 53 – as well as a Club Swan 42, the one-design racing yacht that has been developed in partnership with the New York Yacht Club. The company was particularly pleased with the three new orders for the Swan 60, which takes the fleet to a total of nine to be sailing by the end of this summer. The Swan 60 uses the latest technology, design and construction methods to combine comfortable cruising and easy handling with the potential for racing performance The fifth Swan 60 to be delivered is joining the Swan Maxi circuit in the Mediterranean this summer and will go on to compete in the Rolex Swan Cup in Porto Cervo in September. 164 Industry Europe
Enrico Chieffi, managing director of Nautor’s Swan, commented on the orders: “I am delighted that our order book is so full and that our team of quality craftsmen in our yard in Finland are working at close to full capacity. We have a series of innovations and evolutions to the SwanLine that we will be launching throughout 2012, including the new Swan 100”.
Technology and craftsmanship Nautor’s Swan has been producing oceangoing luxury sailing yachts since the launch of the first of the line, the Swan 36, in 1967. The company itself was established the previous year by Pekka Koskenkyla, a paper sack salesman, who set out to build a highly crafted but strong yacht, using a fibreglass mould, that combined speed and racing capability with comfort and manageability. In fact, the Swan 36 was the first 10 metre fibreglass yacht capable of both cruising and
racing. Koskenkyla drew on centuries of boat and shipbuilding experience at Jakobstad, the small town in Finland near the Arctic Circle where he set up Swan production. From the first, the idea was to combine series production of fibreglass hulls with traditional hand-craftsmanship for the wooden sections and fittings to produce performance yachts of unrivalled quality. Today Nautor’s Swan production is centred on three facilities in Finland. Kalby is the yard the company moved to in 1968 and it was the main yard and head office until November 2006. Today it still houses many facilities for the production of the company’s yachts, including an extensive lamination shop. The most recent investment at Kalby is a high-technology curing oven for the polymerisation of large pre-pegs for hulls and decks. Nautor’s new 30m long FlexMill CNC milling machine is also located at Kalby; it can be used for direct mould milling from 3D files.
