This first Swan Maxi to hit the water showed a balance between comfortable family cruising, excellent bluewater seakeeping and racing prowess that Finnish builder Nautor Swan is well known for in its fleet of luxury sailboats.

Words: Risa Merl; photos: Nautor Swan

The Swan 108 was required to offer elegance and strength with comfort and safety

The first Swan 108, dubbed Fancy by her French owners, was created with the aim to, “seamlessly blend the virtues of speed with elegance, strength, reliability, and, above all, to create a hull that ensures the comfort and safety for both the owner and guests while sailing in conditions likely to be encountered while cruising middle-distance passages,” said naval architect Germán Frers, who designed the hull of the Swan 108.

True to Nautor’s Swan’s racing pedigree, the Swan 108 delivers the exceptional performance one would expect from this renowned shipyard

Exterior design came from the Milan-based Micheletti + Partners and the interior was created in-house by Nautor Swan, with a team headed by designer Misa Poggi. The concept for the Swan 108 had just been announced when the owners of hull one connected with the Finnish builder.

The Swan 108 has a traditional steering circuit to replicate the ease of smaller boat sailing

Craving more space and comfort for their family of seven, the owners were looking to make a sizable step up from their previous yacht, a Beneteau Oceanis 62. The notion of taking on a nearly 20m leap in LOA between boats was made with the simultaneous idea of having a crew to help with the day-to-day running of the boat.

With the guidance of the owner’s representative and yacht project manager Ulysse Harin, the owners consulted with all the top builders of high-end cruiser/racer sailing yachts to find a builder that offered proven design while allowing the owners to make customisations that would best suit their needs.

Curved windows filter natural light into a main saloon

They were drawn to the Swan Maxi line, which blended sailing performance and comfort. Fancy’s owners are a large family, both in number, with five children in tow, and also in stature. “The owner and his son are both two metres tall – and his son is only 16 years old, so he’s going to get bigger,” said Harin.

Rich burgundy accents and furnishing with pops of colour are found throughout the interior

The in-house design team at Nautor Swan partnered with structural engineers to optimise deck stiffeners, allowing ceiling heights in all main living areas to offer more than 205cm of clearance. It’s customisations like these that will be appreciated by Fancy’s owners as well as her charter clientele, as the yacht is also on the charter market.

The Swan 108 boasts many design firsts for the overall Nautor Swan fleet. This includes a new aft design, which sees an entire portion of the aft deck lift up and lower down to sea level to create an 18m swim platform that can be set up as a beach club.

“This isn’t just the transom opening,” said Vanni Gaigani, head of product marketing for Swan and Maxi Swan yachts. “The whole mechanism was designed by us and fully built in Finland.”

Fancy’s owner views the mast as a piece of art and requested it be visually prominent in the saloon

The Swan 108 is also the first to feature a sleek new coachroof style designed by Micheletti + Partners. Also notable is the placement of the mast, which sits on top of the coachroof, rather than in front as might be seen on other yachts. Likewise, while many large luxury sailing yachts hide the mast away inside a box or tuck it behind a bulkhead in the interior, Fancy’s mast is on full display, as per her owner’s request.

The curved windows in the coach roof above help natural light filter down into the main saloon, which is bright in its material choices. The owner’s brief for the interior was simple: space, light and luminosity. Poggi and the team at Nautor Swan achieved this by mixing light and dark colours and a variety of textures to create a sense of spaciousness and interest.

“Light colours and materials are used on the verticals, contrasted by a grounding earthy colour of the lower furniture components and floor,” said Heini Gustafsson, senior project architect, styling, at Nautor Swan.

“Part of Swan DNA is to use real wood veneers, which was appreciated by the owners,” Gustafsson added.

The interior design team also created a selection of four interior motif examples, which, if chosen by future owners of the Swan 108 series, will save time and money over creating a more customised interior.

Options abound in the layout of Swan 108 as well. A standard configuration, which is seen on Fancy, has master cabin and VIP forward, while two twin-bed cabins are aft of the main saloon, adjacent to the crew quarters. A variety of cockpit configurations are on offer as well.

While racing wasn’t their ambition for Fancy, as experienced sailors and racers, the owners put a priority on performance.

High-performance under sail was paramount for the owner family of Fancy

Fortunately, both Nautor Swan and longtime collaborator Germán Frers are known for crafting high-performance sailing yachts. Frers utilised computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis to optimise the hull design to provide a smooth ride even in heavier conditions.

“We wanted to replicate the feeling of steering a small boat even in this size,” Gaigani said. To meet this aim, the Swan 108 was outfitted with a traditional steering circuit that gives realistic feedback to whomever is at the helm, which in the case of Fancy will often be her owners.

Fancy’s sail plan also meets the goal for joyful sailing, with North Sails providing a total sail area of 1,448sqm, while Hall Spars provided the carbon spars and the rigging is ECsix by Future Fibres.

Nautor Swan sailing yachts are largely designed in Italy, built in Finland, and now will have an enhanced presence in Asia. Simpson Marine, Asia’s largest yacht dealership, is the exclusive representative in Asia for Nautor Swan.

Whether the Swan 108 is plying the waters of the Mediterranean or Asia, her sleek design, exquisite sailing performance and thoughtful customisations are sure to get her noticed. 

nautorswan.com

simpsonmarine.com