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Pure energy…


The (very) enthusiastic founder of the Seascape boatyard in Slovenia, Andraz Mihelin, says it’s up to producers to lead the way with new concepts, not customers


Andraz Mihelin talks and thinks simulta- neously, and he talks and thinks a lot. We are sitting in a Danish hotel restaurant, surrounded by dark brown walls with pictures of local war heroes, drinking Coke and recovering from a long race. My plan is to make him describe the philo - sophy behind his wave of new designs that have entered the market – all genuine plan- ing keelboats. Seascape has built a strong brand from producing fast but easy-to- handle small trailable cruising boats, and they are probably now market leaders in


54 SEAHORSE


an interesting niche. They are doing some- thing completely different, and they are growing and selling more boats than ever. As you might have guessed from the open- ing sentence, Mihelin is not a hard man to interview. You basically just let him loose. Seahorse: Why was Seascape brought into the world?


Andraz Mihelin: Because we believe that we need some genuine modern boats and they are in very short supply. Kristian Hajnsek, my partner in the company, and myself came from a Mini Transat back- ground, we sailed Minis for six years in France and built two Protos. We were shocked at the level of knowledge and experience in the French sailing commu- nity. I mean, in France, the first genera- tions of professional modern multihulls – I’m thinking of the Orma 60s – became extinct before the rest of the world even started to get excited about them. They had 60ft trimarans doing windward/ leeward courses, and with small modifica- tions they did transatlantic races with the


same boats, sailing at 20-30kt+. We built 6.5m boats that go singlehanded across the Atlantic, sometimes with daily averages around 10-12kt. It was like landing on another planet. And all this happened while the rest of the world regarded Volvo 60s, Kevlar-built, semi-displacement boats as the pinnacle of the sport! SH: So the inspiration was the mainly French tradition of fast ocean-going shorthanders? AM: We wanted to take this development, that we had seen in the pointy end of the industry, and bring it to regular users. Bring it to amateur sailors who clock up maybe 40-50 days of sailing a year. They are always having trouble finding crew, but they want to have fun. We wanted to bridge the gap between what’s happening in the extreme end of the industry and what you find ‘on the shelves’. We believe that the boats offered from traditional producers are outdated. Most of them, anyway, and especially in the performance cruiser sector.


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