Crazy Jack!


     


Jacky Setton is an extraordinary man. After earning a lot of money distributing Pioneer electronic devices, working in real estate and also selling racing cars (of which he still has a formidable collection), he spent a lot of it on his true passion: boats. The Frenchman has had so many that he is unable to count them all, from superyachts to daysailers. But, above all, his great pleasure was to design many of them working with a dedicated naval


54 SEAHORSE


architect to create the boat that exactly suited him. ‘Tailormade’ boats for which he sometimes has difficulty later finding a buyer! At 72 Setton tells us his amazing story as a private ship owner from his residence in Sardinia. Seahorse Magazine: Where does this incredible passion for boating come from? Jacky Setton: My passion is actually for the sea more than boats. In fact, I realised very early on that production boats were not very suitable for me. I am constantly searching for a way to be in the water like a fish, more perfectly suited to the environ- ment than you can ever be onboard a regu- lar boat design – sail or power. Therefore often I was obliged to put all the ideas together by myself then work with good architects of course to design the hulls themselves… or at least turn my ideas into something that was efficient. My passion for the sea becomes worse


and worse, even now. In Sardinia it is consuming me every day. But I confess that sometimes here I must break my own first rule… in an emergency jumping on a pro- duction Grand Soleil which I bought ‘just in case’ really as somewhere simply to eat and sleep… take my nap! Otherwise, I am always onboard custom boats because that is my true passion, conceiving and execut- ing new and different boats of every type. We have just made such a boat with a


Sardinian friend, Italian Paolo Boa. A small monohull built by Multiplast (it is the third boat I have made with them). This one is a 30-footer: beam 1.75m,


draft 2.45m, 60 per cent of the weight is in the keel, 1,100kg of displacement! She was made for upwind sailing as she never slams even heading into steep waves. Being quite narrow she has also proved to be very quick while running because of her moder- ate wetted surface. She accelerates as a multihull does with only the self-tacking jib in front. She is amazing. Her moulds are original and very special (she cost a lot!)… As usual she is very difficult to sell! SH:How many boats do you have in all? JS: I am unable to tell you either how many I have now or especially how many I have had! At present I probably have about a dozen, of which a good half will be sailing boats. I have some in the Virgin Islands where I have always had a home, another boat I share with an old friend in St Barts. I have a boat in Golfe-Juan and others of course here in Sardinia – one of which is a small cat-rigged design by Frers, Freset, that my friend Bernard Gallay has for sale. It is interesting that as I get older it is


more and more sailing that interests me, because with a motorboat you cannot go anywhere nice without having 50 other boats in the same anchorage. With a sail- ing boat you go here and there and stop


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