Buckle up
The ClubSwan 50 is already a great success: fast, even in performance and super-modern at the dock. Now there is the ClubSwan 36 – less a baby sister than a (very) cheeky agent provocateur… a remarkable successor to the iconic and beautiful Swan 36 that in 1967 started the whole ball rolling
The Nations Trophy 2019 was always going to be spectacular anyway. By day there will be thrilling boat-for-boat action on the Bay of Palma, with lead changes at every mark as the world’s best in three ClubSwan one-design classes square up for the title of World Champion. By night the similarly invigorating and equally exclusive social side of the ClubSwan lifestyle spins elegantly into motion. All in all it’s quite the affair… only this time it’s going to be even more spectacular because ClubSwan are introducing a fifth one-design class: the ClubSwan 36.
To blend the trimming alchemy of traditional dinghies and keelboats with the exhilaration of modern foiling concepts Nautor’s Swan have collaborated once more with Juan Kouyoumdjian on the new entry-level sportsboat, the ClubSwan 36.
With the Juan K-designed ClubSwan 50 voted European Yacht of the Year 2018 in the Performance Cruiser category and winner of the US Sailing World prize for the best one-design launched in 2016 (and currently thriving with over 25 boats sold), why introduce another class quite so soon?
The answer is two-fold, as ClubSwan’s product line leader Philippe Oulhen explains: ‘We learned from the ClubSwan regattas
62 SEAHORSE
in Porto Cervo, the BVI and now the Nations Trophy League that there is high demand for this kind of regatta. There is still strong support for the ClubSwan 42 and Swan 45, which is why Nautor’s Swan took over the management of both classes as well as the ClubSwan 50. From organising the racing to taking care of the owners, all that in-house expertise is already in place to deliver exceptional events to ClubSwan owners. That’s one of the reasons for creating this new ClubSwan 36.’
The second reason, which came from the very top of the Nautor’s Swan group, involved thinking about what ClubSwan’s future generations will want. ‘The challenge from CEO Leonardo Ferragamo,’ continues Philippe, ‘was to keep going in the direction of travel started with the ClubSwan 50, and to bring newcomers into the ClubSwan family who are looking for a very simple way to race.
‘At the Swan events, with the ClubSwan 42 [48 units produced], the ClubSwan 45 [52 units produced] and the new ClubSwan 50s [23 produced], we heard owners asking for a genuine inshore boat, with no interior at all, less sails and crew involved. It is not “another sportsboat”, because it brings this forward thinking to enable the designs to evolve, while
The original Swan 36
designed by Sparkman & Stephens in the mid-1960s remains for many people the epitome of good yacht design during that period – agonisingly pretty, a
wonderful sea boat and an enduring prize winner when it is well sailed. Now Juan K’s 21st-century successor threatens to fulfil the same role but in very different times – a breathtaking new flat-out racer quite unlike any Swan before it
keeping the Swan’s DNA: quality, attention to details and style.’ According to Philippe, the thinking behind it was to look for a boat of the future. ‘If you look at smaller boats there are three broad categories. One is classics like the 6m, Star, Dragon and so on – all of which are going very well today; they carry the sailing history and are still very high level. Then you have the more conventional sportsboats, of which there are a lot; their evolution came mainly from improvements in materials, especially with carbon and sandwich hull construction, making it possible to make lighter boats. ‘At the other end of the spectrum you have more modern boats, with moving appendages and high sail area/displacement ratio. I call these the conceptual boats. The Imoca 60 brings a lot to this category, and the ClubSwan 36 belongs more to this side. It has the flush deck, open cockpit and retractable bowsprit one might expect of a sportsboat, but the chamfered bow, to lower CG and cut aero drag and weight, says ‘no compromise’ and the transverse sliding C-foil, pioneered by JYD for the ClubSwan 125, offers side force and lift in varying degrees depending on your angle of heel.
Above it all stands a ‘highly
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