Hybrid agility
The goal with the Dutch-built Agile 42 was to identify and then deliver a very different type of offer in terms of high performance and quality…
A designer’s dream and a builder’s vision seem to have recently coalesced rather nicely to create the Agile 42, a brand new high-performance, all-carbon luxury cruiser from the Netherlands. Successful entrepreneurs are
hard to please. They’re demanding, uncompromising and don’t easily settle for second best. They’re also the market that Tim van Daal, CEO of VMG Yachtbuilders, and designer Maarten Voogd decided to target with a new brand, Agile Yachts, of which the Agile 42 was the first example to be launched last winter. Voogd is one half of the design
partnership Simonis Voogd, formed with Cape Town-based Alexander Simonis in 1991. Voogd and van Daal have been friends for over 20 years and both are based in the town of Enkhuizen on the Ijsselmeer, which is where they hatched the initial plans for Agile Yachts. Agile: adj, able to move quickly
and easily. The name is a promising start but how would they go about satisfying this exacting clientele? ‘We were thinking about what
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kind of boat we should build to target a new generation of successful professionals between 40 and 50 years old,’ says van Daal. ‘What kind of boat would they want? It was quite an organic process, starting with talking about what we like ourselves…’ It was fortunate then that both
were more or less their own target market, and even more fortunate that Voogd already had a boat in mind. ‘I designed this boat on spec for myself as a follow-up to my own 35-footer,’ says Voogd. ‘If you like, my brief was more speed, so I could do the occasional medium-distance race, and more comfort, so I can sail more pleasantly with my family. ‘It was important to be able to
sail the boat shorthanded, and that she handled easily. Having sailed extensively on the Fareast 31R and 28R over the last four years I know how well a boat like this can sail – now the challenge was to combine this with a simple but functional and stylish interior.’ Voogd’s work with the Fareast brand enabled the process to be
For a yacht with the modern and luxurious interior seen opposite to deliver the performance implicit in its styling demands a higher level of sophistica- tion – and investment – in terms of build method. The Agile 42 delivers on the promise, founded upon the naval architecture of successful ‘freestyle’ raceboat designers and a Dutch shipyard well versed in high-quality joinery and advanced composites
fast-tracked, taking just one year from design to launch. ‘Over the last four years we have designed a full range of sportsboats, but every design had improvements over its predecessor. The hull shape for the Agile 42 is an evolution of this work – full-scale tank testing, you might call it! ‘We settled on a clean and tidy
hull shape with a very flat run aft, but minimal wetted surface,’ adds Voogd. ‘This makes the boat slippery in all conditions. The SA:DSPL ratio is of modern proportions, but not extreme, accentuating the efficiency of the hull shape. However, the bow and chamfered hull deck joint are driven more by aesthetics than by performance!’ ‘The choice of a single rudder
over twin rudders is to minimise wetted surface, weight and cost,’ Voogd continues. ‘The hull shape doesn’t lift the rudder out of the water that quickly, so control is not really an issue. The soft chines are dictated by the maximum deck beam we allowed ourselves.
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