Swapping ‘Goose’ for a Swan
Nautor Swan's first Swan 128 is set to be commissioned for its owner.
Order a new Swan 128 now and it will likely be delivered in spring 2028. It will be finished sooner, but the sea ice will have closed in around Nautor Swan’s shipyard in north-west Finland blocking passage through the winter.
Up around Pietarsaari near the Arctic Circle, the sea typically freezes from November until about April meaning there is an ice-enforced window for deliveries.
“In a way, it’s all part of the charm of buying a Swan,” says Barry Ashmore, Nautor Swan’s chief commercial officer.
“Taking delivery in the early summer or late spring, it really is the land of the midnight sun. We can do sea trials and testing at 11 o’ clock at night, no navigation lights needed. And there’s nothing more lovely than cruising through the Finnish and Swedish archipelagos and going to places that you rarely come back to once the boat hits the Med.”
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The five-month pause in the shed adds a useful “buffer” for fine-tuning and late amends, explains Ashmore. “It’s a very easy conversation to have with the customer,” he says.
“We have delivered boats in early December before when sea conditions allow but it’s a miserable process when it’s so cold and you’re melting ice off the teak decks in the morning and then leaving in a freshly painted boat through sheet ice. It’s no fun.”
Nautor Swan CCO Barry Ashmore says the order book is ‘very strong’.
Swan has a rich heritage of building premium sailing yachts from 28ft and upwards in Finland dating back to 1966 and Ashmore describes the yard as “super busy” off the back of a record year in 2024.
In the superyacht segment, the first Swan 128 (39m/128ft) will be handed over in a couple of weeks, while a second is in build and three 108s are on order or under construction. A Swan 88 and two 80s are also in various stages of construction.
“We’re very pleased that we have a really strong order book,” he says. “We’re really reassured by the uptake of those models.”
However, with one eye on world events he describes the environment as “challenging at the moment”, particularly at the smaller end of the market.
“The geopolitical situation is quite distracting for people who are investing in our kind of boat and many people’s plans depend on a general level of confidence about economics and financial situations, often linked to a business transaction or the sale of a property or the sale of another boat,” says Ashmore.
Mission impossible
Following its 2024 acquisition by Italian boat-building giant Sanlorenzo, the company plans to forge further into superyacht territory with a 43m aluminium maxi yacht to be built in Italy, followed by two larger models. There will also be a blue water range with a 24m alongside a larger and smaller model to appeal to the expedition market, with “the same Swan DNA” but a little further away from its sometimes perceived “sporty” image.
“We’re going into a market that we haven’t really touched on,” says Ashmore. “Having more commercial opportunities will stand us in good stead even in times when the market is pretty challenging.”
Clients are often existing Swan owners trading up, as is the case of the 128 set for delivery, or owners of other large sailing yachts moving into a Swan. Then there are new owners.
The company has been in the mainstream news of late because of reports that Hollywood star Tom Cruise has bought a Swan 108. Video from broadcaster YLE on 29th May appears to show Cruise at Kronoby airport, purportedly after having visited the Nautor Swan yard. Asked by a reporter what he thinks of his new boat, the Top Gun and Mission Impossible actor replied: “Beautiful” before waving and walking off to board a private jet. Trading Goose for a Swan, then.
Re-energise US
Unsurprisingly, neither Nautor Swan nor Ashmore would be drawn on the topic. But Cruise’s rumoured interest in luxury sailing yachts appears to be bucking the trend.
“Generally speaking, the sailing yacht market is shrinking, and we’ve got to do things to try to revitalise it, especially in the US,” says Ashmore. Nautor Swan’s market is 70% Europe with the US making up the next chunk followed by the emerging markets in Asia.
“We’ve historically had a reasonably strong position within the US but we’ve seen a real decline in premium yacht ownership,” he adds.
One reason he offers is “generational” where handing down a love of sailing from parents to children is dying out, while other explanations include people moving into different, possibly cheaper production boats or changing to catamarans. A possible increased focused on sustainability will “hopefully offset that”. “There’s a perception that there is a transition beginning between power and sail but it’s very slow,” adds Ashmore.
One area Nautor Swan hopes to exploit is the growth in the US of high-performance yacht racing. With that in mind, it has partnered with US America’s Cup team American Magic to launch a regatta circuit for its larger boats and other commercial events to lean into that market. “It’s that sort of marketing we need to focus on to re-energise sailing in the US,” he says.
‘Force of nature’
Nautor Swan has been owned by Leonardo Ferragamo, scion of the Italian fashion empire, since 1998. But the acquisition by Sanlorenzo, mirroring other Italian companies buying sailing yacht brands, is injecting fresh vigour.
Ashmore describes Sanlorenzo CEO Massimo Perotti as an “absolute force of nature, an incredible businessman” who turned a “small, underperforming brand” into a €1bn turnover business.
“What Sanlorenzo brings is they’re extremely strong industrially, with considerable purchasing power,” he says. “They’re incredibly strong on design and new product development, strong in marketing.
“They see Nautor Swan as a brand which they can really inject more energy into and allow us to go into new markets, namely the aluminium production, the blue water production, and doing everything that we do in a better way.”
Dreamland
Nautor Swan has also struck a strategic partnership with Edmiston to leverage the brokerage’s expertise in the large alloy yacht segment. Sharing Edmiston’s Newport, Rhode Island office, it will lean on the skills of renowned maxi sailing yacht broker Bruce Brakenhoff.“He knows all of the potential buyers of boats of that size and the mechanics and dynamics of that market,” says Ashmore. “It just makes the whole job a lot easier.”
Within 10 years, the plan is to have a “major impact” on Asia. “In any new market, people start off in powerboats and then gradually realise there’s something called sailing yachts. I’d like to think that Asia will be that kind of transition,” he says.
Ashmore, a lifelong sailor, began working in yachting in the early 2000s with Oyster Yachts, then followed its founder Richard Matthews to Gunfleet before getting a call from Nautor Swan to fly to Florence to meet Ferragamo. He began by overseeing all northern European markets before stepping up to chief commercial officer.
“Before I was in sailing, I was in consumer products, trying to look someone in the eye and be excited talking about a cleaning product or something,” he says.
“Now I talk about yachts that I dream of owning myself. I have a dream job. A dream product to sell.”
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