BeCool: A sailing yacht that racers and landlubbers can equally enjoy

Simple. You buy a large performance cruising yacht with all the creature comforts the family wants while giving you just a touch of pushbutton pace on an easily handled boat.

Take it to regattas as a floating base and you can race hard by day and relax on board with the family by night. This owner first settled on a 29.6-metre Swan 98 but it turned out not to be the answer. The master suite’s two deck hatches allowed only limited natural light, and it was aft so the owner would be woken by his crew coming back late.

For this owner, though, fun sailing comes with requirements: “He wants a boat that feels like a sailing boat and not like a big truck,” Frers observes.

“We found a hull that drops drag as the boat heels. It becomes longer and better balanced when heeled at about 20 degrees. Two rudders give very good control and there’s a telescopic keel for better upwind performance, the draught goes from 4.4 metres to 6.7 metres, which makes it a very pleasant boat under sail.”

To keep the yacht easy to handle by a small crew of four to six, they chose in-boom furling and a pinhead mainsail rather than a squaretop, which would involve crew managing running backstays, and to compensate for the missing sail area this light-airs boat needs, the mast is three metres taller (a 58-metre air draught).

The genoa is selftacking so beating upwind doesn’t even involve pressing a button, just turning the wheel. When the breeze gets up around the 18-knot mark there’s an inner stay for a smaller jib, which also uses the self-tacker.

They didn’t want a bowsprit so the headstay was brought back a touch to leave enough space between the headstay and the bow for offwind sails to be flown.

Sail handling is made easier with captive winches below deck: one each for the genoa and main sheets and a third for the main halyard.

There are six other powered winches: two at the mast, four in the cockpit. Up on the bow, a capstan pops up out of the deck to help crew with mooring lines, and a hatch in the port bow conceals a chunky fold-out bow roller and the anchor itself.

This is a powerful boat and controlling it needs a load-monitoring system so the crew can avoid breaking kit, as Swan’s project manager Kim Sundkvist explains: “It’s called Synapse and it monitors load cells in the rigging, mainsheet, headstay – everywhere. We also have pressure sensors on the hydraulics and an emergency stop.”

Our first test sail day is bumped as there are white horses prancing across the Högöfjärden outside Swan’s Pietarsaari yard in Finland. The next day there is considerably less wind and, after slipping our lines and stopping in deeper water to lower the keel, we motor for an hour into the Gulf of Bothnia in search of zephyrs with the 550-horsepower engine and variable pitch propeller barrelling us along at 13 knots.

Finally, the true wind creeps above five knots and out roll the sails. Our top trial speed is 10 knots upwind in 7.5 knots of breeze at 30 degrees to the apparent wind but there isn’t enough puff to sail offwind angles.

“You saw today there was no wind and we were moving, so this boat is light,” says Captain Luca Serra. “The other day with one reef in the main and the inner jib we were doing 15 to 15.5 knots reaching, easy on the wheel, no stress.”

The light airs brief demanded that the shipyard use everything they’d learned from the build of the 36.7-metre ClubSwan 125 Skorpios, delivered in 2021, to keep the yacht as light as possible.

Hull construction involved Sprint technology to control exactly the amount of resin infused into the carbon fibre, interiors are veneered Corecell foam, the Southern Spars mast and ECsix rigging are carbon fibre, even the stanchions are titanium, so focused was the build on controlling weight.

For the deck design, the owner wanted a low-profile coachroof in proportion with the hull. “We really connected,” says Lucio Micheletti of Micheletti+Partners. “We wanted the coachroof to have a dynamic feel, something that looked like it had been shaped by the wind.”

Forward of the coachroof is a vast foredeck space with all kinds of entertainment options at anchor, from hammocks and deck chairs to Bedouin tents. It’s kept flush by Reckmann underdeck furlers, including a Code Zero furler on the bow that tensions the sail’s luff.

It’s down below where the owner’s personality bounds into view. It’s joyously eclectic, an exploded swatchbook of boldness

A sprayhood folds out of the coachroof to protect the companionway and guests in the cockpit. This is home to two C-shaped bench seats around dining tables that lower to create two huge daybeds, where the family can listen to beats from six deck speakers and a subwoofer, and enjoy drinks from the under-bench fridges.

An awning over the boom that provides shade though a pop-up bimini will be seen on the second Swan 128.

On either side of the crew companionway aft, are twin helm stations with huge control panels. All sail handling is done either from here or up on the mast where there’s a second, smaller bank of buttons, “so you control the furlers closer to the furlers”, says Sundkvist.

A step down from the helms, the boat’s stern is a wide, welcoming sea terrace and a fold-down transom turns into a swim platform revealing a garage for a 4.5-metre tender.

While everything above deck reflects an owner who wants some relaxing family fun and an easy life for his crew, it’s down below where the owner’s personality bounds into view. It is joyously eclectic, an exploded swatchbook of boldness and character.

There are warm, tactile tartans by Ralph Lauren with Colefax and Fowler on the sofas and daybeds, soft panelled leather hides by Fixafell on furniture and lockers that will age beautifully with use, textures like crown-cut cathedral teak on the sole, brushed to give it a haptic feel underfoot.

There’s brushed white ash panelling around the hull windows, vertical teak battens, cream Alcantara and teak-framed raffia on the ceiling, all centred by his-and-hers, custom Goyard trunks in the saloon.

“He didn’t want a classic interior but something that felt lived in,” says Swan’s interior designer Heini Gustafsson. “Vintage-inspired” was the starting point for Misa Poggi.

“My job is to capture his vision and desires and translate them into architecture,” says Poggi. “In this case, I met a person with a unique background and vision, one who does not follow traditional patterns but plays with passion.

I really appreciate the use of different rattan textures, a choice that helped increase and enhance the lightness and brightness of the interiors.”

Brightness below was always an important part of the brief and nowhere is this better seen than in the saloon, with its double-width sliding glass companionway hatch and huge hull windows.

So central are these windows to the success of this yacht that the sofas, on which the family relaxes while watching movies on the mirror TV to port of the companionway, convert into daybeds with the seatbacks moved outboard so you can lie there mesmerised as the sea rushes by.

“The owner looked at our boats and said, ‘I want the space of the 120 but with the lines of the 108’”

Since lounging together was the priority, the dining room, which could be to starboard in the saloon, was moved down a few steps forward into the lower study, opposite the VIP suite. Two double cabins aft of the saloon round out her guest accommodation.

Placing the owner’s suite forward was a lesson from the owner’s previous Swan. Were he expecting to be on board for lively overnight passages, this could be an issue, but he is not.

The extra 10 metres in length, and a hull design that carries the beam well forward, also mean that this is a sizeable full-beam cabin with 2.2-metre headroom, naturally lit by two large deck hatches and a pair of hull windows.

Though he had chosen all the fabrics, the Lefroy Brooks bathroom fittings, bedding by Heirlooms Linen, door fittings by Olivari and the “marble” in the bathrooms (it’s actually Italian ceramic maxi tiles by Laminam), the owner had not seen the finished interior in advance of delivery. When he arrived for the event, he and Gustafsson had a private walkthrough.

“He told me ‘Heini, do you remember when we chose the fabrics?’ I said: ‘Of course.’ He said: ‘I saw on your face that this combination is totally crazy.’ I couldn’t do anything but laugh. The thing is, it was an odd combination but when I put it together, it suddenly made sense. The customer had a fantastic ability to combine the different fabrics in his head. I was really impressed by that.”

Only time will tell if BeCool succeeds in her mission of bringing a family together through sailing but if it doesn’t, it won’t be for the want of somewhere magnificent to do it.

Giordo, who knows the owner and his family well, believes the omens are good: “His two kids sail. They’re not in love with it like he is but I’m sure this will be approved by them.” Wouldn’t that be cool?

First published in the December 2025 issue of BOAT International. Get this magazine sent straight to your door, or subscribe and never miss an issue.