The Swan One Design Worlds came to a dramatic conclusion in Palma de Mallorca over the weekend with the world champions crowned in three ClubSwan Racing classes—two by a single point—and the season-long Nations League ultimately decided.

In the ClubSwan 36 fleet, teams from Brazil, Germany and Spain took the top spots with Haakon Lorentzen’s Mamao, of Brazil, claiming the ClubSwan 36 title after overhauling series leader and three-race winner Black Battalion. Edoardo Ferragamo’s Cuordileone completed the podium.

“I am feeling great, it is our second time,” said Lorentzen, adding the key to their success was never giving up and fighting to the finish. “I was 68 when I won my first world championship, and now I am 70 and have won my second.”

Mark Bezner’s Olymp, hailing from Germany, claimed the ultra-close ClubSwan 50 title by a single point from Raquel and Graeme Peterson’s Moonlight. Leonardo Ferragamo’s Cuordileone, the 2023 world title holder toke the final place on the podium. The level of competition was highlighted by the fact that the top-five boats in the 12-strong class were each only a point apart.

“It’s outstanding and a great reward for our team,” Bezner said. “We’re a new team and the first day was a bit rough but today we had two great starts—we like challenging conditions, we do a bit better. I have only been with ClubSwan Racing for four years, having never raced a regatta before, so you can imagine how I feel.”

Perhaps appropriately, given the Bay of Palma arena, the similarly tight competition for the ClubSwan 42 world title was an all-Spanish affair, with Pedro Vaquer Comas’ Nadir edging out Jose Maria Meseguer’s Pez de Abril—again by a single point. Adriano Majolino’s Canopo, the 2024 Rolex Swan Cup winner with two race victories on its Palma card, was third.

Back ashore Comas said, “We’re feeling very good, it has been a very competitive event for everyone. The 42 class is very strong at the moment and this is the second time we have won the Worlds so we will enjoy it. The team has been together 10 years so I am very proud.”

The teams in the Swan One Design Worlds experienced varied conditions throughout the week, providing a suitable challenge of their skills across the wind range, as well as a rather different challenge for the experienced race management team at the Real Club Náutico de Palma, host for the ClubSwan Racing regatta.

It was an equally close-run affair in the 2024 The Nations League ClubSwan 50 series with Moonlight — despite a strong performance in Palma and victory in the recent Rolex Swan Cup — ending the season as runner-up to Marcus Brennecke’s Hatari, with the German yacht adding to her winning streak.

“It is disappointing to have lost the World Championship, but Olymp deserved it,” said Brennecke. “On the other hand, winning the Nations League title for the fifth time in a row shows that we are sailing well. But it is so competitive and everyone can win — that is the beauty of ClubSwan Racing.”

Despite their third-place finish in the Swan One Design Worlds, Cuordileone was able to secure the overall season ClubSwan 36 Nations League title. Edoardo Ferragamo said, “It was a very beautiful season even if the weather wasn’t the easiest, but we managed to keep the team strong to the end, so we are happy with that.”

A similar tale unfolded in the ClubSwan 42 class, where earlier performances in the season secured the overall title for Jose Maria Meseguer’s Pez de Abril.

“We are very happy obviously as the Nations League is a very important trophy,” Meseguer said. “The highlight for me is that we have been able to hit our targets through the season. We have so many new people who are coming in and they are improving a lot — so everyone is trying very hard to get better and it is a lot of fun.”

While most of the attention has been focused on the action on the water, as ever the shoreside made its own contribution to the ClubSwan Racing atmosphere. A major highlight of the social scene was the Owners’ Evening which was held in the historic and famed location of the 300-year-old Gordiola glass blowing factory, whose architecture is inspired by the Castle of Perpignan, and is a candidate for UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Summing up the season at the celebratory Prize-Giving on Sunday evening, Nautor Group President Leonardo Ferragamo said, “This event marks the conclusion of a Nations League season which has seen friendly and competitive racing merged with the lifestyle and friendship at the heart of the Swan family experience.

“As ever the Real Club Náutico de Palma has been the perfect host allowing us to celebrate the season to date which has been full of so many special events.”

Head of Sport Activities Federico Michetti added: “This has been another exceptional year for ClubSwan Racing and I would like to extend a heartfelt thank-you to all the owners, their friends, partners and crews who have done so much to make it so special.

“We have all been privileged to have been able to compete is so many welcoming venues, here now in Palma de Mallorca, and earlier in the season in Scarlino, Bonifacio, Alghero and Porto Cervo. Their contribution has been fantastic, as has the ongoing support of our partners Rolex, Porsche, Randstad, Henri Lloyd and Banor. Together we have made it happen.”

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As the most aggressive-looking one-design yet from Nautor’s Swan, the strict one-design ClubSwan 50 piles grand-prix concepts into a straightforward boat that will challenge amateur crews but reward them with speed, especially when the breeze turns on.

Heel — 18 degrees of it — is something to get used to with the ClubSwan 50. Flat is not fast. This Juan Kouyoumdjian creation is the first one-design of Nautor’s Swan new direction. Where similarly sized Swans of yore were laden with cruising interiors, this one is not. It’s a furniture-free 50-foot one-design race boat to be sailed hard and put away wet (with a dehumidifier, of course). For an owner looking to get into TP52-style boat-on-boat racing without the new-boat arms race, the ClubSwan 50, the judges say, is one way to go, here and now.

“It’s definitely more of a one-design-class racer than an offshore racer,” says Stewart. “With the big cockpit and the clean Euro styling, it’s a bitchin’ looking boat on and off the dock, and the class racing will be a lot of fun when you get to fleets of 15 or 20 boats.”

Considering two dozen owners ordered boats within the first year of the ClubSwan 50’s launch, and a robust regatta circuit is already underway in the Mediterranean, Nautor’s Swan is delivering to a demand in Europe for big-boat class racing — that’s where the one-design action is at. The challenge for faraway American owners, however, is the designer’s intentional disregard for any and all measurement rules. Handicap racing is not the point of the ClubSwan 50, nor its selling point. “The development of a one-design class in North America will be the ultimate success,” says Nautor’s Swan’s Tom Lihan, who is tasked with recruiting U.S. owners, “and that’s the goal.”

Roughly $1.3 million will put the boat on the racecourse, with 10 to 12 crew members to feed and dress. According to the judges, it’s a boat that demands a professional bowman and two good sail trimmers. The one-design sail inventory is robust — mainsail, four upwind and four downwind sails, as well as two storm sails — will require proper management on the boat and of the morning sail shuffle to and from the container.

As a wide, high-volume planing hull with twin rudders (scalloped trailing edges to make them unique), the ClubSwan 50 is also a yacht that requires the owner’s/driver’s undivided attention directed toward the instruments. With only six winches and the use of constrictors to free up winches at times, there’s a lot of dancing through maneuvers. There’s a lot to get right and a lot that can go wrong, but that’s the appeal of big-boat racing, right? Clean mark roundings and precision boathandling are what get you to the podium.

A year of development with first-generation hulls resulted in a 700-pound diet, which puts the class minimum weight at 18,086 pounds (“or somewhere around there,” says Lihan). The biggest weight savings were accomplished by upgrading to a carbon keel fin and trimming materials where overbuilt. Exploring Hull No. 3’s deepest recesses, Tom Rich found no flaws with the construction, and overall, the judges gave the build high marks. Back at Nautor’s yard in Finland, CNC machines cut pre-preg carbon cloth before vacuum-bagging and pressure-cooking the hull with all the interior components and structural bulkheads in place.

The deck-stepped rig sits atop a solid carbon interior structure (Lihan calls it the “phone booth”), which creates a clear centerline runway for sails going to and fro. The interior finish, while minimalist and easy to strip for regattas, says Stewart, is appropriate for the boat’s purpose while retaining just enough touch of Swan luxury.

There’s modern minimalism with the deck hardware as well, says Rich, pointing out that the boat has fewer winches than he’d expect on a boat this size. Two cabin-top winches are in high demand, especially during jibes. The big challenge is jibing in 20 knots of wind without a pedestal, Lihan admits. Consequently, ClubSwan 50 class management is exploring an electric option for the cabin tops, or a pedestal. “There is an option for a pedestal, but nobody has ordered one yet,” he says. “You can’t do reach-to-reach blow-through jibes, so you just do proper outside jibes, come out low to get that last bit of sheet, and then point it up again. It’s one-design, so as long as everyone is doing the same thing, does it really matter?”

In strong winds, the ClubSwan 50 will be a powered-up machine, says Allen, one that will be fun and forgiving to drive but demand solid crew work. With class rules in place, owners already taking charge, and sanctioned regattas scheduled in the U.S. in 2019, there’s now a turnkey platform into big-boat, big-boy, one-design racing.

At a Glance

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Building on the success of the IRC/ORC winner, the ClubSwan 42, Nautors Swan has unveiled the very first in the new line of ClubSwan 50s.

The boat already has an impressive race circuit lined up, kicking off with three of the new boats sailing the 2016 Rolex Swan Cup in September, before heading to the Les Voiles de St. Tropez and the Rolex Middle Sea Race later in the year.

2017 will mark the first season of a brand new ClubSwan 50 circuit with 6 events scheduled including a Nations Championship with as many as 12 boats expected to compete.

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