When you’ve got a great new boat with a unique feature and it’s doing quite well as a one-design class in the Mediterranean, the next step in growing the class is to replicate that initial success in another key market.
That’s what Nautor is doing with the latest and smallest design in its fleet, the ClubSwan 28. But to launch a whole new one-design circuit in the United States at the same time as a brand new boat, you’re going to need a great local partner with deep knowledge of the US yacht racing scene. And they don’t come much greater than American Magic.
A move like this requires strong commitment and Nautor Swan is moving into the US market by forging a partnership with Terry Hutchinson’s America’s Cup team and setting up camp with a permanent base of operations in American Magic’s home town of Pensacola, Florida. It’s an up-and-coming venue in the US yacht racing community with exceptionally good sailing conditions all year round – warm weather, reliable breeze, a large expanse of deep, sheltered water – and thus great potential for launching and developing a new one-design sportsboat racing circuit.
‘Nautor Swan has such a history of being a great boatbuilder,’ says Terry Hutchinson, skipper of American Magic. ‘There’s a saying that a Swan is a Swan and everyone knows what that means. Alongside the production of performance cruising yachts, the expertise developed over the years has also made it possible to specialise in the construction of pure racing yachts. I think the fact that Nautor Swan is taking this on and designing and evolving a boat that is high performance, easy to sail and great for racing, is exactly what high-performance sailors in this country are after.’
The ClubSwan 28 will be familiar to regular readers but it’s worth having a quick recap of what the boat offers that’s new and a bit different, for the Nautor brand and also for the sportsboat segment of the yacht racing market.
‘The ClubSwan 28 has been an act of courage for us at Nautor,’ chief executive Giovanni Pomati explains. ‘It's an entry-level boat to bring new people in to racing and to ignite their passion for sailing. And on the other side, it’s an offer to the many existing Swan owners who have been sailing increasingly larger boats. This brings them back to the pure essence of sailing, back into close contact with the sea.
‘In collaboration with Juan K we spent 12 months of intensive research, defining what would be the best possible product,’ says Federico Michetti, sport director of Swan One Design and product manager for the ClubSwan 28. ‘We’ve achieved the goal of a boat that is fun, fast, is safe but is also very simple.’
‘Our aim was to create the perfect gateway for sportsboat lovers into the Nautor Swan community,’ he says. ‘The racing début of the boat was at the Rolex Swan Cup 2024 with five boats on the start line. It was for me a great emotion to see, after so many months of hard work, so many happy faces at the dock.’
‘The idea was to come up with a boat that was fun to sail, hi-tech, and represented the modern way of sailing,’ the ClubSwan 28’s naval architect Juan Kouyoumdjian explains. ‘The very innovative aspect of the design that could itself become a benchmark is the rig and the rigging.’
But the ClubSwan concept is broader than just developing and selling a range of excellent racing yachts. It’s also, and equally, about creating and managing a racing circuit and scene, with great parties to follow the racing. After some notable success in the Mediterranean, that’s what Nautor Swan is now bringing to the US.
‘One of our most important missions has been to create a range of international one-design classes,’ Michetti says. ‘And now, on top of our European regatta series, The Nations League in the Med, we are developing in partnership with American Magic The Nations League USA This will start in February 2026 in Pensacola, Florida, then move for the summer to Newport, Rhode Island, and will culminate with an amazing finale for the season back in Pensacola with the first ClubSwan 28 World Championship.’
‘Expectations for the ClubSwan 28 circuit in the U.S. are high. If we can deliver a platform for top-level racing with a boat that offers something truly different from anything seen before, I believe that’s exactly what sailors are looking for.’
‘Pensacola Bay as a venue came to American Magic by chance,’ Hutchinson says. ‘Once we realised what we had truly stumbled upon, not just with Pensacola Bay but with the Pensacola community, how much they’ve embraced the sport of sailing, we’re already starting to see the developing of classes and racing taking place in this area.’
Nautor’s investment in its new US venture extends beyond the creation of a regatta hub and operations centre in Pensacola. They are also tooling up to build boats there.
‘Pensacola Bay is the home of American Magic and the partnership we’ve designed with them is made of different pillars,’ Pomati says. ‘Most of these pillars are based in Pensacola. The ClubSwan 28 will race outside of Pensacola but the centre of operations will be Pensacola. It’s where we will keep the boats, where most of the racing will be. It’s a place that’s becoming more and more a key town for the sailing community.
1 - 4 ClubSwan 28 under construction in partnership with SRG, combining cutting-edge design with advanced build expertise. | It’s rare to see a deck plan as clean and simple as this on a 28-foot sports boat with this level of performance. The ClubSwan 28 is a remarkably easy boat to sail.
‘We will be building boats in America, in partnership with American Magic and the factory will be in Pensacola,’ Pomati says. ‘Then another pillar of our partnership is technological collaboration. As a leading America’s Cup team they have a very strong engineering team behind them, and leveraging their technical expertise will be an important aspect our partnership. And of course their engineering team is based in Pensacola.’
‘Our role at American Magic is to be a partner for Nautor Swan in promoting the sport of sailing,’ Hutchinson says. ‘There are so many great entities and yacht clubs inside the US that can help build the sport of sailing and bring it to a wider audience. The events, the venues are designed to be fun with good competitive racing. You really want to strike that balance. When people invest in the sport, invest their time and take time away from their families you want to make sure that they’re getting something for that.
‘I’m confident that the CS28 is going to deliver a different experience from what we currently have, to make sailing more fun, to do it with your friends and also go out and develop new friendships with competitors alike, which is probably the best part of our sport.’
The first season of ClubSwan racing in the US will be a series of eight regattas: six in Florida and two in Rhode Island. The circuit gets under way with monthly regattas in Pensacola – in February, March and April – before moving north to Newport for regattas in June and July. The racing then migrates south again for autumn, back to Pensacola with regattas in October and early November leading up to the ClubSwan 28 World Championship, from 10 to 14 November.
Establishing the ClubSwan racing circuit, the new Swan manufacturing facility and evolving the partnership with American Magic is going to be a prime focus for Nautor in the next few years but Pomati also has some other ambitious plans in the pipeline.
‘Our experience so far with our racing yachts, for example with the ClubSwan 36, is that there is a widespread desire to have an easy boat in terms of logistics,’ he says. ‘That’s the reason we went down the size range when developing the ClubSwan 28 to a point where it’s easy to transport the boats around, to open new venues for regattas and to launch in different parts of the world. The ClubSwan 28 American circuit is the first of these new initiatives but it will be not the only one.
‘Another one that we’ve already started is to go to the lakes,’ Pomati says. ‘Up until now it’s been very seldom that you see a Swan on a lake. But the ClubSwan 28 is the smallest boat we’ve ever produced, it’s ideal for lake sailing and there are a lot of sailors on the lakes. And also, a point we will focus on for the future is to open the Asian market.’
