ASPECT 45: ANOTHER VERY FAST CARBON CRUISER-RACER FROM SWEDEN

These beautiful narrow yachts are a breath of fresh air in a yacht design panorama more and more dominated by very beamy boats. The fact that most of them are very beamy has nothing to do with sail performance, but with managing the biggest interior volume for a given size, and these days even cruiser-racers are becoming beamier and beamier.

Very beamy light sailboats with very narrow entries and a high B/D are a good recipe for solo downwind fast sailing, but these downwind maximized hulls don't sail well out of a very particular set of wind strength and directions. They have become the dominant tendency in cruising sailboat design, even if most of those sailboats are not sailed predominantly on those conditions.

Their shape has the advantage of being visually associated with solo racing sailboats, probably the most popular form of sail racing today, and their large beam allows not only that visual racing connotation, as it also provides a bigger interior. 

They are also less expensive to build because beamy boats dispense a bigger B/D to sail relatively well (although not for having good safety stability and AVS) and that allows less reinforced hulls and a lighter keel structure.

Narrow sailboats have many disadvantages, they offer a much smaller interior for the length, in some marinas pay a lot more (for the same interior space), sail with more heel, need a bigger B/D but offer also an easily driven hull, that provides a way of sailing fast with smaller sails, better light wind performance and a sailing pleasure that is very different from the one that is experienced on a beamier sailboat, a very particular one, related to the one that was experienced in narrow classic era racers.

Smaller sails for the same speed are a cruising advantage, which is very underrated these days but that is a very considerable one. The smaller the sails the easier dealing with them in all circumstances, but especially when things get rough and winds are high. The huge safety stability and big AVS these boats provide is also an advantage, that has as a drawback, the smaller overall stability due to a smaller hull form stability.

Some months ago, when I first saw Aspect 45's first drawings, I found them beautiful, but honestly thought the boat would never be built: it was too radical, too much a love affair, but guess what, I was wrong! Cheers to the Nordic sailors and designers that keep this tradition of beautiful narrow fast yachts alive.

Swing keel

The Aspect 45 has many things in common with the Shogun 43 and 50, but also some differences and the first big one is having a modern hydraulic swing keel, with all the ballast on the keel. 

The Shogun 50 has a lifting keel (draft from 3.5 to 2.0m), but the Aspect 45 has a 3.5m draft keel that can be folded or brought to intermediate positions, modifying the longitudinal CG to get the right balance for better performance on different wind directions, wind strength, and sail set up. That keel will also swing if the boat hits a submerged rock, absorbing the impact force and preventing or diminishing damages on the hull structure or on the keel.

This yacht has a 13,70m LOA, 12,50m LWL, 3,68m beam, 3,50 m draft (with keel swinged aft 2.08 - 1.40m), 5600kg displacement, 2500kg ballast, 44.6% B/D, 40.3! SA/D upwind, and a 79.8 D/L. 

Longer than the Shogun 43, having less beam (3.68 to 3.70m), more draft  3.50 to 2.70m (on a less efficient keel), bigger B/D, 44.6% to 42%, bigger SA/D 40.3 to 35.3% and a smaller D/L 79.8 to 94.4 (meaning that it is proportionally lighter), this yacht is more extreme and powerful than the Shogun 43! 

The hull looks great and the transom is gorgeous. The only thing that raises some doubts is the Carbon/epoxy monolithic hull. Unusual in carbon boats or even in sportive sailboats (that normally use a sandwich hull). They say that they prefer to use a monolithic hull to allow more resistance in groundings with rocks, but due to the brittle characteristic of carbon when laminated in big thickness, I cannot see any advantage over a sandwich hull with Kevlar on the outer layer, in strategic places. Probably the real reason is cutting costs. 

Anyway, on such a narrow boat with carbon bulkheads and the hull reinforced with stiffeners probably the hull will be stiff enough and will not flex much. However, hull rigidity is much improved on a sandwich hull, so much that weight is saved if compared with any other solution to give the same hull rigidity.

It is hard to understand why the boat has not a sandwich carbon hull with kevlar reinforcements on the points where impacts would eventually take place if the hull eventually hit any rock or substantial floating debris.

The layout seems very good for such a narrowboat, with good storage space in the stern (access through the cockpit) that probably will allow the three cabins to be used for cruising. The galley is good, the head not bad and a good-sized cabinet for wet clothes is provided. If there is something to criticize it would be the small bow sail locker, integrated into the anchor chain locker.

Of course, the interior has not the space of a "normal" 45ft boat, more the one of a 41 ft boat, but for a couple with kids to cruise seems perfectly adequate.

A single deep rudder is used, connected to a tiller (enough due to the small beam). A steering wheel is optional. The boat comes standard with 4 big electric 3 speed harken winches and has lots of operations that work with hydraulic assistance, they don't give much details but say: 

"Seven unique hydraulic functions to simplify sailing: Hydraulically regulated swing keel • Hydraulic solution for a self-tacking, overlapping jib. • Hydraulic systems for the mainsheet, jib lead height, backstay and boom vang. The hydraulics are controlled either by the panels beside the helmsman or with a remote control. Features can be programmed for quicker rig changes and simplified trimming of sails. The remote control can even be operated by a crew member hiking on the rail."

The unusual solutions on a standard 45ft boat do not end in the hydraulics, they have electrically heated helmsman seats (that should make a lot of sense in Sweden, out of the short summer), a carbon cockpit table that can be used to close the cockpit aft, a U-shaped kitchen counter in rose-polished titanium, a trim-tab on the keel for reducing leeway, providing better performance up-wind and a deck-mounted carbon mast that has the advantages of allowing for a better interior while not losing the ability to be trimmable like a keel stepped mast. For allowing this "the mast support rises 80 cm above the deck and is part of the boat’s structure. The mast continues down over the mast support and rests on a ball at gooseneck height."

But "the tour de force is" at the top of the mast where a horizontal extension goes 75 cm backwards and 25 cm forward, allowing for a larger fathead mainsail without the problems associated with a traditional fathead sail in what regards backstays and allows an easier forestay tension regulation: if the backstay is tightened by 1.5 tonnes, the forestay tension will be 4.5 tonnes!

The propulsion is one of the few electric engines systems that make sense to me, for extensive cruising use. In fact it is a hybrid system: "The hybrid engine consists of a 27hp 3-cylinder Lombardini diesel engine and a 15hp electric motor, a total of 42hp. The hybrid assembly has 2 modes – generator and hybrid operation. In generator mode, the batteries can be charged with around 7kW without the propeller connected. In hybrid mode, the boat can run on ...electricity (only) up to 6 knots, at higher speeds the diesel engine will automatically switch in. ... Everything is managed automatically just like a modern hybrid car". 

The yacht comes standard with a LiFePo4 battery pack, 48V / 10.5 kWh + 24V / 3.5 kWh. It offers a lot more unusual equipment standard,  including hydraulic systems, swing keel, insulation with Aerogel, Electric ventilation, heating elements in the cabins, galley, and head (controlled by a central thermostat), two refrigerators in the galley, and on deck and cockpit, recessed EVA foam deck grip panels, electric heated seats for the helmsman, 4 big 3 speed Harken electric winches, carbon spars, including the partially removable bowsprit.

From an initial mild interest in this boat, due to the very scarce information and the odd swing keel design (on the drawings - not profiled and with a much bigger width up than down), I become very curious about this yacht, that presents many and very interesting innovative solutions that can make a lot of sense...if they work well.

The ones responsible for the project and design are part of an eclectic group that includes the mentor, Rolf Tannergård. He was the one responsible for a previous Aspect 40 (2010) that was an ugly yacht, but one that proved to be fast and do well in racing. This time the design team is bigger and the Aspect 45 looks much better than the older 40 even if the looks of the boat are not as ambitious as the boat itself. Their ambition is to make the Aspect 45 faster than the Shogun 50! That would be difficult, being the Shogun 50 a bigger yacht. The Aspect 45 technical characteristics are awesome, but even if it comes only close, swing keel and all, it would be a blast.

The information provided is scarce, the few drawings available (specially in what concerns the underwater part of the hull, keel and the interior) do not allow a fair assessment of the boat potential, as a racing and cruising boat, but the price, 950 000 euros without tax, taking into account what is offered considering the fully hydraulic integrated system and swing keel, all functions controlled by a joystick, is a reasonable price. 

I don't mean that it is not a very expensive yacht, of course it is, but taking into account the complexity of technical systems and what is offered (if the interiors are top quality as they say) it seems an interesting price. Anyway, several top carbon new and very interesting sailboats being developed in Scandinavia are great news to all that like beautiful and fast yachts. Cheers to them 👍.