MYLIUS 50: A CARBON ROCKET CRUISER RACER

 Beautiful small production super fast carbon 50ft cruiser racers seem to be on high demand and even if only a few can own them, they are a pleasure to our eyes: after the Swan 50 there came the Shogun 50 and now the Mylius 50.

Mylius is not as well known as Swan among sailors. It is a top Italian recent brand that unlike Swan only does carbon yachts, and the 50 is the smallest yacht they produce: they have a 60, a 65, a 72 and two 80 footers, one of them a deck-salon.

All of them are very fast with luxurious semi-custom interiors. I would say that proportionally this 50 is going to be the fastest of them all. This boat comes to replace a previous 50, a yacht that still looks beautiful and contemporary.

Compared to the previous 50 the new one has not a very different hull, just a bit bigger (it is in fact a 51ft), slightly beamier (4.48m to 4.42), with a similar T keel but a bigger draft (3.50m to 3.00), lighter (9500kg to 9900) and with a much bigger B/D (43% to 38%) and all that means much more power.

Don't take me wrong, the previous 50 was already very powerful, with a 38% ballast most of it on a lead torpedo at the end of a long fin (3.00 draft). Just to have a fair idea in what regards what this B/D means, mass production 50fters have normally a less performant cast iron keel, lesser draft and a much, much lower B/D. For instance the Beneteau Yacht 54 has a 2.50 m draft, a cast iron keel and a 27% B/D.

What this means is that the new 50 is really a power beast, a racing machine with a confortable cruising interior. We can see that not only on the B/D but also on the sail area that is much bigger than the one of the previous boat and the one of the previous boat was already big, not to mention this is a lighter boat (upwind 170 to 148m2, downwind 346 to 285m2).

But with all that power it will be a relatively easy boat to be sailed by a couple, if not pushed near the limits and there is no need to because this boat sailed at 75% will be faster than almost anything sailing on the water. The easiness has to do with the small amount of sail that is needed for going fast. The SA/D is huge but due to the very light weight the sail area to be handled is relatively small, 170m2 with a main with square top and 158m2 with a "normal" main.

The previous 50 had good racing results for a cruiser-racer with a luxurious interior, but it was not as fast as the also full carbon Swan 50. Truth be said that though the Swan has a luxurious interior, it is not comparable to the true cruising interior of the Mylius, that even has a dinghy garage, except in finish and materials. Well, now we will see, if not a match it certainly will be much closer.

The hard asses will say that both boats are med boats, even if the Swan has been sailed and raced all over the world in many offshore races. It is true that for enjoying sailing while cruising and enjoying life they are more geared for the Med or Baltic conditions, but with that stiffness and stability they can be sailed safely anywhere even if that does not mean comfortably in what regards water projections.

Mylius is a recent brand created in 2003 by three friends who love sailing and yachting, one of them a yacht designer, Alberto Simeone, and amazingly their first boat the Mylius 11E25 still looks modern. 

What had started just as a challenge to create the perfect boat for the Med, due to the increasing demand and the Italian's love for fast and beautiful boats, ended up in a medium sized "cantieri" specialized in big carbon boats, always beautiful, always fast.

Today Simeone coordinates a team of engineers, architects, designers, and technical specialists that work in the house, and that allows him a full integrated design where speed, high performance and comfort are perfectly matched.

This methodology, that was common 30 years ago is today very rare and almost all shipyards ressource to exterior naval architects and interior design cabinets and sometimes exterior designers.

Maybe this difference is one of the things that makes Mylius different and special, contributing for a homogeneity of style and design that is hard to find elsewhere and that makes the boats easily recognizable as Mylius, no matter the size.

I know that some will be asking about the price. Well, if you are really interested ask them, it should be not far form the one of the Swan, maybe a bit less but certainly over 1 million euros. A boat like this cannot be built for less.

SHAPE OF HULL AND BOAT PERFORMANCE: Round the Island 2021

I am in Marmaris waiting for the Greeks to allow European Union sailboats to enter EU waters (they closed the door almost two years ago more for political reasons than sanitary ones). I am bored, have time and I will share with you the observations I have made on the Round the Island race regarding the performance of different type of sailboats and hulls, I don’t mean handicap performance but true performance over the water.

 

The Round the Island race (around the Island of Wight) is not a top race and the average crew has lesser quality than for instance the one on the Fastnet, but it has an advantage of having a huge number of boats racing (more than 1000) some of them very well sailed.

Pogo 12.50

To take into account the bigger variability in crew quality I will disregard the worse results of a given boat model and I will consider the best and average results.

Regarding winds, this was a typical summer coastal race with variable winds in direction and strength, from very light to light winds to 25kt. A good race to measure the all around boat sailing potential, especially in summer conditions.

And let’s start with the Pogos, with three 12.50 competing, a moderate performance, with similar elapsed times. The fastest has done it in 8h 16m 22s, then the others in 8.21.39 and 8.37.59.

J122 e

With a similar type of hull but smaller, not so extreme but heavier, an RM 10.70, made it in 8.39.27.

As usual the JPK were fast, with a 11.80 making it in 7.34.59 and a smaller JPK 10.80 making it in 7.42.20.

The Sunfast were a bit slower than the JPK, with the exception of a 3300, that was very fast with 7.52.59, faster than all 3600 (8.01.25, 8.05.27….)

Jboats were also very fast with a J122e making it 7.49.41, another in 7.53.29 and the slowest in 8.32.22. Three fantastic J112e have done it in 7.46.16 , 7.51.11, and 7.58.18. Two J99 made it in 8.13.36 and 8.15.54. Three J111 have done it in 7.36.21, 7.36.27 and 7.43.11. The First 40 were also way faster than the Pogos, with 7.44, 7.45.10 and 7.55.57. 

I know that the conclusions are similar to the ones on other races with variable winds, where it is the overall sailboat potential that counts (and not a boat maximized for a given set of conditions) but some keep thinking that boats like the Pogo or the RM are, out of the trade winds, faster than fast boats with a more traditional hull, and that is not the case.

J 112e

In what concerns fast cruising multihulls we can see that with these conditions the results were not better than the ones of fast monohulls with the same size. A very fast 1295 Dazcat catamaran, that is used extensively for racing, made it in 7.27.08.There were several Dragonflies, two 32 made it in 8.05.46 and 8.38.42; a 35 made it in 8. 36.53. There were two Nautitech racing and these ones, that are among the fastest not very expensive production cats, were slower then the monohulls: an Open 46 made it in 9.02.17 and an Open 40 in 10.14.12.

Nautitech Open 46

This particular race confirmed the performance of the J112e, a sailboat boat with a great cruising interior and that in what regards regatta racing had already proved itself winning a World ORC championship. It shows here that in a more offshore race it continues to shine, being only slightly slower than the racing J111, faster than the racing Sunfast 3600 (on this race) and with a performance similar to the bigger First 40, and of course, going faster than the Pogo 12.50.

I love this little boat, made several post about it, but it seems I fail to convince other sailors to love it too. The J112e sales continue on the low side and it seems that today for a performance cruising boat to sell it is not enough to have a great cruising interior, a stellar performance, to be well built, it is needed to be fashionable and it seems the J112e is not. You have more information about the J112e on this post:

http://interestingsailboats.blogspot.com/2017/11/j112e-beautifull-nimble-fast-cruiser.html