1986. How Nauta Yachts was born and the recipe for its success

Welcome to the special section “GdV 5th Years.” We are introducing you, day by day, An article from the archives of the Journal of Sailing, starting in 1975. A word of advice, get in the habit of starting your day with the most exciting sailing stories-it will be like being on a boat even if you are ashore.

My ideal boat

Taken from the 1986 Journal of Sailing, Year 12, No. 02, March, pp. 64/65.

He, Mario Pedol, does not know it yet. But he will become one of the world’s boating archistars. Pedol and his Nauta Yachts in the 1980s set the stage for a success story. An account of the beginnings of a luminous career in which he reveals what the ideal boat should look like. Everything came true!

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It is one of those exemplary stories, a story in which passion, expertise, and a desire to sail rule the day. The sea virus in Mario Pedol ‘s blood comes from his Istrian origin, generations of fishermen and fish traders. Actually, he was born in Milan but has always been sailing. Here is his exemplary story. In ’76 he decided to devote himself professionally to the boating industry. His company, Nauta, markets the most innovative (for that time) serial minitonner. Called the Avventura 703, it was designed by Andrea Vallicelli and brought for the first time to the then burgeoning world of small boats the concept of a hull valid for cruising and racing. Having exhausted the small boat phenomenon Pedol scouts a new yard in England,Oyster Marine, which makes very ‘serious’ boats that start from the same concept as theAvventura 703. They are safe and typically cruising boats but with an extremely fast hull. In the meantime, tired of sailing and Mediterranean regattas, Mario Pedol becomes familiar with theAtlantic in parallel after attending the specialization course in naval design at theSuperior Institute of Architecture and Design in Milan he goes to the United States and enters the New York studio of Scott Kaufman, with whom he still collaborates. This brings us to the present day and the new activity of his company, Nauta Yachts, which designs and builds custom prestige sailboats. These are ‘unique product’ boats that combine, at the highest quality, costs that are on average lower than those of the top quality series boats on the market. It is with him that we tried to understand what are the trend lines in sailing yachting for the coming years.

GdV – What has been the real revolution in the sailing world in recent years?
Pedol – Very simple and short. The development and increased efficiency of racing boats has also transferred to cruising boats and mass production. The efficiency parameters of a sailboat are not invented, but at one time they were not always applied to sailboats. Applying them to mass production turned out to be a successful operation that revolutionized the market. See not surprisingly the success of shipyards such as Cantiere del Pardo in Italy, Beneteau in France. The pleasure sailboat today cannot be considered and is no longer an object that stays afloat, but is an object that goes to sea with the highest possible performance.

GdV – When did this final revolution take place?
Pedol – Not more than four or five years ago definitively. Before, the user was lured by the misconception that the high-performance boat was more uncomfortable than a slower boat but promised great comfort. Today’s ‘high performance’ boat has the same volumes of habitability as a motorsailer of 10 years ago that struggled upwind and in downwind gaits was unsteerable.

GdV – What is the ideal boat of the 1990s?
Pedol – I support the concept that there is no such thing as universally the ideal boat for everyone, but the ideal boat for each person. The good work of a designer is measured in the ability to understand the needs of the owner and make them real in a design of ‘his’ ideal boat. The boat is not a car but, especially on sizes above 12 meters, an asset that must reflect the user’s needs from time to time.

GdV – Let’s try to define the basic elements of designing a high-performance cruising boat.
Pedol – Design is a cocktail of various elements. Let’s try to rationalize: speed plus convenience plus aesthetics. Speed. First of all, it is guided by precise and well-codified rules such as displacement/sail area ratio or the most current hull shapes. Equipment is also an element of speed, especially in upwind sailing. Comfort. Here, one should not stop at established standard parameters but, following the needs of each owner, make life on board as pleasant as possible. This mainly means creating real environments (both above and below deck). In short, interior architecture in a boat is just as important as in a house. With the handicap that in a boat the rooms are small. Aesthetics. The relationship with a boat is a love relationship. And so the boat must be beautiful, a real object of desire. At one time, the aesthetic parameter was neglected. There was a need for more interior space, you would raise the deckhouse or freeboard and so on. Today that has all changed and goes hand in hand with the evolution of public taste. Just look at the revolution in automotive design that makes one car successful over another despite the fact that the technical features are virtually identical. In short, a boat today has no market if it is fast but ugly or vice versa. But it’s not fi nite, you also have to go into the detail, perhaps of an interior piece of furniture or the application of a teak deck on a fiberglass hull to see if a boat is aesthetically sound and above all, well designed. That’s where the real difference lies.

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GdV – But why choose a sailboat and not a motor boat?
Pedol – Is it pleasant to navigate by motor? No, it is stressful. Is motor sailing faster? Yes, but it is less safe and in heavy seas it is better to stay in port. But that’s not the end of it, today thanks to automatic pilots, furling mainsails, electric winches and other contraptions you can sail even with a very small crew.

GdV – Fewer and fewer people to run a boat, but will it also cost less in the future?
Pedol – The future is one of increasingly lighter and therefore less expensive boats. There will be a definite evolution of those light displacement boats we call ULDBs today. Today these ULDBs have the disadvantage of being very narrow and therefore not very habitable, but in the future the sailboats will be lighter, but just as habitable. Why will they cost, relative to today, much less? Because there will be less material, the sail area will be smaller and so will the size of the equipment and the weight in the keel. In the 1990s we can expect boats to be cheaper, at least by 25 percent.

by Luca Oriani

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