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Lucky Bird’s radical refurbishment wasn’t always on the cards. When the Swan 48 arrived at Younique the original plan was to fully restore the interior carpentry, but to keep it fundamentally original.
As more and more of her traditional fittings were stripped out, however, the beauty of S&S’S original lines became visible inside the hull, as well as outside.
Inspired by what they found, owner Eric Bijlsma – who also owns the Hoek-designed superyacht Firefly – and the Younique team decided to change their refit plans. Instead of recreating something original they moved towards restoring her with a much lighter, more modern touch.
“I have always been in love with the designs of Sparkman & Stephens, and I know that Olin Stephens’s favourite design was the Swan 48. I’m very keen on the lines and the heritage of the brand, but I was missing a bit of the modern feel,” recalls Bijlsma, who wanted a simpler yacht to sail with his family.
Creating sightlines along the hull edges and cabin sole, rather than concealing them under heavy fitted joinery, was integral to the design. “Once you can see where the hull meets the floor, which gives a lot of space, you see how the beautiful lines work from the interior,” explains Egbert Wattel, co-founder of Younique Yachts.
“Actually that was the starting point, and from then on we came up with new ideas to show the construction of the hull.”
The main tool they chose was miles of thin strip sycamore planking, which creates an optical effect of illustrating the original hull lines through the shadows between the planks. The new woodwork takes its inspiration from the original Swan 48 interior, which had some Sparkman & Stephens Nautor’s Swan, 1972 14.60m 47ft 11in 11.36m 37ft 3in 4.15m 13ft 7in 2.4m 7ft 10in 16,300kg 36,000lb 114m2 1,227ft2 231,5m2 2,492ft2 Upwind sail area Spinnaker sail area metres of sycamore strip planking were used in the refit areas of strip planking visible above bunks in the forepeak and saloon, but has now been used throughout in a much lighter finish. The fixings were also changed, from visible screws to aluminium bolts with each bolt head hand-sanded and polished for the desired finish.
“If you look closely you can see around the hatches and the corners of the bulkheads, we wanted to keep that and rather than do anything to smooth it away, keep it honest,” explains Wattel.
Some areas of the yacht’s construction have been modified, and the interior reflects that. Lucky Bird’s new rig has single stays, which has required new structure to be built underneath the chainplates for additional stiffness.
“The new rig has one chainplate, so all the stress is focused on one area now,” says Wattel. “So we designed a new strut under the deck, a large knee that we shaped in plywood first and integrated it into the bunks, and then the whole structure was covered with glassfibre and carbon fibre.”
In keeping with the overall ethos of showing rather than concealing the functional elements