Oceanbel 128 explorer

LOA 39.00m 128ft 0in • Beam 10.00m 32ft 10in Draught 2.00m-7.00m 6ft 7in-23ft 0in • Displacement 200 tonnes • oceanbel.fi

The man behind this new Finnish brand set up Nautor’s Swan in the 1960s then built 41m luxury monohulls in Thailand. Now Pekka Koskenkylä has teamed up with his nephew Sami for another roll of the dice, and the result is an entirely recyclable 128ft two-master, which can be sailed single-handed.

She sports a curious rig, which sets two large roller-furled jibs, but no mainsails – the aft boom is just for supporting an awning. She has a lot of weight in the bilges, as well as a deep swinging ‘keelboard’, which also serves to dampen rolling. Koskenkylä argues that the keel design will give access to shallow waters and allow for cheap slippage.

With twin electric propulsion, supplemented by 30kw of solar panels, hefty regeneration potential and two big diesel gensets, she is described as a solar assisted plug-in hybrid electric vessel.