Rán VII named World Sailing’s Boat of the Year
After an incredible debut season, Rán VII, has been recognised with the inaugural Boat of the Year award at the 2018 World Sailing Awards in Sarasota, Florida, USA.
Niklas Zennstrom’s Swedish new generation Carkeek-designed, Carrington-built yacht, Rán VII, has won every regatta it has entered, completing a clean sweep of the high-performance planing monohull Fast 40+ circuit. Those victories included the 119-year-old One Ton Cup in September, where she won an astonishing six of the nine races at the regatta and finishing second in two of the others.
“The latest version of Niklas Zennstrom’s success of boats named Rán, Rán VII, received the Boat of the Year Award for its outstanding boat design, innovative concept and ground-breaking technological advancement,” World Sailing says. “Designed by Carkeek Design Partners and launched on 13 April 2018, Rán VII is a pioneering boat.”
Zennstrom has said that Rán VII is the most fun boat he has raced, that it lights up downwind and is possibly faster than the TP52 or Maxi72.
Rán VII also showcases a revolutionary electric power system. Environmentally friendly and lightweight, the system marks the beginning of a partnership between Carkeek and Zennström on their electric EEL Propulsion venture.
Rán VII is World Sailing’s first Boat of the Year – this was one of the three inaugural awards out of eight presented last night (Tuesday) in Florida.
“It’s a fantastic honour to have one of our designs recognised as Boat of the Year by World Sailing,” Shaun Carkeek says. “The fact that it comes after such an incredible season, and that it is the first time this award has been made, and when you look at all of the other boats that were nominated, makes it all the more special. I’d like to thank Niklas again for the opportunity to design this cool boat.”
The sentiments were shared by Jason Carrington: “Carrington boats are delighted to hear that Rán VII has won “Yacht of the Year”, he said. “We are particularly thrilled as Rán VII was our first yacht.
“It was a pleasure to work with the Carkeek office and of course the Rán team. Rán will always be a special boat to us and we thank Niklas for the opportunity to build her.”
Great boats are the products of great collaboration and the excitement around Rán VII was there from the start.
“These boats are labours of love and in Rán VII we’ve distilled everything we’ve learned from our previous champion boats,” Carkeek said. “To have that validated to this degree by the results and then this award means so much. Success like this is not possible without collaboration and it testament to the vision and ability of Niklas and the Rán Racing team, the builders at Carrington and everyone here in our design team. We set out to like we always do to push the boundaries and innovate and are proud of the achievements and massive positive interest in the boat which sums up our design ethos and capabilities.
“Perhaps most importantly, with a great spirit of openness, Niklas has made the tooling for Rán VII free for all to use and we’re already in discussion with two owners to use those moulds for next year – 2019 looks like being faster than ever.”
Story of Ràn VII:
Fast40 circuit results: http://fast40class2018.com/result
