After the Darwin Class Vessels have become the most successful explorer range of yacht ever built you are now presenting your flagship Nauta Air 108 to the yachting community. Is this replacing the Darwin Line? Absolutely not. The Darwin Class is for Cantiere delle Marche what G-Class is for Mercedes. It is the Quintessence Explorer Yachting both in terms of design and engineering: like the G-Class, the Darwin can be refreshed (we are already at the 3.0 version) but never replaced. The Nauta Air line is a range which fills another niche of the Explorer Market, actually creating something non existing before: a true Explorer Vessel engineering and seakeeping wise, with a more contemporary design, a lay out which appeals a wider audience, and for the first time giving the possibility to passionate yachtsmen to have a true and heavy duty ship with an elegant and stylish line. After years and years where shipyards have convinced yachtmen that a yacht must look like a tug to be a good ship... CdM is now spreading a new message around!

We have noticed that Narvalo has an - unseen at CdM - bulbous bow. Is this a new naval engineering approach or just a specific request of the owner? The bulbous bow is strictly linked to the hydrodynamics of the hull. There are hulls (like our Darwins) which do not need a bulbous bow to be efficient and perform well, and there are others (like the Nauta 108) which are studied to have a bulbous bow. As simple as that. It is just a matter of the right combination of element and the target set by the yard/owner to the engineers.

If you should highlight two engineering characteristic of Narvalo to be considered key for an explorer vessel, which would they be? For sure the seakeeping performances of the yacht. We had a preliminary idea of how good this hull was during our tank test at the Marin facility in the Netherlands, but when we went out at sea with Narvalo we immediately understood that this vessel was more than we expected: something very special indeed! This is another incredibly seaworthy vessel: a real CDM! The noise and vibration levels are also something quite unique in our industry and definitely difficult to find in the 100/120 feet range! A prospect client seatrialling Narvalo with us said "I will trick my friends and say that the boat is hybrid and they will believe it for sure!!!". Noise and vibration comfort are key for those (but not only) who want to cruise long passages and spend months onboard their vessel.

Narvalo is definitely a milestone for CdM: what do you expect after her worldwide premiere at the Cannes Boat Show? Narvalo will definitely hit the target for which we started the Nauta Air range: our market share will grow sensibly and with it our possibility to give to a larger number of yachtmen the pleasure of buying yachts which will finally let them expand their cruising grounds instead of narrowing them down because of their limits.

The shipyard you founded less than six years ago is now leading the worldwide market: what is the secret behind such an incredible success? In our next issue we will publish the results of a very precise market analysis and I have to admit that we are once again very positively surprised by its outcomes. We are definitely the absolute leaders in our segment of the Explorer Yachts market, and expanding the comparative analysis also to FRP Semidisplacement and Displacement yachts, we are just one step far from the three biggest groups in the world. As I said before, I cannot reveil the secret behind that... But I can definitely give you three very important ingredients of the receipe: Passion for what we do, knowledge of our specific segment and total commitment towards our customers. In a few words, we are a shipyard which keeps on putting at the centre of its world the two most important elements: Clients and Yachts. That is what we are focused on and that's why we keep on saying: we want to become better and better, not bigger and bigger!