Over in Iceland they recently launched the Langskip a modern day rendering of a viking cruising boat...
I like people who do stuff like this!
At 55 feet and with a beam of 14 feet this is one big boat. Throw in the fact that its draft of around a meter and there are very few places this boat cannot go.
Skipavik is a shipyard which has plenty of experience building boats and they have been doing plank on frame for the Icelandic fishing fleet whose day in day out sailing is in some of the toughest most extreme weather anywhere in the world. Which in my book tells me they know how to build boats!
The Langskip is their first "yacht" and unlike most people getting their toe wet in a new market, it is refreshing to see that they did not decide to build a clone of a Bendytoy fifty something or yet another Swan derivative. Nope, they decided to make a statement and a pretty awesome boat is the result...
Did I say I really like these guys?
Looking at how the boat is set up it is easy to see that while it wears its Viking heritage proudly, a lot of thought was put into upgrading and bringing the design into the current time zone (that being 2009 AD) with state of the art winches and a carbon fibre spar.
Most certainly not the same old same!
They are open to building bigger or smaller versions which opens a lot of possible scenarios for some very interesting boats.
On a related note, our cats, who we are pretty sure have some viking genes in their makeup (being berserkers of the first order) would be right at home on the Langskip...
Why Bikes?
2 weeks ago
