J Craft Boats, the small Swedish builder, just delivered its first 42-foot retro Torpedo RS boat to its owner in St. Tropez. Powered by twin 480-hp Volvo IPS650 pod drives, the mahogany beauty tops out at 47 knots, and has a range of 270 nm at its cruising speed of 30 knots.
But J Craft Boats are not about statistics. They’re about style, elegance and craftsmanship. Consider that it takes J Craft a year to build each boat by hand on the island of Gotland. And that the cockpit is fitted with diamond-stitched white upholstery with midnight-blue piping. The helm has hand-stitched leather controls. The hand-carved wooden Nardi steering wheel has the same hand-stitched leather grip as the one in a Ferrari 250 GTO.
The Torpedo RS is the 26th boat built by J Craft, and each one is different, to suit each owner’s wishes. This one has the standard layout of two cabins and one head below. The cabinetry is varnished, the lighting is ambient, and the furniture is posh (there’s a white Alcantara sofa in the salon).
For relaxing, the boat has two bars, a fridge and an icemaker. When it’s stopped, you can push a button and a table rises from the sole via hydraulics for dining or even as an extra sun pad.
An 8kW genset provides electrical power or you can run the boat’s systems from a quiet lithium battery bank, or the air conditioning from the latest inverter technology.
J Craft delivered the Torpedo RS to its new owner, who’s based in Monaco, at its new Mediterranean office in the old port of St. Tropez. “The J Craft Torpedo is a beautiful work of art and an engineering marvel,” he said. “She is joyous to drive and built for speed and comfort. I love her.”
Specs.: LOA: 41’8”; Beam: 11’8”; Draft: 3’1”; Disp.: NA; Fuel: 211 gals.; Water: 67 gals.; Power: 2×480-hp Volvo IPS650 pod drives. Read more
