The Nimbus Sport Tender 35 makes its world premiere at the Cannes Yachting Festival, featuring a twin-stepped hull and premium design.
This week the Nimbus Sport Tender 35 makes its world premiere at the Cannes Yachting Festival. The boat Nimbus revealed in June, the signature first model of the new Sport Cruiser 35 series, is in the water at Port Canto, Power 054, and Nimbus presents it to the press on Tuesday 8 September at 13:15 at the Nimbus stand, Power 150. Since the reveal, the 35 has spent its first season on the water on the Swedish west coast, where the first real tests and photographs were made in the Bohuslän archipelago. The performance figures are now measured. In Mercury Marine’s sea trials in August, the twin Verado V8 300 installation reached a top speed of 48.5 knots, accelerated from 0 to 25 knots in 9.9 seconds, and ran at 32 knots on 2.5 litres per nautical mile. The boat can be ordered through Nimbus dealers now.
A good day on the water is rarely about the person at the wheel. It is about everyone who came along, the children, the friends, the one pouring coffee while someone else drops the anchor or takes a dip. The Sport Tender 35 was designed around that day, and everything else followed. It is the clearest expression yet of the Scandinavian design philosophy that has guided Nimbus since 1968. Design where every choice answers to the people onboard and the life they live there. The Sport Tender 35 sets the future direction for the Nimbus Sport Cruisers, just as the award-winning 495 Flybridge does for the Coupé Cruisers. It is an all-new boat on a newly developed twin-stepped hull. The new Sport Cruiser 35 series comprises three models on a single hull: the Sport Tender, the Sport Weekender and the Sport Coupé. The Sport Tender 35 is the first.
It starts with imagining the perfect day
Every Nimbus begins the same way. Before the hand sketches, before the hull line is drawn, the designers ask one question. How does a day onboard actually look and feel, from the moment you wake to the moment you turn for home. “We never start with the boat. We start with the day. Where do people sit, how do they move, what do they never want to think about. Then we design with that vision in mind and take away everything that does not serve it. The hardest work on this boat is the part you will never notice” said Joacim Gustavsson, Chief Designer at Nimbus.
Seakeeping and handling
Long-time Nimbus owners recognise the shape of the new model at once. The sheer line is back, the long curve that runs along the top of the hull, and with it the volume and the height in the hull sides that the low-boat trend had taken away. It makes the boat more beautiful to look at and gives more inside it, room on deck, a steadier feeling underway, space in the cabin. This is Nimbus building substantial dayboats you can genuinely live on. Underneath, the 35 rides on a twin-stepped, air-lubricated hull, vacuum-infused around a Divinycell core so it is light and stiff at once. Nimbus introduced the step hull with the Nova R series in 2000, among the first production boats anywhere to run one, and has refined it across the Nova, R and T ranges in the 26 years since, long before the rest of the industry made steps a headline. The 35 takes it further, with a sharper bow section and a deeper V aft, and the air steps sit in exactly the right place at exactly the right size, so they stabilise the boat without making themselves heard. The feel is of a heavy boat, solid, steady and quiet in the sea, yet it is a light boat that rides on top of the waves. There is no planing threshold and almost no spray aft. Built in one piece, the hull is exceptionally stiff, and that stiffness, more than weight, is what keeps the ride solid and free of slamming when you push on. No creaks and no squeaks, the boat is built to be solid and quiet, and you can sit right forward and hold a conversation when cruising. It adds up to genuinely good seakeeping, the kind you come to trust.
“We took customers out on the open side towards Hönö this summer, in ten to eleven metres per second and a big swell, driving close to thirty knots the whole way. They had never seen waves like it, and the boat just kept going, dry and composed. I have driven Nimbus boats for a long time, and this one is sensational in a sea” underlined Jonas Göthberg, Commercial Director and Brand at Nimbus.
Freedom of movement, from bow to stern
Designing around everyone onboard is the one thing that sets the 35 apart from a class that often sells the person at the wheel a fantasy. It shows up differently for different people, and it starts with how you move. Because the day belongs to everyone, so does the boat. The helm is built to be handled by anyone onboard, the decks are built to be moved through by everyone, and the freedom to move from bow to stern, to sit forward for a while, move aft, join the driver or go below, passing each other with room to spare, is, in the words of the team, worth more than you realise until you are out there using it. Boating is so much more than getting from one place to another.
“I have been with Nimbus a long time, and I love the new exterior design, the volume and the height in the hull sides. This boat flirts with our history, and it is genuinely beautiful. The mid-cabin alone opens a market for families, at home across Scandinavia and far beyond it. And the freedom to move around the whole boat, from bow to stern without snagging on anything, is worth more than you understand until you are out there living it” said Jonas Göthberg, Commercial Director and Brand at Nimbus.
Living spaces on deck
The 35 has two living spaces, and both change with the day. Nimbus calls them multifunctional. In practice it means the boat you travel in on a cool morning and the boat you swim from at noon are the same boat, rearranged in seconds. The fore deck is a work surface with wide and secure footing when you are boarding, loading gear and handling ropes, and two broad sun lounge areas when you are not, each around two metres across so you can lie along them or across them and follow the sun through the afternoon. Eight can sit up here. The Nimbus habit of turning the gunwales into seats is here too, lowered and shaped into proper places to sit, among the nicest seats on any boat. Channels drain every cushion so nothing sits in a puddle in rain or heavy seas, and the new click-fit latches hold the lockers shut without a sound underway. The lockers run all the way to the bow, long enough for the canopy poles, a fishing rod or the gear of a long day, and a fixed bow ladder, the same one proven on the 305 Coupé, makes stepping ashore or onto a low jetty easy and safe.
The aft deck is where you gather during the day and where it all comes together. A large U-sofa seats six on a solid laminate frame, built into the boat itself, somewhere comfortable to sit and read, relax, dine with the family or hang out with friends. Its three-part backrest is the clever part. Fold the sections together for one large sun bed, fold them apart for a sofa, sit facing each other, or turn a section outward over the fold-out balconies and watch the water with your feet toward it. The balconies open from the hull sides and bring you right down to the water at anchor. Stowage is generous and easy to reach, under the sofa, forward of the engines, and extra-deep side lockers that swallow several fenders. The galley is split in two on purpose, so people can still move through the centre of the boat even with the canvas sides pulled out, and because it sits up in the cockpit with a 65 litre fridge, plus an optional 70 litre fridge under the sofa, you can pour drinks and feed everyone without going below.
Overnight comfort below deck
For a family, the cabin opens up real possibilities. There is room below for two cabins that sleep five. A full-length double forward, two full-length berths in the mid-cabin, and a sofa that takes a child. A family of five can spend the day here, and stay a few nights when they want to. The head is spacious, with a shower, a toilet and a washbasin. “Buyers who have chosen quality across a lifetime, in cars, in homes, in the things they surround themselves with, recognise a boat like this. It holds up to a closer look, and the choices are clear, you see at once why each one was made. This is a premium way to be on the water, smart and discreet, and that quiet confidence is exactly what this buyer recognises” remarked Joacim Gustavsson, Chief Designer at Nimbus.
Canopy solutions designed in from the start
Anyone who has wrestled a canopy on and off a boat knows how hard it can be. On the 35 the canopy solutions were designed in from the first sketch, several canopies working as one. Integrated side doors, the sides that cover the aft sofa and the galley, the aft section, and a canopy that closes behind the galley when you run with the T-top alone. It all sits in a recess around the helm, so it stays tight and quiet at speed and looks like one piece when closed. Each part goes on and off with a few zips, and it stows neatly onboard without taking the whole thing down. Covers for the cushions are part of the same design.
More Nimbus, by taking things away
A single laminate structure runs in one piece from behind the helm seat all the way to the roof, with the full-height windscreen built into the roof, for a stiffness you sense underfoot when the weather turns serious. The T-top is standard and integrated, and its pillars are shaped with a facet that exists for a reason, to hold a handle exactly where a hand reaches for one. Its acrylic sunroof keeps the sun off while it keeps the space light and open, so the cockpit stays bright without the glare. The sound system is built into the roof, and the lighting is the kind of detail Nimbus has always cared about. Ambient and courtesy lighting as standard, step lights over the surfaces you walk on, downlights over the galley and lights below the waterline, including under the balconies. Ventilation is integrated and out of sight, as on the 42 series. That is Scandinavian thinking, where the shape follows the function. Even the helm is kept clean, inherited from the award-winning 495 Flybridge, with the wiper controls on paddles at the wheel, the buttons you actually use built into it, and a choice of twin 12-inch displays or a single 16-inch.
“The Sport Tender 35 is something genuinely new to the market, a Sport Cruiser with the comfort of a Coupé. The boat is more Nimbus than ever, built on the DNA that has run through the brand since 1968. I am really proud to bring this boat to market” mentioned Johan Inden, CEO of Nimbus Group.
The right engines for the boat
Nimbus has a clear view on power, the right engines for the boat. The 35 is offered with a single V10 or twin V8 outboards, with a propeller chosen for strong acceleration and usable range across the whole speed band. It cruises comfortably between 30 and 36 knots. In Mercury Marine’s sea trials in August, the twin Verado V8 300 installation reached a top speed of 48.5 knots, went from 0 to 25 knots in 9.9 seconds, and ran at 32 knots on 2.5 litres per nautical mile. The boat is built for the whole of boating, and for everyone on it.
