Porto Cervo wrapped up the 23rd Rolex Swan Cup in vintage style. Over 1,800 sailors aboard 170 Swan yachts crowded the docks in front of the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda for the final day of racing, and the Mediterranean delivered what was billed as a perfect day: clear skies, north-easterly winds building from eight to 12 knots, and enough drama across the finish line to justify the week-long gathering.
The conditions split the fleet geographically. Rating divisions tackled a coastal race that wound around the Caprera shoreline and past the Isola dei Monaci, threading through tight passages before the beat home. The one-design ClubSwan fleets, meanwhile, raced windward-leeward courses between the island marks. From the water, the sight must have been something special: a working fleet of 170 boats spanning six decades of Swan design, all converging on Porto Cervo for what amounts to the boat builders’ unofficial world championship.
This year carried extra weight. Nautor Swan is marking 60 years in business, and the Swan Cup itself dates back to 1980, though it took the Rolex naming some four years later. The event has become one of the sailing calendar’s most reliably well-organised affairs, partly because the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda treats it like family business. YCCS Commodore Andrea Recordati acknowledged as much during the prize-giving: “This brings to a close a week of great racing and, above all, exceptional commitment from owners and crews. I would like to thank Rolex and Nautor Swan, with whom we share both a longstanding relationship and a genuine passion for this event.”
Consistency proved decisive across most classes. In the Swan Maxi division, Freya (Swan 90) showed grit, recovering from a sixth-place start with three consecutive wins to claim the class. The smaller one-designs rewarded steadiness too. Earlybird, Francesco Bruni’s ClubSwan 50, finished with five wins from seven races. In the ClubSwan 43, Team 42+1 posted six consecutive victories. But the ClubSwan 42 fleet went to countback after Nadir and Pez de Abril tied level on points with identical race results: three firsts, two seconds, a third. The final race decided it, Nadir taking the gun.
The ClubSwan 28 class came down to a single point between Anya Race and Black Swan. Both crews left nothing on the water. Black Swan won the final race but couldn’t quite claw back the gap. Anya Race held on to claim the class, and both boats took what everyone involved knows matters most: the knowledge they’d been tested properly by serious crews in a fleet that doesn’t forgive mistakes.
Recordati signed off the week with an invitation to return in 2028, which is how these things work in the Swan world. The boats go home, their owners file them away among their other prized possessions, and two years later they’ll haul them out again and sail back to Porto Cervo. In the meantime, the Rolex Swan Cup becomes what it always does: the story people tell about the week their boat was competitive at the big regatta.
