SPECIFICATIONS
MAKE Viko
MODEL S35
PRICE FROM £107,431
DESIGNER Sergio Lupoli
BUILDER Viko
First seeing the Viko S35 at the Düsseldorf boat show in 2019, not long after her launch, and she struck me as a boat worth watching. She looked as though she might sail quite nicely and also had a price tag (just €60,000 plus VAT) that would have looked more at home on a 32-footer.
Only a few years earlier I had tested the Viko 21 and I’d come away with mixed feelings, so I was interested to see the new arrival. She too was designed in Italy by Sergio Lupoli, whose racing yachts and performance cruisers (including the Comet range) go back to IOR designs from the late 1970s. I sailed his Comet 33 in 2007, rather liked it and was disappointed that the Comets never gained a foothold in the UK, though Viko subsequently used the hull of the Comet 31 to produce the Viko 30.
This move by Viko – taking on an existing design to build under their own name – reflected a broader push by Polish builders to sell boats themselves rather than just act as contractors for yards in western Europe. Many well-known builders have had their boats produced (or at least moulded) in Poland for decades. Some I only learned about by chance when, poking around in the back of laminating shops in the middle of nowhere in the depths of Polish winter – as you do – I found the names of some highly reputable boats attached
