I have no idea what time it is. Is it midnight? 2 a.m.?
The sun has barely set and I’m floating off the Swedish coast, but I’m not floating on a boat. I’m floating in the water.
The water is cold, but it’s actually quite comfortable. Nimbus Brand Manager Jonas Göthberg is floating nearby too. The sun is scudding right below the horizon. We can see its glow. No, our boat hasn’t sunk. It’s the summer solstice in Sweden and we’re celebrating the longest day of the year with a Midsummer night party, Sweden’s biggest holiday. Now, we’re taking a cold-water dip after a middle-of-the-night sauna.
I’ve come to Sweden at the invitation of the Nimbus Group, builders of Nimbus Boats, which is hosting a dozen North American yacht brokers to show off their latest model, the Nimbus W11.
I’d arrived in Gothenburg, Sweden’s second largest city, the day before the summer solstice and the next morning joined Nimbus America Vice President Justin Joyner. A three-hour bus ride brought us to the Nimbus factory in Lugnås, which sits in the Central Swedish lowland just south of lake Vänern, the largest in the European Union.
Nimbus was founded in 1968 in Långedrag, a suburb of Gothenburg, and built its first boats in Lugnås in 1969. The company was the brainchild of Harald Wiklund, then managing director of Volvo Penta, which still builds its engines in Varna near Lugnås.
