The Southern Wind SW108 Gelliceaux won the ISS Award 2024 in the BEST SAIL 24-40m category.
The annual Design & Leadership Award Gala took place on October 30 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The Gala gathered the international yachting industry’s most influential professionals to honour the remarkable accomplishments of this year’s outstanding launched yachts.
The judges awarded the first Southern Wind 108, designed by Farr Yacht Design (Naval Architecture) and Nauta Design (Exterior and Interior Design) with the following motivation:
“Gelliceaux stands as a true marvel of sustainable sailing, featuring a cutting-edge diesel electric hybrid propulsion system. As the first Southern Wind project designed from the ground up as a hybrid, she is paving the way for eco-friendly performance sailing. This yacht seamlessly integrates the latest design innovations, ensuring they harmonize perfectly with the sleek exterior, creating a cohesive and forward-thinking sailing experience.”
“We are pleased and proud that the Southern Wind 108’ GELLICEAUX won the ISS Award”, said Massimo Gino of Nauta Design. “We thank all the team involved in the project and construction, Southern Wind and Farr Yacht Design. And we especially thank the Owners: we’ve always been on the same page in terms of taste, and we were given many chances to come up with styling proposals and that made the creative process all the more rewarding.”
Unique deck style
Gelliceaux is the latest in the ‘GT’ series of Southern Wind bluewater sailing yachts that includes the SW105 Taniwha and the SW96 Nyumba (winner of the 2023 ISS Award as “Best sail below 500 GT”).
One of the first Southern Wind yachts with hybrid diesel-electric propulsion, beside featuring striking performances on the water, that led her to be the overall winner of the 2024 St Barth’s Bucket (in her very first race after the launch) and also triumph in the recent 2024 Ibiza JoySail in the Performance Cruising L division, she is one of the most beautiful designs that Nauta has ever done for Southern Wind, with a unique, very special style.
Her deck design is fresh and immediately recognizable for the clean, sober geometry that decline all the touchstones of the Nauta designed GT look in a new composition.
Gelliceaux’s sporty and distinctive coach roof is clad in teak with a huge central skylight and the teak side decks aft morph into ‘floating’ bench seats that also provide a handy platform for winches, enhancing functionality and giving a feeling of warmth and elegance.
A distinctive Z-shaped composite coaming of the coach roof, that looks like a stylized lightning bolt, gives the yacht a low-rise, agile profile look, enhancing the yacht’s profile.
The new opening transom concept, developed by Southern Wind and Nauta, includes an opening part of the aft deck, providing a staircase leading down to the beach platform, and making for a fantastic connection for the guest to the sea when the yacht is at anchor.
The interior design
Gelliceaux features an elegant and refined interior design which emphasizes a calming, Mediterranean feel through a natural contemporary and warm colour palette, fabric-lined walls, and contrasting light and dark wood finishes.
One of the most striking features of the two-level saloon is the comfy lounge sofa on the lower-level which moulds into the upper-level sofa. Beside connecting the two levels, it also adds an organic and flowing form to the interior design that opens the space and draws the eye through the saloon. This organic, flowing design is echoed throughout the interior, with soft shapes and rounded edges, providing the interiors with a very natural look.
Alongside with the refined and detailed on-board light design, natural light plays an important role, flooding in from the large hull windows, from the coach roof side windows, and from the big saloon skylight and the deck hatches.
The fixed furniture designed by Nauta appears more as freestanding, and not built-in, as the furniture units don’t run right up to the bulkheads and looks separated from walls, making for a cozier feeling, normally typical of a open space interior design.
Everything is very pleasant on the eye and the overall ambience is understated but sophisticated, stylish and warm.