Nimbus Sport Tender 35 - Crafted for Living

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 new Nimbus Sport Tender 35 was designed around that day, and everything else followed.

Today Nimbus reveals the first images of the Sport Tender 35, the signature first model of the new Sport Cruiser 35 series. 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, air-lubricated 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.

This is what Nimbus means by Crafted for Living. A boat is measured by the life that happens onboard and around it, the mornings, the long lunches, the swim before the wind picks up, the evening when nobody wants to go in. The 35 is built to give that life room, and make those days a reality.

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.

Picture it. You load up the boat, top up the refrigerator, gather the family or a few friends, and head out to a sheltered bay or an island. If the wind picks up or the rain comes in on the way, you sit warm and sheltered thanks to the integrated canvas side canopies, with room to move inside and around the boat. You settle into a U-sofa with a backrest that holds you comfortably, and you can stand safely in the middle of the boat, where you might want to be if the waves pick up. When you arrive, the canvas folds away in seconds, the sun beds open fore and aft, the hull sides fold out into balconies down to the water, and the galley is a step away when someone wants a coffee or a cool drink. The way home is just as simple. The day just feels easy and that ease is the hardest thing of all to design.

Two decks that change through the day

The Nimbus Sport 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

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

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.

For owners who fish, the Nimbus Sport Tender 35 is ready for it. A live bait tank can be fitted in the port aft locker.

Built around everyone onboard

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.

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. 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 go from bow to stern without climbing over anything or asking anyone to move aside 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.

More Nimbus, by taking things away

More is the easy answer in this part of the market. The 35 takes the harder route. Anyone can add. Knowing what to leave out is the craft.

What remains is built to be felt. 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.

Design and the air-lubricated twin-stepped hull

Longtime Nimbus owners will 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 twenty-six years since, long before the rest of the class made steps a headline. The 35 takes it further, with a sharper bow section and a deeper V aft. The result is a boat that runs dry and stays composed when the weather turns serious, and steady the rest of the time. 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. It adds up to genuinely good seakeeping, the kind you come to trust

The right engines for the boat

Nimbus has a clear view on power, the right engines for the boat. The Nimbus Sport Tender 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 and runs well over 40 at the top, around 45 with the twin V8. The verified figures follow once the boat has been on the water and Mercury has signed them off. The boat is built for the whole of boating, and for everyone on it.