Almarán was born as Swell (Wave) and is the third yacht built for the famous New Yorker 32 class (NY32), designed by Olin Stephens to replace the famous NY30s designed by Nat Herreshoff. This was a huge success for Stephens, who was very young at the time, because he had to beat the best Naval Architects’ firms of the moment in a New York Yacht Club contest.

Among those defeated were important names like Alden, Luders, or Payne. This class, like many of Stephens’s initial projects, owes much of its design to the International Rule, for which the young Olin designed several “6 metres” that were his first highly successful boats. Compared to a metric formula, the NY32s have a much higher freeboard and, thanks to that, are more liveable and suited to offshore sailing, which was one of the contest’s requirements. Furthermore, the Almarán is the only NY32 sailing in Europe, and that’s because a passionate Italian brought this yacht to his country to carry out an important restoration project.

Nowadays, it’s still a very fast yacht in races — and not only classic ones! Almarán is able to give quite a scare to many modern raceboats, its great-grandchildren.