Mystic to Introduce Yachts at Cannes Boat Show
A new high-performance yacht line will unveiled at the famed event, which opens September 6.
September 6, 2011
With all the travel that John Cosker, the owner and founder of Mystic Powerboats, has been doing lately, it’s a wonder that he has time to actually build boats. At least he doesn’t have to waste time unpacking.
The Mystic SL 700 luxury performance yacht can run more than 80 mph.
Mid-August found Cosker in Italy for a week helping to test SilverHook, a 48-foot, Ocke Mannerfelt-designed V-bottom that races in the Ocean Grand Prix circuit. Then it was back to the Mystic shop in Deland, Fla., to get started on the second six-seat, open-cockpit 50-foot catamaran and begin repairs on Miss Geico, another 50-foot Mystic cat—a well-known offshore race boat—that broke a sponson during a race in Madison, Ind.
From there Cosker headed to the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout in Missouri, where My Way, another 50-foot Mystic cat, took the Top Gun trophy with a liquid-mile top speed of 208 mph. That tied the 208-mph set by Nauti-Marine last year and was just shy of the 209-mph course record set by Longlite. By the way, both Nauti-Marine and Longlite (now Miss Geico) are 50-foot Mystic catamarans.
The interior of the SL 700 does not lack for creature comforts or amenities.
That Shootout ended Sunday, which gave Cosker just enough time to drive to St. Louis and catch a red-eye flight back to Florida so he could land, hop in his car and drive to work on Monday morning.
After all, he has boats to build before he leaves for the 2011 Cannes International Boat and Yacht Show, where he will introduce Mystic’s line of high-performance 60- and 70-foot yachts. The show begins September 6.
So what business does one of the premier builders of composite, primarily turbine-powered high-performance catamarans have in the yacht market? Quite a lot, actually.
“I’ve been working on big boats for my entire career,” said Cosker, whose smallest current offering is a 50-footer.
A range of diesel power options are available for the SL 700.
Cosker, a naval architect who earned his degree at the University of Florida, began his career with the late Tom Gentry in the late 1980s. With Gentry and his team, Cosker worked on the Gentry Eagle, a 112-foot, nearly 11,500-hp luxury yacht (called a “mega-yacht at the time, how times have changed) that set the current trans-Atlantic crossing record of 62 hours and 7 minutes.
Before starting Mystic in 1996, Cosker worked with some of the biggest names in high-performance pleasure boat and yacht industry including Phil Rolla, John Connor, Mark Nemschoff and Fabio Buzzi. However, the first “big boat” Cosker designed on his own wasn’t a catamaran—it was a 55-foot turbine-powered V-bottom he built for Dave Callan, an entrepreneur from Boston, Mass. The boat topped 120 mph.
Though Cosker’s main thrust was his high-performance catamaran line, he continued to tackle yacht projects. In 2004-2005, Mystic built a 62-footer. In 2007, the company created a 70-footer.
The down-sized M6000 delivers the same level of performance as its larger SL 700 sibling.
At present, there are two high-performance luxury yachts, both monohulls, in the Mystic line. Measuring 70 feet, the SL 700 is the company’s “flagship” and is capable of running more than 80 mph. At 60 feet long, the M6000 is a smaller version of the SL 700 but can deliver the same top-end performance.
Unlike Mystic’s high-performance offshore racing and pleasure catamarans, the yachts are powered by diesel engines, rather than gasoline turbines. Naturally, the prices of the yachts will be several times higher than those for the cats, which have an average cost of $1 million (U.S.)
Which model will represent the Mystic yacht line at Cannes? Cosker declined to elaborate and hinted that it might be something new.
“We will have a boat in the show,” he said. “And we may have another model coming out.
“We think we can build and sell three or four yachts a year,” Cosker added. “That is our goal. We’re looking forward to showing what we can do at Cannes. We think we’ll be well-received there.”
For more information, visit Mystic Powerboats.
Matt Trulio is the editor at large for Powerboat magazine. He has written for the magazine since 1994. Trulio’s daily blog can be found on speedonthewater.com, a site he created and maintains, which is the high-performance arm of the BoaterMouth group.
