Fantasi sailboats: a Swedish cruiser sharing its name with an unrelated French sloop
Two unconnected boats answer to the name Fantasi in used-boat listings. One is a Swedish cruising yacht, the Fantasi 44, built in two versions on Sweden's west coast. The other is the Jeanneau Fantasia 27, a French production sloop designed by Philippe Harlé that has nothing to do with the Swedish boat beyond the shared syllables -- different country, builder, designer and era. This page is about the 44.
Origins and ownership
The Fantasi 44 Classic and her sister the Fantasi 44 Pilot House are built by Fantasi Yachts / Jacobssons Båtbyggeri, a Swedish yard also referred to elsewhere as Bröderna Jakobssons Båtbyggeri and Jacobssons Båtvarv in Källviken -- evidently variations on the same family operation, though no source spells out the exact corporate structure. Gabriel Heyman, a yacht designer and member of both SNAME in the United States and Sweden's SYR, is credited as the boat's designer on his own portfolio and, independently, by the Swedish boating magazine Båtliv. Heyman's studio, Heyman Yachts, has described itself as known chiefly for one-off yachts from 57 to 90 feet, with a 2015 press release singling out the production Fantasi 44 Pilothouse as one of its award-winning exceptions. At least one hull was finished by Fribergs Båtbyggeri of Skövde -- a yard owned by Lars-Åke and Britt Friberg, with thirty years in the carpentry, electrical and technical trades -- working in collaboration with Jacobssons Båtvarv; that build, the most recent Fantasi 44 on record, was completed in 2012. The lineup also includes a Fantasi 37, named here without further documented history.
Construction and character
The 44 carries a longish fin keel with the lead set very low in a pronounced bulb, giving a moderate-displacement hull the stiffness and power expected of a blue-water cruiser. Most were rigged with twin headstays, the inner forestay carrying a near-masthead self-tacking jib. Hulls are GRP sandwich construction with toughened, double-glazed windows, and the Classic's interior is finished in Honduras mahogany and birchwood.
The Jeanneau Fantasia 27 came from an entirely different brief: Philippe Harlé drew a hull with finely raked bow lines running aft to a beam stern section, work Jeanneau's own materials single out as unusually efficient.
Who Fantasi is for
A used Fantasi 44 suits a buyer after a Scandinavian-built, moderate-displacement cruiser with genuine offshore keel and rig choices behind it, who is comfortable that the yard's own corporate history is thinly documented. Anyone who turns up a Fantasia 27 while searching should treat it as a separate boat entirely: a French Harlé design worth judging on its own terms, not as a smaller sibling of the Swedish 44.
