J CRAFT OWNERS’ TALES: ALFRED COYLE

Back in the spring of 2023 I saw an article in Forbes magazine about J Craft and its Torpedo yacht which was written by Bill Springer, and it caught my attention. I was looking to get a new boat. While I’d never heard of J Craft before, the article talked about J Craft’s Torpedo, its beauty, elegance and its manoeuvrability, in such exquisite detail that I felt I had to experience it for myself. When I learned that Radenko, the owner of the business, was going to be at FLIBS [Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show] later that year I decided to learn more about it.

So, I asked my broker to track him down, and a few months later I travelled to Key Largo to meet him and experience the Torpedo for myself. After spending a weekend with a J Craft Torpedo at the Ocean Reef Club, I commissioned one right there and then.

I've always been attracted to wooden boats and I've got an old 1927 Chris-Craft. But, you know, keeping up a regular wooden boat is a lot of work, and despite my love for it, I was getting a little tired of doing that. 

What appealed to me about the J Craft Torpedo was that it combines a fibreglass hull and deck with mahogany wood veneer, making maintenance and upkeep both cheaper and easier. The other thing was the sheer quality of the hand built workmanship.

We have a home in Sarasota, Florida and one in Knoxville, Tennessee, and I thought, well, this boat's small enough – even though it's a large boat – that I could transport it down to Florida in the winter and have it up in Tennessee in the summer, so I get use of her all year around. But most of all, she is just beautiful… the curved, hourglass shape… just gorgeous. 

My brother and I travelled to the shipyard located on the Swedish island of Gotland to see J Craft’s set up and to go through the custom elements of the build. I'm an owner-operator, so I wanted to go through the whole thing while the boat was being built, to spend time with Johan Hallen, the chief master builder and head of the shipyard, and Zoltan, his second in command.

It turned out to be a really nice trip because it provided me with a thorough understanding of the Torpedo and how she is built. I also made very good friends with the guys there at the factory – and to this day, we text and call each other all the time. I think they enjoyed the fact that I really wanted to know what they were doing and how they were doing it. 

My wife Rejane was also intimately involved from the very beginning. In fact, she’s from the Amazon region of Brazil and our Torpedo Amazon Queen is named in her honour. She’s an interior designer, so all the detail choices – the colours, materials, as well as the equipment supporting our lifestyle on board such as refrigerators, and the set-up of our galley – all reflected her choices.

We are both very visually led people, and I’d say we’ve created a stunning boat. We decided to be bold when it came to our choice of colours and I'm glad we did. Of course I'm biased, but I think our J Craft Torpedo stands out more because of the colours; the cockpit finished in Hermès orange, the cabin covered in handwoven Fortuny fabric and especially the custom-designed Hohenzollern family Prussian royal blue hull, marinised and finished in metallic stand out. We really like it as we feel that they complement the beautiful lines and the visual appeal of the Torpedo. 

My wife's sister lives in the Black Forest in Germany, and we were over there the summer of ’23 and we went to tour an old castle. The queen's dressing room – this gigantic room – had a ceiling that was painted in this vibrant blue colour, and since I've always liked blues, I took plenty of pictures of it.

When we were all discussing colours for our Torpedo, I told Radenko about the ceiling and the colour it had been painted in and he said, ‘Oh, I know the castle and the family that owns it. Just let me see what colour it is.’ So, he did and we created Amazon Queen’s custom paint colour in what we call Hohenzollern blue. This together with the handwoven Venetian fabric uniquely handmade by the Fortuny brand makes Amazon Queen distinct and, to be frank, simply beautiful. 

I've seen a lot of J Craft Torpedoes over the past couple of years, each unique and beautiful, but even my already elevated expectations were exceeded when I first saw Amazon Queen. Both Rejane and I were really excited about it.

I’d always said to Radenko that before we shipped the boat to the States, I’d like to take her from Sweden down to the Med and tour the French and Italian Rivieras with her. He said, ‘Well, if you're going to do that, let's do the Baltic Sea, J Craft’s home sea, as well.’ So that’s what we did! 

For parts of the way we were even accompanied by other Torpedoes and their owners, and we had this wonderful, extensive trip covering the Baltic Sea and the French and Italian Rivieras, staying in gorgeous villas and hotels and meeting fellow J Craft owners along the way. 

I've been boating now since I was 15 years old and I’ve owned numerous boats. But I've never had a boat that handles like the Torpedo. It's almost as though, if you think you want this boat to do something, it already does it for you. It's just so easy to operate and handle and manoeuvre. As a former US Air Force F-15 fighter pilot, it’s like I’m flying a jet again, but across the waves. It’s the best boat to drive I’ve ever experienced.

Of course, with the 2 Volvo Penta IPS 650s, Amazon Queen has big, powerful and torque-rich engines, propelling her to speeds near 50 knots. But it’s about more than just sheer power, it’s her responsiveness and manoeuvrability. When you put her into a turn, she is just so smooth. Some of the modern boats when they turn, they stay flat in the water. So, if you're at 30 knots and you turn, they throw your passengers around.

What’s remarkable is that the Torpedo has a little bit of old-school about her in the way that she turns – she banks like an airplane, for lack of a better way of putting it. All your gravitational forces are going through your body instead of against your body. So, she doesn't throw you around, but rather centres you. If anything, it pushes you down and makes you feel more comfortable and secure. Driving her is pure pleasure.

When we were in the Mediterranean, we found ourselves in some six- and seven-foot seas some days and our Torpedo handled those really well. Back here at home the conditions are calmer. We’re on the Tennessee River, which has connected and dammed lakes. We could actually leave the dock at the back of our house and get all the way to the Gulf of Mexico if we wanted to. It'd be a long drive, but we could do it in Amazon Queen. 

After having experienced our trip to the Baltic and Mediterranean Seas this year, I think that both Rejane and I would really like to do part two and take Amazon Queen down the Amalfi Coast, around Italy and up to Croatia, as we didn’t have time to do so this year. So more to come on that front. As I said, her size makes moving her easy and importantly not cost prohibitive, so that transporting her even across the Atlantic is very feasible. 

The thing that clinched it for me is Amazon Queen’s practicality. Apart from her timeless lines, classic beauty and the cutting-edge technology beneath her skin, you can easily transport our Torpedo by road in the States; she is right under the limit as far as wide loads in the US go. Small enough for a lake and large enough for the sea.

So, if you have different places on the water, she is a great boat, giving you use and pleasure all year around.