RONDINE

Model: Swan 36, Hull No. 42

Year: 1962

Design: #1710-51

Builder: Nautor’s Swan

The Return of the Black Swan

In economics, a black swan is a metaphor for an extremely unlikely, hard-to-predict event with an outsized impact. On Sunday morning 31 May 2026, we woke up in the black Swan 36 at Hellsö, Kökar in the Finnish south-west archipelago, and for her this was the first time in Finland since she had left the Nautor yard in Pietarsaari, fifty-eight years earlier. Her name is RONDINE, and after half a century in Sweden, we feel she has finally come home.

We bought RONDINE, S&S Swan 36 hull number 042, with no builder’s plate, in Limhamn, near Malmö in southern Sweden, after a test sail in September 2025. We had been looking for a classic Sparkman & Stephens or Olle Enderlein designed boat, and RONDINE was the fifth Swan 36 we viewed. She was built in 1968, and like so many old boats she had quietly slipped between owners, sailing clubs, and even names, leaving just a fragile trail that took nine months of research to follow. What we discovered was a chain of different lives, all connected through one beautiful well-built sailing yacht.

The story begins with Gustaf Piehl (1922–2006), a Stockholm brewing magnate, distinguished member of Kungliga Svenska Segel Sällskapet KSSS, 12-times Gotland Runt racer, and later the first non-royal Grand Master of the Swedish Freemasons since 1774. Piehl named all his boats SAGITTA — Latin for “arrow” — a nod to his family’s name and brewery emblem. The 1969 KSSS yearbook, located in the Åbo Akademi maritime history archives, confirmed Piehl’s Swan 36 SAGITTA had carried sail number OR S 48, the very number cast on a small bronze plate fixed to RONDINE’s forward dorade box. Piehl raced her in Gotland Runt in 1968 and 1970, and in 1972 he moved to a Swan 40.

In 1971 the black Swan passed to Olle Renvall (1925–2004), an Alfa Romeo racing driver in Eskilstuna. Olle was the 1960 Swedish ice racing champion but the Swan was for Lake Mälaren racing in the summer. According to Olle’s old crewmate Leif Hedman, Olle named the boat RONDINE — short for “Renvalls ONDINE” — a homage to the celebrated high-tech offshore racing sailboats named ONDINE by Sumner "Huey" Long, rather than the Italian word for the bird swallow, however poetic that coincidence remains. Olle’s 1970s sailing trophies — and some entertaining stories of overboard racing protesters and strictly rationed whisky for the crew — are still living on board today.

In 1995 RONDINE was motored to Göteborg through the Göta Kanal. The new owners Henrik (1946–2013) and Kerstin Wingård enjoyed cruising in the Göteborg archipelago, and kept RONDINE at the mooring buoy at their summer house. The next owner from 2004 was Olof Tiselius in Stockholm, a sailing instructor and European and World Championship level sailor from Djursholms Segelklubb. Olof enjoyed RONDINE, and installed a new engine, but soon wanted a larger S&S yacht, and currently he sails the S&S 52 yawl GEROFIA.

After a DNF in Gotland Runt, Olof passed RONDINE to Sten Berg (1943–2026) in Limhamn, in 2009. Sten would own and sail her for the next sixteen years. Sten was, by every account we gathered, “a very special man, in many ways”: an engineer, a dreamer, and perhaps ultimately RONDINE’s most devoted custodian. He fitted a new Selden mast to the original Proctor measurements, commissioned a broad new sail inventory, installed new engine and winches, raced in Malmö’s Saltholm Runt, and twice in Denmark’s Sjælland Rundt, finishing third on one occasion. He made two solo attempts for a pilgrimage sail north to RONDINE’s birthplace in Pietarsaari, turning back at Öland when the passage proved too demanding alone. He set up RONDINE for an Atlantic crossing, and began another journey through the European canals to the Mediterranean. Sadly, we signed the purchase agreement last autumn but never got to meet Sten — he passed away this January.

That makes our own arrival, the closing of the half-a-century loop. We travelled again to Limhamn in May, spent a long busy weekend with help from a local electrician and Ulf Björk, Sten’s longtime sailmaker, and set off for Finland on May 19. Thirteen sailing days, one lay day, and 586 nautical miles later, with no incidents — we arrived at her new home mooring in the Turku archipelago.

RONDINE is in honest working condition rather than a showroom centrepiece, which suits us fine. Sten kept her well, and what she needs now is the slower, more affectionate kind of TLC — new teak where the old has softened, making her sandwich deck solid again, refreshing cushions in the original blue, gas system rebuild, interior woodwork, repainting her black hull and the hull stripe. Some of this is more urgent, some less so. Our previous boat was a wooden one so the upcoming woodwork does not frighten us.

We have applied RONDINE to the Finnish National Heritage Agency’s classic boat registry, and along the way we’ve been lucky enough to draw on an international network of helpful people, their knowledge and their networks — Robert Holm at Nautor, Simon Turner at Berthon, Robert Louhimies at Åbo Akademi, Ulf Björk of Sydsegel, Kerstin Wingård in Göteborg and Olof Tiselius in Stockholm, Sebastian Cedercreutz at Nyländska Jaktklubben, sailor Daniel Serrander in Eskilstuna, classic boat authority Jani Vahto in Finland, and several others — all willing to help piece together the life of a fifty-eight-year-old black Swan.

So — is the black Swan a black swan, in the metaphorical sense? We like to think so, in a way: an improbable boat, with a lively history, that nobody could quite have predicted would end up exactly here. RONDINE has come home to Finland for the first time since she left Pietarsaari in 1968. We intend to make sure she’s still sailing — a little more polished each season — for a long time yet.

Maarit Laanti & Harri Kiljander, Kemiö/Espoo, Finland, June 2026