Do you like to travel as a family on small waters and the coast? Water games and family picnics outdoors are your typical weekend activities? The Danish trimarans from the Quorning Boats shipyard, known as Dragonfly, are designed just for you.

History

The Quorning Boats shipyard was founded in 1967 by Borg Quorning. From the first days the company designed and produced trimarans, but the first success came with single hull motor boats. It took more than a decade to find the right solution for the market and to realize what had been planned. It was only in the early 80’s, when the shipyard completely abandoned single hull boats, that the Dragonfly brand appeared.

The first models had rigid hulls fastened to each other. The revolutionary Swing Wing concept, where float hulls are attached to the main hull in parking or transport, has been in use since 1989. The first model with the Swing Wing system was the Dragonfly 800. Residents of the rugged bay and shallow Scandinavian coast appreciated the Danish innovation and in the future Swing Wing was used on all models of the yard.

It is interesting to note that the founder of the shipyard himself, driving his Dragonfly 800 MK I, won the famous Round Great Britain race in 1985. And that wasn’t Dragonfly’s only victory. Trimarans under this brand won the Micro-Multihull European championships and the Round the Island Race.

What can I say, the legendary Paul Elvström himself was the owner of one of Dragonfly!

In 1995, the son of the shipyard founder Jens Kuorning replaced his father as head of the shipyard. His brother Erik manages a related company that supplies spare parts for the construction of trimarans. Overall, after more than half a century of existence, Quorning Boats has built more than 1000 trimarans.

Model range

As if confirming stereotype about northern manners, Quorning Boats very slowly updates the list of models. The notorious Dragonfly 800 was taken out of production and replaced by Dragonfly 28 only in 2009! So it was a successful and popular model.

Dragonfly’s large 920 and 1000 models had a similar fate, and their history ended only in 2012. These “sailors” were replaced by Dragonfly 32 and Dragonfly 35.

Besides Dragonfly 35 and 32, the shipyard also offers smaller models: Dragonfly 28 and Dragonfly 25. All are equipped with the Swing Wing system; all except Dragonfly 32 are trailer boats and all models have two versions: touring and sports, with greater sailing and steering configuration.

Features

Comfortable, habitable, with low draft and low crew requirements, Dragonfly will delight those who love short journeys with its performance. At the same time, Dragonfly trimarans are quite dynamic. They have participated in sailing races more than once and won. Today, they are far from stepped-up boats for retired people. Dragonfly are armed with rotating carbon masts, and the sports versions have impressive sailing and rudder feathers located on floats. Dragonfly are designed for the ‘weekend round’, when you can easily explore water areas inaccessible to large vessels. Then, with a simple movement of your hand, you fold the side floats, load a trimaran onto your trailer and go home.

Production .

Quorning Boats is traditional. Today the shipyard is located where it was built 50 years ago by its founder Borg Quornington, in Skærbækvej, near Fredericia in Jutland. The shipyard now employs around 40 people and Quorning Boats produces around 50 trimarans per year in series.

Awards

The influential British magazine Yachting Monthly has included the Dragonfly 920 in its list of “100 Best Yachts of the Century”. At the same time, Dragonfly was the only trimaran mass-produced yacht to be included in this list. It happened in 2006. In general, Dragonfly trimarans were voted “Best Boat in Europe” three times, while Dragonfly 1200 and Dragonfly 32 were the U.S. boats of the year.