The Shogun 43 is one of the most not-Swedish Swedish sailboats there are currently on the market. Since I´ve first boarded this all-out performance boat two years ago, I wanted to sail one. This weekend it was time to do so: But it all turned out to become a little … complicated. This article tells my own little Odyssey that started to evolve around sailing the Shogun 43 – and ended with watching Christopher Nolan´s latest cinema feat instead.
The past weekend turned out to be very turbulent for me. Just like my own little private odyssey, I shall say. So, don´t be surprised if this article is a bit weird in terms of location, time-jumps and contents. Well, maybe this is my take on Christopher Nolan´s style of telling a story? We´ll see how it works out. To begin with, it all started on the nice sandy beach of … Troy? No, the fine white beach you can see in the cover picture of this article is Laboe, not far away from Kiel City.
Unlike Odysseus and the great Greek army roughly 3.200 years ago, this beach hasn´t been ravaged, burned and soaked in blood by a ten year long brutal war, subsequently besieging the adjacent city of Troy, but crowded by beach chairs and – usually in summer – thousands of bathers and sun worshippers roasting their backs for a nice tan. That Friday though a pretty nasty low was in for a summer´s break: Down to 15 degrees Celsius, occasional rain showers and a nice steep breeze. A bad omen?
Goddess Nike didn´t appear in the Odyssey
I arrived very early. Following an invitation of Shogun Yachts to accompany a delivery crew for a some 230 nautical miles trip from Kiel to Gothenburg, where this performance yacht was due to attend the famous Tjörn Rundt regatta, one of Sweden´s most prestigious races. This was of course an occasion I couldn´t let go past, so I signed on to become a member of the four-person crew. At least so I thought. The Shogun 43 has fascinated me right when I saw her for the first time in 2024 during a boat show. She is Swedish to the core – and yet the most “un-Swedish” boat I know of.
Designed by Oscar Södergren, son of legendary Hakan Södergren, this racer-cruiser is built in full-carbon, sports a very aggressive, modern design and is fitted with latest sailing hardware like a full hydraulic trim system, toe-in-regulators for the double rudders and much more. Nope, the Shogun 43 does not follow in the steps of classic Scandinavian yacht design, yet she incorporates everything Swedish boatbuilding still stands for, including a high-grade joinery and luxury, interior. You should check out the in-depth walkthrough article if you are interested to see more from this racer-cruiser. This boat, however, is named NIKE. A name that might refer to Greek goddess Nike, which, for some reason, does not appear in Homer´s Odyssey, but Athena does.
Watching Nolan´s latest cinema flick, (beware, that´s the first time- and location jump fo this article), I must admit I was a bit torn between going to the cinema or not, spoiled or appalled by some of the over-ambitious criticism connected to this movie. Yes, I personally am as well not a fan (not at all!) of Zendaya. I cannot get why she is hyped that much because all she does is … staring. I wouldn´t call her acting “acting”. Also, the huge turmoil surrounding Elliott Page´s role turned out to be completely exaggerated. You might have your personal opinion about the transition from Ellen to Elliot, but I must say, albeit the character of Sinon does not even appear in the original text by Homer, Elliot had been cast fitting perfectly well to this role. It did not bother me in any way, nor did Zendaya, who´s screen presence added up to no more than 7 minutes or so.
Becoming the Barbarians
So how is the “Odyssey” by Christopher Nolan then? First of all, Homer´s grand epos is one of my all-time favorite books since I was a child. I don´t know how many times I read it and I cannot even count the times I´ve watched the numerous movies which have been produced in the past 40, 50 years. Comparing Nolan´s take with, let´s say “Troy”, which depicts the events of the “Iliad”, doesn´t work. Nolan does not stage a grand adventure, a huge historical accurate depiction of the events. Nor does he take us into the wonders of the ancient Greek mythology. His Odyssey is bleak, dark, freezingly cold and brutal. Christopher Nolan does not focus on the “adventures” of the wandering and travel of Odysseus and his crew. Not at all. As every product of any artist, his movie is a commentary on our present, it´s a product of our present lives.
I was astonished and really overwhelmed to learn that Nolan did indeed interpret the ancient source material in a very, very modern way. I learned something new when I walked out of the cinema. For decades I had been focusing on the grandeur of the Odyssey, the shiny heroes of the Trojan War, the sorcery of the Gods. Which is perfectly fine. But Nolan did catapult the story into the 21st Century: It´s not a story of how the odyssey itself broke the character, made him suffer all the way throughout his arduous journey home. In Nolan´s film, Odysseus is a broken character from the start. That´s a major shift and the ingenious take of Nolan. It´s not the odyssey that breaks Odysseus! He had been broken all along, right from the start: We watch him accepting his guilt, making decisions that are costing the lives of his fellow men up until every single one was dead. Up until the moment he himself has become the threat of the “seafaring nations from the West”, the menace that is talked about the whole movie. They have become the Barbarians they once set out to counter.
Speaking of Barbarians, that´s what I had named the article about the Shogun 43 back in the day as well. Naming the brand “Shogun” – as a referral to the ancient Japanese warlords and sword fighters – being built in Sweden, the land of the Vikings, is an analogy that promises a wild combination of so many exciting things if combined in a sailboat. The Shogun 43 sports a sharp, inverted bow, a long bowsprit and many sails setups, envisioned to crush her opponents. In this, as Swedish sailing legend and North Sails professional Björn Österberg and his mate, Lars, started to set up the laminates for our sailing trip, the NIKE had already claimed 3rd places in ORC double handed European Championships of 2025, the 3rd place in the Gotland Rundt and multiple line honors and first ship home in many races. Bearing the name of the goddess of victory as well is indeed a good sign, wouldn´t you agree?
A true Nolan
My sailing trip with NIKE was to become a true odyssey by itself too. After readying the boat, a thorough safety check of the equipment aboard, a thorough functional check of the sophisticated hydraulics, the electronics, the whole running rigging and preparations of the A3 Gennaker and Code 0 sails, we headed out for a last dinner ashore and sat down in the saloon to pre-plan the sailing route as well as to set up a watch scheme for the upcoming sailing trip.
The plan was to leave Kiel bay as early as possible tomorrow on a due north course. The route would take us up all the way along the Danish islands of Langeland, through the Great Belt with the island of Fyn to port side and Sealand to out starboard side. Entering the Kattegat, we´d pass Anholt and try to sail closer to Denmark to avoid much of the swell that builds up in a Westerly, just to pass Laeso island and turn in to Gothenburg. Some 230 nautical miles up north. That´s for the plan, but from that moment on, things turned … strange. Because just as it is the case for Christopher Nolan´s movies, stuff happened.
Jumping into the cinema again, watching “The Odyssey”, I was compelled to learn that the original style and structure of the source material does indeed fit Nolan´s style of narrating a story very well! Christopher Nolan never tells a story straight from the beginning to the end. He plays with time, often also with perspective. That´s the same with the “Odyssey”, and I mean the original text. Many of the movie´s criticism was about the back and forth, the time jumps, the flashbacks. The thing is, this is how the original had been written all along! Homer never tells the story “from A to Z”, the original text indeed is a back and forth in time, narrators change and the readers jump back and forth within the timeline, changing locations and perspectives. I think Nolan masterfully picked that up and combined it with his style of telling a story. That´s a grade A from my side!
Was it worth it?
On the day of our casting off to sail to Gothenburg I woke up at 3.45 a.m. as the two guys were already active in the saloon. It wasn´t even dawning outside, pitch black darkness all around us. Slowly getting back my consciousness after a not so pleasant night (because of my excitement), I heard them talking about a storm front coming in, winds from 20 to 28 knots, changing the jib to the smallest jib already and lots of rain. Well. That did not sound good. Switching on my smartphone, a dozen whatsapp messages poured in, all sent to me during the short night. Apparently, the family living underneath me had discovered water coming through their ceiling! Blocking the main valve for the whole house, I was asked to immediately return home to check for the cause of this flooding. Oh boy!
So my odyssey ended right there: Of course I couldn´t leave with NIKE to set out on a two days dash into the storm system in the Northern Kattegat. I tried to spontaneously organize a trip home (Saturdays, 4 a.m. in the morning … not easy at all!) to stop the apparent flooding of my apartment. NIKE had to leave without me. Which, in retrospect, was the better outcome: My duffel bag did not contain clothing to cope with low temperatures and hours of heavy rain at all. The sailing trip – as much as I had loved to do it! – would have turned into a freezing cold soaked wet experience, just like the one of Odysseus and his fellowship, but without the subsequent crushing of the boat due to Poseidon´s wrath, of course. After containing the flooding in my flat (I had left open a tap a bit, which cause the sink to fill up and spill), I followed NIKE on Marine.Traffic. Sailing with maximum speeds around 11-13 knots SOG, the boat finally arrived at Marstrand on Sunday after non-stop sailing for 36 hours. That´s a 7 knots average. Not bad! As ingloriously my part in this sailing trip ended abruptly before we could even cast off, as much of a lucky occasion it turned out for me in the end.
Because that way I regained a free weekend, enabling me to buy a ticket for “The Odyssey” and indulge into the world of Christopher Nolan again. For the sailing part: There will be numerous chances to try a second attempt maybe as early as this year, surely next year! As for the cinematic experience of “The Odyssey”, I must say it is worth it indeed! Don´t expect a colorful, rich and fun joyride through ancient Greece with playful Gods up in the clouds enjoying to toss around little boat models in a tub underneath them. Nolan´s “Odyssey” is a dark, depressing take on how war annihilates humanism, turns good people into barbarians capable of committing unspeakable crimes. In this, it´s of course a commentary on our modern (western) world. How we see us as the good one, whereas in fact we may be the culprits. It´s a though provoking film, definitely not pleasant to watch. Graphic, brutal and exposing.
In this, dear readers, I hope this, my “nolanesque”, article did not confuse you all too much. I didn´t want to miss out on the chance to tell this little story about my short non-sailing trip with the Shogun 43 racer-cruiser. At the same time, I wanted to comment on the movie, telling you how I found it and what really moved me. Both, the boat and the movie, are worth taking a further look onto – so I hope you guys will be as surprised, as excited and as moved as I had been after watching Nolan´s “The Odyssey” and maybe delve deeper into the very special un-Swedish Shogun 43, which is also worth a second, deeper look.
My overall assessment of “The Odyssey” is a great 9 of 10
You might also check out these related articles:
My take on the classic tale by Homer: From a sailor´s point of view
Not wandering, but wondering around the world: Guided circumnavigations from ARC to Oyster World Rally
A different kind of Odyssey: Following the Argonauts
