Gulf Craft's new Nomad 70 drops a cabin to buy a 270-degree suite

A restyled 70 touches water in the Gulf

Gulf Craft put the first 2027 Nomad 70 in the water at its UAE yard and announced it on 29 July. The boat is the second generation of a model the yard has built since 2022, and the significant change is who drew it. Phathom Studio, a Dutch practice, took both the exterior profile and the interior, where the previous boat was styled in house.

Below the styling the layout has been rearranged rather than merely refreshed. The 2027 boat has four en suite guest cabins, an upper deck salon, two dedicated crew cabins and a separate professional-grade crew galley. Phathom says it moved the main salon to an aft open lounge with the dining and galley arrangement amidships, which is what frees the main deck forward. The studio also specified carpets woven from hemp and recycled fishing nets, and a composite stone made from recycled bottles and quartz.

The cabin that went missing

The outgoing boat, which YachtBuyer lists as the Nomad 70 SUV Mk1 and marks discontinued after a 2022 to 2026 run, slept ten guests in five cabins. The 2027 boat sleeps its guests in four. The hull length is unchanged at a little over 21 metres, so this is a decision about who the boat is for rather than a smaller yacht. The volume the fifth cabin used to occupy has gone into a main deck owner's suite that Gulf Craft says carries 270-degree views.

The trade is legible in both directions. An owner who runs the boat with a couple aboard gets the best room on the yacht and a galley the crew can work in without crossing the guest area. An owner who intended to charter, or who routinely sails with two families, has lost two berths and a good deal of the boat's earning case. Gulf Craft has kept the old crew arrangement at two cabins and added the separate crew galley, which points clearly at the first buyer rather than the second.

The only performance numbers anyone has

Gulf Craft has not published speed, range or tonnage for the 2027 boat, so the outgoing hull's figures are the only guide a buyer has. Nomad's own brand site gives the 70 a length overall of 21.50 metres, a 6.04-metre beam, a 1.59-metre draft and a displacement the yard puts at about 66 tonnes. Power is twin MAN V8-1200 diesels rated 882 kW each at 2,300 rpm, with a 28 kW generator. The yard quotes 2,000 nautical miles of range, and brokerage listings put the top end at 25 to 26 knots.

Two of those numbers deserve attention first. The 6,814-litre fuel tank against a 2,000-mile claim implies a slow passage speed rather than a 25-knot one, which is normal arithmetic for a semi-displacement hull and no criticism of it. The fresh water tank is the harder figure at 946 litres. On a boat rated for ten guests that is a watermaker question, and whether the 2027 boat changes it has not been published.

Against its own sister and against Sirena

The comparison that matters most is in-house. YachtBuyer's side-by-side puts the Nomad 75 SUV at 23.4 metres with eight guests in four cabins and four crew, on twin MAN V12-1550s for 24 knots and 1,300 nautical miles at 10 knots from 7,880 litres. The smaller 70 is quoted at 2,000 miles. On the published figures the shorter boat out-ranges the flagship above it, an awkward line in a brochure and a useful one for a buyer.

Outside the family the obvious rival is the Sirena 68, which argues a different case. Sirena is 21.4 metres to the Nomad's 21.5, runs 28 knots against 25, cruises at a published 16 knots where Gulf Craft publishes no cruise figure at all, and carries 1,600 litres of fresh water to the Nomad's 946. It sleeps six, optionally eight, in three or four cabins, against the outgoing Nomad's ten in five. YachtBuyer puts used Sirena 68s at an average of about GBP 2m across five boats aged three to six years.

What a buyer still cannot find out

Two things are missing. Gulf Craft has published no price for the 2027 Nomad 70, and Northrop & Johnson, which lists the model as available exclusively through it, quotes on application rather than a number. The outgoing hull is discontinued and YachtBuyer records no current used market data for it, so there is not yet a residual to argue from either.

The second gap is experience. The 2027 boat touched water days ago and nobody has run one, so there are no owner reports on the layout, the materials or what the restyled superstructure does in a beam sea. Anyone buying now is buying the outgoing hull's sea manners and the yard's record, not a tested boat. That is ordinary with a first of class, and it is the reason to ask for time aboard hull one before the deposit rather than after.