POWER REVIEW Saxdor 200 SPORT MERCURY 150 Highly innovative new cottage / adventure boat Story By | Andy Adams C anadian Yachting magazine was excited to get our first opportunity to run the Saxdor 200 Sport - a very new and different sport activity boat from Europe. The lines are different, the hull and running surface are different and the design is clearly from an " out-of-the-box " thinker. Saxdor was founded in 2019 by legendary Finnish designer, Sakari Mattila. Saxdor quickly became the fastest-growing premium boat brand in Europe. Mattila was also a founder of Axopar and two other brands. Distinctive features include the plumb bow (vertical instead of curved or sloped) which is a major design cue. The running surface is stepped and Saxdor designs for maximum beam at the transom a design feature also seen in the Axopar boats. We reviewed the Axopar 37 XC in Canadian Yachting in June 2020 when we met Jan-Erik Viitala, one of the two co-founders and majority shareholders of Axopar. Jan-Erik's title is 'Creative and Innovations Director'. He is Finnish, but his English is excellent and he described in detail their design approach to seakeeping and performance. Indeed, we were very impressed with that boat. At 37-feet, the Axopar was a Bluewater adventure boat and as impressive as it was, we wondered if the same design features would work in the 20-foot size of the Saxdor 200 Sport. We think it does. We did not have a chopped-up Biscayne Bay to test the Saxdor 24 CANADIAN YACHTING | JUNE 2023 The stepped hull rides high and dry and delivers solid performance with the Mercury 150. The bow is a distinctive shape and effectively gives a longer running surface to bridge waves than a raked back bow would.