MV RAGNAR 68M review

Most explorer yachts are styled to look tough. This one actually is. She started life in 2012 as SANABORG, an ice-breaking supply vessel built for the North Sea, and ICON Yachts spent three years (2017-2020) converting her into the yacht now known as Q, ex MV RAGNAR. The bones never changed: a 68.20 m ice-breaking hull, 14 m of beam, and roughly 2,250 gross tons of steel that was designed to shrug off pack ice long before anyone drew a sundeck on it.

The propulsion package is the heart of the story. Two Caterpillar 3516 HD diesels (2,095 bkW each) feed a pair of electric Wartsila ice pods, 1,750 kW apiece, with fixed four-blade propellers engineered specifically for churning through ice. Ice Class 1A Super and Polar Cat-C notation mean the Arctic is not a marketing line here - it is the design brief. Top speed is 12.5 knots and cruising pace 10.2, which sounds sedate until you remember where this boat is meant to go and what she can push through to get there.

Inside, the conversion gave her 695 m2 of luxury area for twelve guests, backed by a crew of thirteen plus four staff - a crew-to-guest ratio you normally see on much larger yachts. RWD handled both exterior and interior design, and the result keeps the commercial heritage on show rather than hiding it. A 110 m2 tender garage and 105 m2 of storage swallow a serious toy collection: an EC145 helicopter on a certified deck, two tenders, four jet skis, four wave runners, and a Big Bo 4x4 all-terrain vehicle for shore excursions where there are no shores to speak of.

ICON's conversion programme in Harlingen built its reputation on this boat and on the 77 m LEGEND before her, and the shipyard's argument is persuasive: start with a proven commercial platform, keep the sea-keeping that offshore service already validated, and spend the budget on the parts guests actually touch. RAGNAR is the strongest expression of that philosophy afloat.

She is not a Mediterranean posing platform. The lines are industrial, the speed is workboat-honest, and twelve guests is modest for the volume. But if the plan is Svalbard, the Northwest Passage or Antarctica with a helicopter and a real ice certificate, there are only a handful of yachts on earth that can follow her - and none of them started with a hull this honest.