“She’s the most beautiful boat I’ve ever laid eyes on,” said Fred Coyle as we approached his 42-foot J Craft Torpedo RS. “See how the Hermès orange upholstery just pops against that Prussian blue hull?”
Amazon Queen, named in honor of Coyle’s Brazilian wife, Rejane, was moored in Visby harbor on the Swedish island of Gotland, home to the J Craft shipyard. Her mahogany details glinted under the morning sun as a light wind blew off the Baltic Sea. Coyle—a former U.S. fighter pilot who now owns car and marine dealerships in Knoxville, Tennessee—had waited two years for this moment.
Coyle had been on the lookout for a boat to replace his trawler when he read a magazine story about the J Craft brand, and the 8,500 manual hours it takes to hand-build one boat. He fell in love quickly and commissioned Amazon Queen, the 24th Torpedo model from the builder.
J Craft was founded in 1999 by Bjorn Jansson. The company’s first model was the 38-foot Cabrio Cruiser Polaris built for Carl XVI Gustaf, King of Sweden. His high-profile endorsement of the company helped launch the brand of luxury handcrafted speedboats, now renown for achingly good looks and limited-edition production.
Like all J Crafts, Amazon Queen combines sporty performance—47 knots at top end—with meticulous craftsmanship. The classic wood appearance is achieved with West African mahogany veneers applied over a fiberglass structure. The mahogany surfaces are finished with up to 18 coats of varnish. She has custom details too, including bespoke chrome work and upholstery. This is the first Torpedo to sport such a bold color combination, and only the second to incorporate metallic flake in the exterior finish. She is proof that no J Craft is alike.
This Torpedo RS is fitted with a raft of customizations. They include a logo designed by Rejane’s daughter that’s featured on the leather seating and the Italian Nardi steering wheel. (That wheel was originally designed for Ferrari’s 250 GTO.) There is also a Seakeeper gyro for a smoother ride, and heating in the open cockpit.
The interior is dressed in a cream fabric by Fortuny that’s handmade in Venice. “When I saw the orange leather stitching and custom-designed logo, I knew this boat would be a perfect fit for Fortuny,” said Radenko Milakovic, who bought J Craft in 2007. This type of artisanal detail is also a great fit for the Coyles, who plan to use the boat for long days on the water near their lakeside home.
“The visual appeal of the wood is undeniable,” Coyle said as luggage and supplies were stowed on board.
I joined the couple for the first three days of their seven-week shakedown cruise that would take the Coyles from Sweden through Finland, Denmark and the French Riviera. “I can’t wait to see how this boat handles,” Coyle said. “I’m tired of hearing the waves slap against my trawler at 12 knots.”
Also on board was Zoltan Antunovic, J Craft’s master builder, who maneuvered the boat out of Visby Guest Harbor as Rejane bounced to the beat of Willie Nelson’s On the Road Again. “I played this tune the first time I flew my F-15 trans-Atlantic from Germany to California,” Coyle said. “It seems fitting to play it now, the first time we take Amazon Queen across the water.”
The first leg of our trip was a five-hour crossing of the Baltic Sea, from Gotland to Sandhamn on the Stockholm archipelago. It was both exhilarating and grueling, as we had to reroute when we hit a Russian blackout zone that caused the boat’s GPS to draw a blank. But this was just a temporary blip.
Amazon Queen has 1950s-era tumblehome curves, but she is kitted out with the latest technology, including Starlink and a suite of Garmin electronics that sync with Coyle’s Garmin Quatix 8 marine smartwatch. That means his wrist can receive anchor drift alerts and more, even when he’s on shore.
As we ripped across the formidable Baltic Sea, the saline-scented air was tinged with a palpable sense of expectation. Standard Torpedo boats are powered by Volvo Penta’s IPS400s, but as a Torpedo RS, Amazon Queen has IPS650s that produce the straight-shaft power equivalent of two 650-hp engines. “This joystick is a dream,” said Coyle, who was at the helm. “It can make even a novice like me look slick on the water.”
Amazon Queen had company on this first leg of the journey. Zens is an immaculate 15-year-old J Craft Torpedo—cream with tan leather accents. Her Austrian owner gifts the builder use of his boat in exchange for overwintering it at the yard. The owner greeted us from his summer house in Saltsjöbaden, which is kind of like the Swedish Hamptons. He invited our crew in for a meal, and that’s when the gorging began. Platters of sashimi, octopus broth and soy-cured egg yolk on bluefin tuna were prepared by chefs from the Stockholm-based restaurant Sushi Sho, which received its first Michelin star that day.
We spent the night at the Grand Hotel in Sandhamn, one of 30,000 islands in the Stockholm Archipelago characterized by stepped cliffs, wooden fishing huts and the collective clink of moored sailboats. The next morning, we cruised past astronomically priced summer houses on the fertile banks of Lake Mälaren, including King Gustaf’s permanent home, Drottningholm Palace. We then continued through the narrow Baggensstäket strait and arrived at Stockholm city center, where we tied up outside of famed restaurant Aira. The pair of gleaming hulls elicited sighs of admiration from onlookers.
Aira is a two-Michelin-star establishment perched on the edge of a marina. It’s housed in a boatyard-inspired building designed by Swedish architect Jonas Bohlin. The interior lighting and color scheme resemble the archipelago’s seasonal shifts. The Nordic cuisine set our taste buds alight. We dined on plates of fresh scallops, wagyu and Swedish dairy cow tartare with caviar before returning to the boats for a digestif.
Stockholm is a city built on water, with yawning skies and wild islands. Even the cloud cover and rain couldn’t dull our enthusiasm for the location. As we motored down winding rivers where trees sprout from rocky outcrops, the two J Crafts cruised in tandem and drew smiles and waves from island residents.
At this point, Coyle and his wife dropped me off on the banks of Stockholm and continued their journey. From there, they visited the fishing village of Grisslehamn in northern Sweden, and the quiet inlets of Finland’s Åland Islands, where they sampled 200-year-old bottles of Veuve Clicquot that had been discovered in a shipwreck at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. Åland-born oenophile and sommelier Ella Grüssner Cromwell-Morgan led that underwater expedition.
The couple’s plans to venture to Helsinki were thwarted by weather, so they turned around and explored more of the Swedish coast, including Slottsholmen Hotel in Västervik, a luxury boutique owned by ABBA member Björn Ulvaeus.
Later, strong winds prevented the couple from taking Amazon Queen to Copenhagen, but they were undeterred. They spent three days relaxing on the Danish island of Bornholm, after which their captain took the boat to Germany, where it was shipped to France. After a week with friends in the Greek islands, they rejoined their boat in Saint Tropez. They rented a large villa in Port Grimaud to host friends and family for 10 days. They even found time for a little J Craft promotion.
“Since I was a fighter pilot, Bremont wanted to do a photoshoot of me wearing a watch at the helm of our boat, which was fun,” Coyle said.
Their grand Mediterranean tour finished with three days in Monte Carlo, and then time in the Italian ports of Portofino and Cinque Terra. The couple even connected with the owners of Amazon Queen’s sister Torpedo Toucan. “It was a meeting of sisters with clean and classic lines,” said Coyle. “From the outset, Rejane and I really wanted an epic vacation, and by the time our maiden voyage was done, we’d banked a lifetime of memories.”
This article was originally published in the May 2026 issue.
