MV Swift - helping passengers make the most of the beautiful Lake District, a UNESCO World Heritage site

Industry Database

Damen Shipyards

Built in situ in a car park on the side of a lake in one of the most beautiful parts of the world, the MV Swift has been officially handed over to her owners Winander Leisure Limited by Damen Shipyards Group.

Over the past 40 years, Damen has delivered over 1000 vessels via the Damen Technical Cooperation (DTC). DTC enables Damen vessels to be built around the globe without the need for a Damen facility to be in place. This is the first DTC project that the shipbuilder has carried out in the UK. Damen has built MV Swift in a lakeside car park owned by the client. The vessel will be operated by Windermere Lake Cruises.

As well as being a UK National Park, the Lake District is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Damen has worked closely with both its client and the local community in order to ensure compliance with the robust regulations in place to protect this important environment.

MV Swift is the seventeenth vessel in Windermere Lake Cruises’ fleet. She is a unique vessel, tailored to Windermere Lake Cruises’ requirements. The company is one of the UK’s most popular attractions, welcoming over 1.6 million visitors in a normal year.

Windermere Lake Cruises needed a vessel that is able to operate in a variety of weather conditions, year-round, picking up and dropping off passengers from small jetties around the lake, hence the MV Swift features covered decks with large windows and, at 34 metres, is slightly smaller than the company’s current flagships.

Damen sales manager Mike Besijn said of the handover, “I am very happy to be delivering this special vessel. Working together on this with Windermere Lake Cruises, we have made the project into a success. This is a very unique way of building a vessel, requiring a lot of flexibility and we could not have done it without the support of our customer. Their operational experience has been priceless to us throughout the construction process. I would particularly like to thank managing director Nigel Wilkinson and operations director John Woodburn for the excellent cooperation. It’s been a pleasure to work with them.”