NORDKAPP ENDURO 830

We head for Oslo to test the latest, and possibly the greatest, Nordkapp Enduro yet

- Alex Smith

Ever since its foundation in 1966 in the historic Viking town of Sarpsborg in Norway, Nordkapp has been known for its compact, high-quality family powerboats. It wasn't until the 1990s though, and the beginning of the firm's association with celebrated Norwegian designer, Espen Thorup, that we really saw Nordkapp’s famous practicality spiked with a healthy extra dose of playfulness and dynamism. The emergence of the new Enduro centre console and Avant bow rider models saw a marked shift toward sharper, more progressive designs and more capable deep-vee hulls - and today, in line with Nordkapp's enduring 30-year collaboration with Thorup, those same happy traits endure in the modern fleet.

Whether you're looking at the open Avant bow riders, the Enduro centre console day boats, the Noblesse sporting weekenders, the Coupé pilothouse cruisers or the high-performance Airborne RIBs, each and every one of Nordkapp’s 17 models is an outboard-powered platform of between 6 and 9m. Very few builders in the modern market can claim to be quite as focused as that. And that makes it all the more remarkable that, after 60 years of building small boats, this famously restrained builder should describe this new flagship of the Enduro line as its “most versatile vessel ever.”

BIGGER AND SMARTER

The first element of that versatility is its size. The Enduro 830 might be a 27ft boat but with its 9ft 7in beam, it’s a foot longer and a massive 1ft 3in wider than the next model down. In fact, there's such a clear difference between the scale and purpose of this and the Enduro 805 that, in spite of their nominally similar lengths, both boats will continue to be built concurrently.