A second life for a yacht that never sailed: MicroPolo returns to the water at Gdańsk Tech

Designed in the 1980s but never launched, it spent more than a decade under a tarpaulin in a back garden. Now the small Micro-class yacht MicroPolo is being brought back to life by staff and students of the Institute of Naval Architecture at Gdańsk University of Technology (Politechnika Gdańska). The restored boat is due to be launched on Tuesday 30 June at the Tamka marina in Gdańsk.

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27 june 2026   |   07:13   |   Source: Gazeta Morska   |   Prepared by: Michał Iwański   |   Print

fot. Politechnika Gdańska

This is not a story about a gleaming new build, but about a boat given a second chance. MicroPolo was designed in the 1980s by Dr Jacek Centkowski and Dr Jan Młynarczyk, two naval architects associated with Gdańsk University of Technology (known in English as Gdańsk Tech). The hull never touched the water. According to the university, it was only in 2024 that one surviving example came to light – for years it had sat in the garden of one of its creators, Dr Jan Młynarczyk, waiting for its turn.

The yacht that waited in a garden

For the Pomeranian shipbuilding community, this is an unusual story, because it weaves several threads together at once: a design conceived by the university's own people, a piece of local sailing history, and the very current question of a sustainable approach to boats. Rather than ending up as waste – the fate of many craft in its class – MicroPolo has undergone a thorough overhaul in the hands of a new generation of shipbuilders.

The restoration is being carried out by faculty and students of the Institute of Naval Architecture, with support from partners. The aim goes beyond simply returning the yacht to service: it is also to show that sustainable sailing can mean rescuing existing boats, not only building new ones from eco-friendly materials.

The Micro class – the sailing world's "people's car"

To understand the affection MicroPolo inspires, it helps to recall what the Micro class is. It is a family of small cruiser-racer yachts up to 5.5 metres long, whose rules were drawn up in 1977 in France, around the magazine Bateaux. The idea was for boats that were cheap, easy to tow on a trailer and free of complicated racing measurements – yet seaworthy enough for coastal sailing and comfortable enough to sleep aboard. The class quickly became international; world championships have been held since 1999, the first of them in Gdynia, on Poland's Baltic coast. Polish designers and sailors are among the class's global front-runners.

Professor Wojciech Litwin, head of the Institute of Naval Architecture, reaches for a vivid comparison. Asking an older sailor "what is a Micro?", he says, is rather like asking about the Fiat 126 – the boxy little car that, for two generations of Poles, was often the first car they ever owned, and is remembered with great fondness. The analogy lands: for many people, a Micro was their first taste of cabin sailing.

In Poland alone, around 20 variants meeting the class rules were built, and the total produced was probably around 600. Over time, however, the laminate ages, and some of these boats – as Professor Litwin notes – end their days in landfill. That has been the fate of many "Micros", but not all. MicroPolo is the proof.

Sustainable sailing instead of landfill

The renovation is being carried out within the international TeCoNaut project – a European initiative funded by the European Union (under the Erasmus+ programme) that brings together companies and institutions from the boating industry in seven countries: Spain, France, Greece, Belgium, Germany, Turkey and Poland. The project's goal is to support the green transition of the recreational boating industry: promoting sustainable composite materials, recycling solutions and the training of qualified personnel for "eco" boatbuilding. Poland is represented by Gdańsk University of Technology and the Polish Chamber of Marine Industry and Water Sports (POLBOAT).

The scale of the problem the project addresses is considerable – much of the world's recreational fleet is built from materials that are difficult to recycle, measured in tens of thousands of tonnes. Seen in that light, MicroPolo becomes more than a restored yacht: it is a hands-on illustration of the circular-economy idea, in which giving a forgotten boat a second life matters as much as modern materials or clean propulsion.

A hands-on project for students

MicroPolo also has an educational dimension. Students on the Yacht Design and Construction programme, run by the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Ship Technology, are working on the boat. It is a rare chance to gain experience on a real vessel – from design work, through fitting out the interior, to preparing the yacht for launch.

The new interior layout was designed by Michał Warmiński, a design student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, as part of a bachelor's thesis supervised by Dr Paweł Gełesz of the Institute of Naval Architecture. In keeping with the spirit of the project, the fit-out is to be made primarily from simple materials – single-axis machined panels such as marine plywood, ideally from recycled sources. The proposed solutions include shelves made from repurposed sails to underline the boat's nautical character, segregated waste bins under the entry hatch, and a light colour palette throughout the cabin to diffuse light and visually enlarge the cramped space.

As Professor Litwin emphasises, the quality of teaching rests on staff who combine academic work with professional and sailing experience, as well as on the support of boatbuilders who take students on placements and share their know-how. Interest in the programme is clearly strong – according to Poland's science ministry, in 2025 Yacht Design and Construction ranked among the fifteen most over-subscribed degree courses in the country by number of applicants per place.

The launch on 30 June

MicroPolo's ceremonial launch will take place on Tuesday 30 June. The event begins at 10:30 in front of building no. 30 at Gdańsk University of Technology – home to the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Ship Technology – with a symbolic raising of the sails. At around 12:00, participants will move to the Tamka marina in Gdańsk, where the boat will be assembled and launched. The yacht can also be seen up close by building no. 40 during rigging work, where visitors can hear the story of its restoration.

After a decade under a tarpaulin, MicroPolo will finally meet the water – not as a museum piece, but as a floating reminder that, in sailing, a second life can be every bit as valuable as the first.

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MicroPolo klasa Micro Politechnika Gdańska zrównoważone żeglarstwo wodowanie jachtu

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