Lürssen 106mt Amadea

From the outset, Amadea’s owner was determined that his 106-metre Lürssen should be a project to leave others in the shade. “The key to his brief was to make Amadea one of the most detailed vessels ever built: millions of hours spent on creating and assembling… and then finding the smallest snagging points,” says Evgeniy Kochman, founder and CEO of broker Imperial, which acted as the owner’s representative.

Monaco-based Imperial has a reputation for, shall we say, exactitude. The very name sends a frisson of fear down the spines of boatbuilders, who recognise that Imperial requires total precision in every element of the yacht, particularly the finish.

Yet despite Amadea’s astonishingly detailed finish, she was built quickly by the standards of a yacht of this size. From the first steel cutting, delivery took just 31 months. “That is very fast,” says Michael Breman, sales director at Lürssen. “We were given the opportunity, in order not to waste time, to use engineering solutions previously arrived at.” In other words, the technical innards of the yacht were based on an existing project – Quantum Blue, launched in 2014. Even so, the captain says they had the time to personalise and polish every detail of the boat before delivery: “The warranty list pretty much didn’t exist,” he tells me over coffee and patisseries from Amadea’ s classically trained French pastry chef. That’s partly because a flurry of late upgrades, notably in the galley and owner’s bathroom, added about six months to the build – at the same time taking time pressure off for fixing small problems. And it’s partly that Imperial’s rigour in planning means that there are no question marks left when work begins.

“We are recognised for being ‘inflexible’ and above the expectations of our client,” Kochman tells me. “But this is what success is made of: the partners working with us have to deal with this philosophy, and so far… we can proudly say this vision has been followed by the greatest yards and designers of our industry.”

I board Amadea along the passerelle, because she is berthed port-side to in the harbour at Vilanova, Spain. But most visitors will arrive in one of the custom Windy tenders, where their first view will be the teak of the beach club, which is partly overhung by the 10-metre pool on the main deck, overflowing down a glass wall behind the boat’s backlit name. It is an impressive way to make the boat’s acquaintance. “I tried to make it dramatic,” says exterior designer Espen Øino of the pool. “Loungers at either side kind of float in space, and look like two wings coming off it.”

Assuming you’ve hurried up from the beach club, eager to get on board, you would have missed the angular base to the transom – just one of a myriad of tiny details Øino dropped in. “You can naturally sit down there and take your shoes off without putting chairs out,” he tells me, before asking, “Did you notice it?” I confess that I did not, and move quickly on to what really did strike me: the large number of small, personal corners where you can relax unobserved. And nowhere more so than at the front of the superstructure, where a wing creates a private nook on each deck, which has been well filled with cushions and loungers.

But here again, I’ve missed something. “It’s a clamshell arrangement,” Øino tells me – a comment that makes more sense when I see the aerial view of this part of the boat, which resembles three overlapping shells cascading down from the four silver satellite domes. And it turns out this feature is something that Øino introduced after personal experience on board yachts. “I visit a lot of these boats and I receive [commercially sensitive] phone calls,” he says. “Sometimes there can be a lack of cosy spaces.”

Unexpectedly for such a large yacht, cosy spaces are not in short supply. Even the main deck saloon – which has clearly been built to impress with its double-height atrium, hand-painted Pleyel grand piano, leather-book-clad walls and full-beam dining table – offers warmth. Much is down to interior designer François Zuretti’s vision, which pairs the grand with the intimate: hand-painted Michelangelo clouds on the ceiling above the dining table; or the dozens of warm organic tones delivered via the backlit whiskies, brandies and rums in clear bottles behind the bars. “The [owner] asked for an authentic classic representation with the integration of classic furniture from the 18th century,” Zuretti tells me. “Alcohol, books and accessories are part of the design.”

But Øino has also been clever with the layout, which offers lots of recesses for seating and magnificent sea views through drop-down bulwarks. “Detailing such as the stainless steel, onyx panels, deck motifs – a lot of work went into it together with the owner,” says Øino. “Normally, the good boats come out of clients that are really engaged with the project.”

The owner of Amadea has taken great care to stay out of the limelight, and yet his influence is everywhere on this yacht. Just look at the vast art deco-style albatross that soars off the bow. “We worked with Willem Lenssinck, an artist from the Netherlands, who built it from stainless steel. It was then welded on to the hull,” says Øino. It weighs a staggering five tonnes. Or take the galley on the top deck. It gleams with copper pots and pans, offers a huge grill area and even a live tank for lobsters. “It’s a guest area really,” says the captain. The idea is that those on board can get involved with their food if they want to. It serves the so-called winter patio – a dining area that will seat up to 24 in a space decked with ferns and painted with lianas.

Water tinkles softly down the slate wall, and indirect light falling through opaque ceiling panels looks like daylight. It feels like a secret Parisian eatery, not the top deck of an ultra-modern yacht. And yet just a few centimetres behind the greenery, the main exhaust runs up to the vents above. Such is the build quality that not a decibel escapes through the multiple layers of insulation.

The deck outside, however, is built to be anything but quiet. Here, 20,000 Watts of built-in speakers, plus lights and even lasers, are very much designed to be heard. For this is the party deck, where a good-sized spa pool flanked by sunbeds can be converted into a stage where bands and DJs plug straight into the ship’s audio system. “We’ve only ever had it up to half volume,” says the captain with a mock grimace, “but you could feel your chest pounding.”

“It’s a party area,” says Øino. “The deck terminations are inverted on this deck and the one below, so the structure lends itself very well to anchoring lights and speakers. The geometry wasn’t accidental.” A storage area to one side reveals equipment including a teppanyaki grill, a rotisserie and a hog-roaster. There’s even a crane available to lower it over the side so it can be taken ashore for a beach party. “This is something completely unique,” says the captain.

Equally unique, to my mind, is the cinema on the bridge deck below. The projector and big screen fully retract when not in use, but there is something special about the two main sofas. The captain hits play on the rocket sequence from the 2014 film Interstellar and my whole seat begins to move. As we blast through the stratosphere, it tips forward, wobbling like crazy, then suddenly we reach space and there is an eerie stillness. This is D-Box motion control. All that’s missing is a popcorn machine, I reflect, before spotting exactly that behind the bar.

Another key part of this boat’s appeal is the way that space has been divided up. Naturally, there is a private office on the owner’s deck, but it is not huge. Zuretti has given it the glorious feel of a private room in an old-school gentlemen’s club, complete with overstuffed armchair and a hand-painted map of the world on the ceiling. But it is an intimate space. For less personal business, there is a small conference suite on the lower deck by the guest boarding platform (next to the humidor and wine cellar, it turns out).

The owner’s deck has all the features you would expect of such a large yacht: a dressing room, a bathroom with an ornate bath recessed slightly into the floor, a beauty salon and a gym. But by far the biggest space is devoted to the owner’s cosy saloon, bar and dining area. Yes, there are marbles, rare woods, exceptional stone and wood inlay work, but the result is warm and inviting. Step outside on to the huge aft deck, and there is a large circular wooden table to seat eight. Clever design means that extra circular leaves fold out and turn it into a table worthy of King Arthur and his knights, with room for 16. Glass windbreaks can be opened when not required, and there’s a firepit and comfy sofa area.

More evidence of the obsessive detailing comes from the ensign staff here, which would make a decent mast on a classic boat: hidden hydraulics rotate it inboard for polishing and maintenance. And at the other end of the deck, the owner’s cabin opens out on to a private terrace with a mosaic-lined spa pool: as you recline on the stainless-steel bathing rack, observe the glittering light show above your head. All the signs of the zodiac have been included in a panorama of the night sky. “You’d have a heart attack if you could see behind that panel,” Lürssen’s electrical technical officer (ETO) tells me. “There are 2,000 fibre-optic cables and a spinning disc for the twinkling effect.”

Lighting is a subtle presence on board wherever you are. Indirect LED strips outline many items of furniture on deck and are even built into the stainless-steel poles that can be planted in lugs in the deck to support the extensive awnings. Everything, from the entertainment to the curtains and blinds, is controlled via dedicated iPads. “There are 6,500 devices in the interior design,” adds the ETO.

No expense has been spared in equipping Amadea. For instance, her helipad, which can accommodate a craft of up to 3.5-tonnes take-off weight (an Agusta 109 or an EC135), features a glide path indicator. Resembling for all the world a dormant party light on the foredeck, this is far beyond class requirements. And when it comes to the full-beam tender garage, the captain can’t help lingering. There’s the mandatory limo tender, a Pascoe beach lander, but the real attraction is the cabrio sports boat, known on board as the “boss boat”. With styling that echoes the mothership, the two custom Windys are works of art in their own right – something that Espen Øino is also keen to point out. “You are going to mention them in the article, right?” he wants to know. “People don’t realise that we designed those as well.”

After four hours on board, I’m still discovering details as I reluctantly retrace my steps down the passerelle to the waiting taxi. None of it has happened by accident. “Imperial’s managing style is very thorough, attentive to details,” says Zuretti, who had worked with them only on smaller boats in the past. “Suppliers also need to step up and reach quality requirements.” Øino agrees. “They are very thorough in the way they go about things. Sometimes that means more work for us, but at the end it’s all useful; all good. As these boats get bigger and bigger, the investment is considerable. One cannot go light-heartedly into such a project.”

And yet it’s clear that he enjoyed the experience – there is fun in the design. “In general, creativity and corporate structure don’t always go very well. It went very well on Amadea. I really felt in symbiosis with the owner. It was like a game of ping-pong getting faster and faster with more pace.” And it looks like everyone won.

Among the many elements of Amadea’s immaculate interior, the hand-painted Pleyel piano stands out. This Paris piano builder has been in business since 1807, founded by a talented Austrian musician who adopted French nationality. Over two centuries, the brand has been embraced by artists from Chopin and Ravel to Daniil Trifonov and Vanessa Mosell today. Pleyel no longer manufactures pianos, but it still accepts occasional custom orders, such as this Directoire baby grand. Measuring 1.9m x 1.5m, the piano’s soundboard and ribs are built of solid spruce from Italy’s Fiemme Valley. Pleyel’s famous metal frame revolutionised sound quality in the 19th century, and it is still in use today, albeit computer-optimised now. It features a Renner action and a Laukhuff keyboard in spruce. All the hardware, from pedals to hinges, is in 24kt gold. The vines and flowers hand-painted on to the body of the instrument were completed by master painter Pierre-François Battisti. All told, the piano took 18 months and thousands of hours to build.




Lurssen Yachts

( https://www.lurssen.com/en/home/ )

Arcadia Yacht 23,90mt Sherpa XL

When you go around comparing yourself to Apple, you had better make sure you’ve got some impressive products to back it up. Arcadia Yachts made just this claim at the Cannes Yachting Festival, and fortunately for the Italian builder, it also launched the yacht to prove it. Called the Sherpa XL, it is a more roomy, 24-metre version of the headline-grabbing 18-metre Sherpa model – the “Plus” to the standard iPhone, to continue the analogy.

Arcadia’s claim to trend-setting innovation is staked on its rather different-looking yachts, with their rounded semi-displacement hulls and the mass of the low superstructure forward. Designed to cruise efficiently at speeds in the mid-teens, there was nothing else quite like them in 2009 when the first A85 emerged from the shipyard on the Gulf of Naples. The yachting industry dismissed it as an outre design that had appeared at exactly the wrong moment – just as the financial crisis of 2007 was tightening its grip.

Ten years on, the critics have been proven wrong. Not only is Arcadia still very much in business, but its growing Sherpa line has pushed the aesthetic even further. The ninth Sherpa has just been ordered by a client in Australia, and the company will reveal a Sherpa XXL project at Boot Düsseldorf 2020. “At the start, no one took us seriously,” says Arcadia’s Francesco Ansalone. “These lines, these shapes are now part of yachting culture.” So much so that Arcadia now claims other yacht builders are imitating it.

But at Cannes, all eyes are on the brand new Sherpa XL. Viewed in profile, it shares the same high, snub bow as the smaller Sherpa, with successive chines that give it a hard-working look. It has a similar boxy bridge deck, which extends right forward, wings in the superstructure and the large aft deck runs down to the bathing platform. Milan design outfit Hot Lab clearly drew the lines of the XL with one eye firmly on its predecessors. “The brand identity is so strong that every designer involved in their project will have to somehow put aside their own styling desires and bend them a bit towards the yard’s approach,” says Hot Lab’s Enrico Lumini.

At the same time, though, there are subtle differences. The sundeck on the XL extends a long way aft, shortening the amount of open deck space below. And the lines are a little different on the bigger boat: windows, bulwarks and the tender garage all interrupt the smooth run. Coming at a higher price point (€5 million vs €1.8 million) and packing many more features, the Sherpa XL looks a little less utilitarian. “The design of the original Sherpa was well balanced with her philosophy; more easy-going than the XL, which is a proper yacht,” Lumini continues. “In being considered a megayacht, even being only 24 metres, of course, the interior and the exterior design had to be a bit more ‘serious’.”

The Sherpa may have grown up, but its soul is still very much intact. It’s there in the huge external entertainment areas; the big windows that open, connecting you to the sights and smells of your surroundings; and, of course, in the 35-square-metre solar array encased in the glass roof of the main saloon. The boat aims to re-engage owners with the sea – a principle that Ansalone sums up as “making the blue economy – yachting – greener”.

In the heat of a Mediterranean day, the boat’s solar panels can pump 3kW of energy into the 30kW battery bank. It’s enough to run most key systems without firing up the generator, so you can spend the evening enjoying an anchorage in perfect silence, or keep the boat in quiet mode overnight if you’re sparing with the air con. “We always try to give the maximum surface area to solar panels,” says Ansalone. “It is a trademark of Arcadia, at the same time preserving the line and the beauty that every yacht must have. The light and shade that the panels create is fabulous.”

Of course, large glazed areas on a yacht can easily undo all the benefit of collecting the sun’s energy in the first place – no one wants to have to shout over the sound of the air con running flat out. “We further improved our heat insulation system, which is characterised by multi-glazed glass with insulating gas between glass panes,” says the yard’s plant manager Salvatore D’Ambrosi. “This technology can be appreciated in the sky lounge in particular, which can be fully enjoyed reducing the use of the air-conditioning system to a minimum, and sometimes not using it at all.” The insulating effect is similar to that of a 20-centimetre-thick brick wall, the yard says, enough to support a temperature difference of 18°C between the exteral and internal glass surfaces.

However, the idea behind this yacht is to minimise the use of air management altogether. In cool weather, that means keeping in as much heat as possible. “Our yachts are also defined as ‘jardins d’hiver’,” says Ansalone. And when it’s hot, you can simply lower the windows. Just like the original Sherpa, the XL has electric windows all the way around the main saloon – each controlled independently, so you can let in just as much sea breeze as you wish.

This “outdoors, indoors” quality also helps to connect the boat’s three principal spaces. The main aft deck extends to around 65 square metres and is really the social hub of the boat. There’s a large teak table that seats eight, but can be extended for up to 10 people. Two-metre-high glass panels on both sides can be slid out of a hidden recess in the superstructure to protect against draughts. A low console between the table and the sofa area contains a 127-centimetre pop-up television, turning the aft deck into an outdoor cinema. Or you can move back to the lounging area, where deep, comfy sofas make the perfect spot to admire the view. There’s a big sunpad here that overhangs the bathing platform with its transformer.

Ringing the differences between this boat and its smaller sister is the addition of a completely new sun lounge, reached up a half-flight of stairs from the saloon. It’s a very clean, geometrical shape containing some freestanding sofas by Meridiani, a bar and icemaker, plus storage. “A big awning provides cover up here,” says Ansalone. “We want this as a private area for the owner and guests without crew.”

This concept of privacy, separating crew and guests, was not a major concern on the smaller boat, since the original Sherpa was an owner-driven boat and offered two guest cabins. The XL can afford a dedicated crew area right in the bow with two bunks and a shower. Access is via stairs next to the helm, which can be closed off with a sliding glass panel. Crew use the port side deck to get between their cabin, the galley and the working areas of the boat. You can even opt for a glass wall to separate the helm station from the rest of the saloon if you want.

Other than that, the key choice is between a three- or four-cabin yacht. With the former, the galley is on the lower deck and has its own set of stairs to avoid any awkwardness with guests running into the cook bearing platters of steaming lobster bisque. Alternatively, the galley is in a room carved out at the back of the saloon on the port side – small, but well equipped with Bosch appliances.

That generous 6.98-metre beam allows an impressive owner’s suite amidships on the lower deck, filled with natural light thanks to windows that can be opened. “When stepping into the cabins you feel like being on board a much larger yacht,” says Lumini. “This was again a main characteristic of all Arcadia yachts we had to follow and respect.” The bathroom area fills the starboard side and Arcadia has left the sink and vanity units open to the cabin. The mirror is a mobile panel in front of the windows that you can slide one way or the other depending on whether you want to admire yourself or the view.

The finish is sophisticated Italian – a mixture of polished stainless steel, gleaming black Marquina marble, grey-stained oak panelling and deep, white carpet. Indirect lighting lifts the beds off the floor, and the headboards are all in light grey Alcantara. Arcadia has won a sense of space from a game of half levels, where you step up from the owner’s cabin to the guest cabins. In this boat, they are configured as two twin cabins, ideal for children, and a VIP cabin forward which is the lightest of all the cabins with three windows on each side. Naturally, Arcadia can tailor the interior finish to the owner’s wishes. Even the furniture can be custom-built.

The final ace up the Sherpa XL’s sleeve concerns the technical areas. The brand firmly believes that tenders should be hidden away, not carted around on the stern for all to see. But while the original Sherpa used a precisely engineered storage space with a crane accessed under the sunpad, the XL has gone for the more superyacht approach of a shell door at the waterline. “Considerable attention in terms of design and testing was focused on the new side garage system, which is one of a kind in the 85- to 90ft [25- to 27-metre] segment,” says D’Ambrosi. “It provides clean profiles and allows guests to use the entire yacht at all times.”

This system increases the tender size of the original Sherpa to around four metres. And crucially, it doesn’t require guests to vacate the sunpad. A crew member simply climbs down into the garage via a hatch concealed in the plinth at the side of the aft deck sofa and operates the winch from there. The use of twin Volvo Penta IPS drives for propulsion means that the engines are right aft, freeing the space amidships for the tender garage.

Innovative? Certainly. Intuitive? At times. And definitely employing slick design. Sound like the products of a certain Californian megabrand? Well, let’s not get carried away. Arcadia is flourishing with its quirky take on outdoor living and slow yachting, but it isn’t trying to become a trillion-dollar company. As Ansalone concludes: “Arcadia aims to continue being a thought leader, an innovator. We do not aim to be a leader in turnover or big numbers.”

Optional twin Volvo Penta IPS 1350 drives give the Sherpa XL a top speed of 23 knots, but this is not her calling. Arcadia’s “back to nature” philosophy appeals for owners to take their time and enjoy the ride, not merely transfer from port to port. “If we did not invent it, I can say without any doubt that Arcadia strongly contributed to the ‘slow yachting’ concept,” says Francesco Ansalone.

At 12 knots, fuel consumption is just four litres per kilometre, “almost 30 per cent less than other yachts in this segment”, he adds. “The majority of yachts go below 15 knots and get a certain efficiency, or they go faster and efficiency is not part of the equation. We wanted to give something more.

In fact, the new XL is even more efficient than the original Sherpa. Although it is nearly twice the size and weight, it consumes only 32 per cent more fuel per nautical mile at 10 knots – 4.6 litres instead of 3.5 litres.

It is all part of the wider trend in yachting since the financial crisis. More and more yards are specialising in comfy, slow motor yachts, while designers say clients are less interested in speed. As Philippe Briand, designer of the Vitruvius line, puts it: “This school of efficient, displacement hulls is for clients who have already learned that fast speed on a power boat is not usable, for reasons of comfort first and durability second. So they look for a yacht with a practical cruising speed.”


Arcadia Yacht

( www.arcadiayachts.it/en/ )