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.

Lürssen

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Lürssen 66mt Ester III

Ester III’s distinctive lines are the work of Espen Øino, and he calls the conception of the yacht “both an opportunity and a risk”, for the simple fact that the owning family are his “good personal friends”.

The lines of the yacht are strong and business like, with a number of keynote features outside. The dedicated helideck above the wheelhouse is certainly there to be regularly used. “It enables the owner’s family to arrive and leave the yacht without interfering too much with life on the aft deck,” Espen Øino says. Gull-wing doors forward reveal a spacious tender garage, which also serves to free space aft for a spa area.

“Food and hospitality is a big thing for the family and the top deck dining is organised around a barbecue and teppanyaki-fitted kitchen that doubles as a bar. Entertainment on deck includes external cinema and a disco/stage – as well as amenities for golfing!” he says. The exterior spaces have also been maximised for differing weather conditions, with appropriate levels of protection.

The Reymond Langton Design inside is equally blessed with highlights. “The owner requested a French classical theme, but with an authentic contemporary interpretation of this style. French classical with a twist!” says Pascale Reymond. At the heart of the yacht is the set-piece staircase that displays the marquetry skills of Silverlining, and uses wood veneers, leather and metal. In the main deck salon there is a cosy fireplace, as well as seating and dining areas, while the vast owner’s suite is forward on this deck. There are five lower-deck guest cabins, each with a unique theme “derived from bespoke fabric artworks that rise from the headboard and wrap onto the ceiling”, says Reymond Langton Design.

The lower-deck spa, with its Assyrian influence, boasts a massage room that doubles as a hair salon, and a sauna and steam room. Ornate mosaic inlays and a full-sized wall relief carved in stone in the gym combine to form a relaxed, calm yet energising ambience, with direct access to the sea.

“Two world-leading design studios, each adding unique ingredients to the successful recipe, together with a number of owner-commissioned artisans, have allowed us the opportunity to create a truly unique vessel that opens the eyes to new possibilities in designing spaces for living. Combined with Lürssen engineering and expertise, the end result is a superyacht that will provide decades of seaworthy enjoyment,” says Lürssen.


Lurssen Yachts

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Lürssen Yachts 95mt Kismet

As owner of NFL franchise the Jacksonville Jaguars and Fulham Football Club, yacht owner Shahid Khan knows the sporting maxim: you don’t change a winning team. So when he wanted a new, bigger, better yacht, he knew exactly what to do to create his new 95 metre Lürssen Kismet. Launched in July, 2014, Kismet took a win at the 2015 World Superyacht Awards, claiming top spot in the Displacement Motor Yachts of 1,3000GT to 2,999 GT of 75 metres and above category.

When Shahid Khan ordered his first Kismet, in 2004, the gist of the brief to his design team was “make it impressive”. Not only would his family be using the boat for their own enjoyment, but Khan wanted it for corporate entertaining as well as for charter service. That 68 metre motor yacht, launched in 2007 by Lürssen, was successful on all counts, but in the intervening years Khan’s business and his corporate guests have both increased in size. He now owns two football teams, one in the UK and the Jacksonville Jaguars in the US. The American footballers, in particular, mean that Khan does have some pretty bulky guests to accommodate. Sixty-eight metres just wasn’t cutting it.

Enter the new Kismet, launched last year, all 95 metres of her. Her size alone is impressive. Then there is the four metre silver statue of a jaguar, its paw resting on a football helmet, that graces the bow on game days; the two helipads and all that space – enough for his Jacksonville Jaguars to stage a practice. The number of decks for owner and guest use – five – is the same as on the previous yacht, but the scale of those decks, the accommodation afforded by eight suites, and especially the size of the areas dedicated to entertaining, are where the new Kismet really scores.

There are obvious advantages when the team responsible for a successful superyacht project is reassembled for an encore and, indeed, the owner brought all the original Kismet players back together: Moran Yacht & Ship, to develop the specification package and oversee the build, which again was at Lürssen; Espen Øino, for the exterior design; and Reymond Langton for the interior. Just as important in ensuring that the new yacht functions as smoothly as the first, is the fact that Captain Kyle Fultz and his wife Gerry, who serves as purser, have crewed for Shahid Khan for 15 years and have the benefit of knowing how the family lives, works and entertains. The Fultzes made frequent visits to the yard over two and a half years implementing the owners’ wishes for the new luxury yacht.

“They made it what it is,” Shahid Khan says. “Sometimes they would have to take on the yard, sometimes the designers and sometimes they would have to take on the owners,” he chuckles. “They would say to me, ‘yes, you can have that but you would have to give up this function.’ I knew the design of Kismet had to follow the function.”

Khan, who left Pakistan as a teenager to attend the University of Illinois, personifies the American dream with a story that starts with him washing dishes and selling ice-cream, takes in marrying his college sweetheart Ann and results in him owning a $4.4 billion auto parts company with 13,000 employees. He first tested the waters of yacht ownership in 1999 by purchasing a 39 metre Feadship named Gallant Lady from his friend and customer, the late Jim Moran, a car dealer and philanthropist. He told yacht broker Rob Moran, founder of Moran Yacht & Ship, that if he liked yachting, he would have a boat built. Apparently, he found yachting more than suitable and, after several years aboard the Feadship, started talking about building from scratch.

“We were six months into the specs for his next boat when the economic crisis began,” Moran recalls. “Two weeks after Lehman Brothers collapsed, we had a meeting. The market was falling about 1,000 points a day. We were prepared to hear [Khan] say he was halting the project; instead he said: ‘Everybody thinks I’m mad but I’m going to do it.’ He’s a forward-thinking progressive and he makes decisions other guys wouldn’t.”

They started with a design of about 85 metres. “What was originally offered is not what you see today,” says Moran. “He challenged the designers a lot. He’s heavily influenced by automotive shapes and he pushed the designers to the max.” The max became 95 metres.

Pascal Reymond, of interior design firm Reymond Langton, says: “He asked us to scale up the drama of the first Kismet; he had seen [our work on 134 metre] Serene and wanted that level of detail.” Her lead designer on the project, Jason Macaree, credits a collaborative process. “She (Ann Khan) has a clear idea of what she wants things to look like and he (Shahid) drives things to be at the edge. He presents ideas, they are good ideas, and we would work on them, bounce them back and then they would just grow.”

One example of this process is the video walls in the space separating the main saloon from the forward section of the main deck and flanking the stairs to the deck above. Originally a pair of curved stairs, like a double helix, was envisioned to rise between the floors through an open atrium and the renderings showed curved artwork surrounding the staircases. “Then it was Shahid’s idea to have one staircase only with a video wall and open space opposite. Ann said she thought there might be room for a piano there and that led to the idea of creating a more intimate lounge in that space. We made a presentation on that idea and, in the middle of that presentation, she asked if the piano could be integrated into a bar. Well, you’ve seen it, it’s a piano that can be heard through two decks and it’s a bar, but it’s really a work of art. That’s the way this entire project evolved,” says Macaree.

It is why Kismet, despite her size and the fact that her remit is to charter, is so intensely personal. Shahid Khan says he has space to host parties for 270 people and yet there are also comfortable places to go when he’s alone on the boat.

The video walls – with one extending two decks high – are a unique piece of work, made up of 42 individual 140-centimetre monitors. Yes, they can show Fulham's football games, news or films, but they are also programmed to show digitised, high-definition moving artwork as a backdrop to life on board. The system, installed by Atlanta’s Techno Gurus, also links to a pair of high-def cameras mounted outside that can convert the walls into virtual windows.

The massive art deco staircase between the video walls leads from the main saloon to the upper deck lounge, but is not, in fact, the yacht’s centre of circulation – that is farther forward and comprises a lift and offset stairs leading to all decks. But it is the link between the four primary indoor guest entertainment areas on two decks: saloon and cinema on main deck and dining room and lounge above. It’s a feature, amongst others on board, that had Lürssen’s engineers scratching their heads.

“There were, of course, many challenging design features both inside and outside, which gave our engineers some headaches but as expected we were able to solve them all,” says Peter Lürssen, the yard’s CEO. “Particularly, the level of detail on the exterior furniture with its decorative features, was something we hadn’t done before to this extent. And the stunning staircase is a feature that has brought many engineers and craftsmen a few more grey hairs. But that’s our job."

An etched glass walkway spanning the atrium connects the bar with the dining room. It is a masterful way to keep the party connected between decks while exterior stairs link the two aft decks. During inclement weather, sliding glass panels flanking the aft owner’s deck turn that space into a winter garden and outside dining area in all but the worst winter or tropical downpours. The adjacent V-shaped bar – back-lit onyx with RGB colour controls – is party central, but to get celebrations off on the right foot, the aft main deck begins with a convivial outdoor bar. The entire area becomes one big social loop. Add in the bridge-deck lounge above, which looks out over the aft helipad, and the spacious sundeck higher still, with both pool and spa pool, and large-scale entertainment is guaranteed.

One of the challenges Reymond Langton faced was in creating enough intimacy for family use or small charter parties on such a big yacht. Smaller spaces such as the up to date cinema, which is adjacent to the six guest cabins on the main deck and doubles as a guest saloon or reading room, the bridge deck lounge up top and the gym and spa below, show that they have not forgotten the value of cosiness. In fact, there are four fireplaces aboard to ensure just that.

Kismet really shines in details. Each of the five guest suites has not only a unique colour scheme, but uniquely themed door trim. Their position on the main deck means that the suites are wide and multi-windowed. It also has an unusual feature called a sea cabin, carefully placed on the lower deck on portside amidships, where motion will be at a minimum for guests who suffer from seasickness. Of course, its placement adjacent the guestgym, the spa and the starboard side fold-down tender dock would make it equally coveted for other reasons.

“You can go one of three ways with a spa,” says Pascal Reymond. “You can either put it up top and make it surrounded by glass walls for light and views; you can put it adjacent to the beach club at the stern, but that ambiance might suffer when the stern door is closed, or you can put it deep in the ship where it’s naturally going to be dark and cosy and restful with little motion. This is what the owner chose for Kismet. It’s very much a meditative space.”

Indeed it is. Dark stones and interesting juxtaposed textures – from smooth flat rocks to glass to various wood surfaces, including a door that had patterns routed into its face and then was singed for effect – provide just the right amount of physical stimulation while the hammam, spa pool, cold plunge pool, steam shower and massage room are focused on relaxation. The light is soft and soothing.

Behind all the beautifully, exotically finished owner and guest areas lies the heart of the yacht: not just the engine room, which is a typical two-deck Lürssen paean of efficiency, but rather the attention that has been put into the operation side of things, or “back of the house”.

“The first Kismet was the first Lürssen with the ‘Moran cathedral’ engine room: two storeys, with a separate control room,” says Khan. “Some people thought it was a waste of space, but we have factory experience and know how much good visual connection improves the work.”

The crew passages and their connectedness to stores, exteriors and the areas they need to access quickly and repeatedly for service are brilliantly thought out. The main deck placement of the galley, for example, might be considered atypical yet it was arranged to service interior and exterior dining areas above and the social areas on the main deck as well as to receive provisions. The spa also has hidden access so crew or visiting therapists do not travel through owner areas.

The under-deck crew passage contains copious amounts of linen storage and connects to the laundry on the same deck. Like most of the things aboard this yacht, it is well worth the space allocation and adds to function and maintenance: key design elements that are often, unfortunately, overlooked by less experienced project teams or owners. “The crew areas, their cabins and the crew gym as well as the passageways and work spaces, have a positive impact on crew retention, our charter operation and resale,” says Khan.

Kismet itself is a Turkish word that means destiny or fate, perhaps resulting from random forces set in motion long ago, like a 16 year old arriving in America to study engineering and ending up with a superyacht.


Lurssen Yachts

( www.luerssen-yachts.com )

Lürssen Yachts 98mt Carinthia VII

When Heidi Horten, the widow of department store owner Helmut Horten, heard about Limitless she was apparently furious with Jon Bannenberg for creating a copy of ‘her yacht’. Clearly she needed to build something larger and finer. Returning to Lürssen, the Bremen shipyard that had built Carinthia VI for her late husband, she was permitted to peep at Tim Heywood’s preliminary drawing of the yacht that was to become Pelorus. Heywood had previously worked at the Bannenberg studio and been fully involved in the design of Limitless, but the Pelorus sketch showed a quite different style, with a bold, raised forebody and a sheerline that sweeps downwards towards the stern in what is termed ‘reverse sheer’.

Mrs Horten decided to follow this style and ordered a new yacht to be designed by Heywood and built by Lürssen. Crucially, its overall length had to be 98 metres – 2 metres longer than the hated Limitless. In the event, her order was quicker in build, so the new yacht, which she christened Carinthia VII, was launched in 2002, a year before the inspirational Pelorus.

Heywood used some clever visual tricks to achieve the incredibly powerful profile of Carinthia VII, the most obvious being that, viewed from a distance, the main deck appears to have no windows. In fact, with darkened glass and black frames, they are set back into what at first appears to be a continuous hull side and only become obvious close to. The deep blue hull colour, which the makers, Awlgrip, now market as ‘Carinthia Blue’, helps to create this trompe l’oeil effect. Aiming for a profile that was as clean and uncluttered as possible, Heywood replaced the usual stanchions and handrails with glass bulwarks set in slim steel frames that do not catch the eye. Some necessary technical features such as the bridge wings and air intakes became smoothly moulded bulges in the superstructure and assumed an almost feminine character.

Echoes of the earlier Carinthia remain, including the forward lean of the transom matching the outline of the stem. Another Bannenberg touch is the style line along the after part of the topsides at main deck level, formed by a large radius moulding. Forward-facing windows in the superstructure are shaded by the characteristic brow that looks like the peak of a cap.

Heywood’s design extended to the layout of the interior but not the décor, which is the work of several designers and Heidi Horten herself. As on her previous yacht, it is private and photographs have never been published.

Speed was clearly going to be an issue, and with four of the largest MTU diesels available, coupled through combining gearboxes to twin screws, a maximum of around 25 knots is possible. Whether or not she is faster than Limitless could only be decided by a race, which is never going to happen while both yachts remain with their original owners.

Lurssen Yachts

( www.luerssen-yachts.com )