Finding Nemo may not be part of the on-board movie collection of superyacht Barbara, but this is exactly what the crew had to do when a clownfish disappeared from the yacht’s aquarium. The story, surprisingly, has a happy ending, but then this is a boat on which nature is honoured, protected and used as a source of inspiration.
The product of an experienced designer-builder-owner team, 88.5 metre Barbara is a travelling beach house with roots in the wilds of the Asia Pacific region. As of November 2017, nine months after delivery, the yacht had already sailed from Alblasserdam in the Netherlands, where Oceanco built her, to Turkey, Greece, Venice, Antibes, Golfe-Juan, Sardinia, the Amalfi Coast, Corsica and then Dubai.
Docked across from Queen Elizabeth 2 at Port Rashid in the UAE when I catch up with her, Barbara is easy to spot with her dark hull and shapely superstructure. It’s a little tricky to make out how many decks she has from a distance, and there does not appear to be a straight line on her.
“I think that’s the appealing thing, it really is quite unique,” says Sam Sorgiovanni, the yacht’s Australian designer, whose fondness for nature is intimately woven into the styling. “The client’s brief was to create a timeless design, something that was like nothing else, and I think we’ve achieved that. It’s got a very organic feel, where everything is interrelated. There are no hard edges; even the chamfer, if you like, is concave, so it creates a shadow effect. There are many subtle things like that.”
As I get closer, I spot a group of people in matching grey shirts hunched over the side of the concrete dock a few yards from Barbara, which arrived just hours before. It turns out to be the deck crew and the yacht’s captain seeking a freshwater source. The haze that hangs over the Emirate contains fine sand that eventually falls down on to houses, cars and, yes, boats. To prevent damage to the lustrous paint, the crew has to wash the yacht every day, the captain tells me.
As I look more closely at Barbara’s finish, I realise that not all that sparkles under the sun is the result of high quality paint over a perfectly fared hull and superstructure. “Where it’s black on the superstructure, it is actually glass,” Sorgiovanni told me a couple of weeks before my visit. “I did not want to mix paint and glass, so we made sure they actually used glass. In fact, even the corners are glass, so it’s very clean and pure and flat; you can never get paint to look like glass because it’s never that perfect.” I now see what he means; large areas of glazing balance the superstructure’s white painted aluminium surfaces.
Once on board Barbara, I follow Captain Neal Roche to the bridge. The cool and quiet atmosphere is a delightful reprieve from the harsh sun and the heat that radiates from the concrete dock of the commercial port. Roche takes me on a virtual walkthrough, talking me through a chart he keeps in the superyacht's wheelhouse so I can get my bearings.
Barbara has an unusual and interesting layout that the owner devised with Azure Yacht Design and Naval Architecture, which produced the general arrangement. “He really wanted to do his own custom arrangement plan and not base it on any existing platform, even if it might save him time,” says Azure’s Hugo van Wieringen, who worked with the owner to develop the GA.
The bridge, plus several crew cabins and offices catering for Barbara’s operations, are on the same deck as the superyacht office and the upper saloon, but are completely separate from them. “In the owner’s office we have 3.5 metre ceilings,” Sorgiovanni tells me. “So in the central area of the boat, we’ve got these big opening doors and balconies that hinge down on both sides to create a massive expanse.” The doors, made by German glass specialist Tilse, are the largest Oceanco has ever installed.
Automated, weather-tight and flush-mounted, they slide on an invisible track, each a single pane of glass nearly four metres tall. Once open, they allow fresh air to flow through the office. Balconies expand the space even further, while waves dancing in the glass-bottom pool on the superyacht sundeck above send light bouncing all around the large room.
Stairs on the port side lead to Barbara’s panoramic owner’s suite with a central skylight. This amazing owner’s area is self-contained and private and, with its silk carpets mimicking retreating waves, is an island sanctuary in itself.
Installing the doors and accounting for their weight and their interaction with the metal was one of the build’s most challenging aspects. “At the moment, according to the rules and regulations of the classification society, glass is not part of the load-bearing structure,” says Van Wieringen.
“That poses an extra challenge in calculation and design for a structure with large windows and openings because Lloyd’s still requires all the strength to come from the aluminium part of the structure, even if the glass, of course, adds stiffness.” In addition, glass weighs a lot more than aluminium and does not flex in the same way.
It was also an interesting engineering and build challenge for busy Oceanco. “These particular doors could only be placed after the actual [yacht] launch due to their enormous size,” says Paris Baloumis, Oceanco’s group marketing manager. “A large crane was necessary to place the doors after the teak and all the customised items were already installed.” A tender was in radio contact with all passing commercial ships to ask them to slow down to ensure precise positioning of the door.
The yard orchestrated the complex ballet of suppliers. “More than 1,000 craftsmen touched the yacht over the entire build process,” Baloumis adds. F/List was the fit-out company responsible for the owner’s area interior, and Sinnex tackled the main deck, which is dedicated to a large saloon/party space, dining and five guest cabins and suites.
Sorgiovanni designed the interior and most of the furniture on board Barbara and sourced the artwork and the vast array of materials, which are as unique as they are remarkable. “The owners requested a relaxed, comfortable interior with a rich blend of textures and natural materials to create a resort-like feel that has become extremely popular with many of my clients,” Sorgiovanni says.
“This time we have gone for a resort/retreat feel, like a spa type of environment that you find in the Asia Pacific region, with all natural timbers and lots of exotic materials inside, such as pufferfish skin and water buffalo horn. The idea was to make the interior very friendly and relaxing, with bamboo ceilings, bamboo floors. We used fairly neutral stones because we wanted to keep it very pure,” he adds.
One of the most striking features, aside from the owner’s area, is the glass elevator-cum-staircase. Seemingly growing out of the lower deck and girdling the lift shaft is a root system made from teak and stainless steel. “In the Monkey Forest of Bali, I saw vines wrapping around tree trunks, and that’s where the inspiration came from,” reveals Sorgiovanni. “So I spoke to the artist and he created this amazing sculpture using timber and metal welded together. It winds its way up all four levels.”
The artist built the piece around a mock-up of the lift in Bali. “It took well over one year to design and construct,” Sorgiovanni says. “It is fully handmade, with individual small segments welded together and ground, using a special technique to weld the stainless steel to the wood.” Silky oak and niches in a galuchat and metal composite cover the bulkheads that surround this fantastical root system.
Sorgiovanni Designs worked closely with Swiss company Nature Squared. From the bounty that nature provides — shells, seeds, bark, stones and leathers — it chooses sustainable materials in keeping with its mission to foster environmental, economic and social well-being. Among the unexpected materials used on Barbara is frog leather. It is used on bed frames, where smaller squares (each one formerly a frog) create a patchwork of deep browns. “These skins are a sustainable by-product of the common frog that is eaten locally. Each skin is carefully cleaned and treated and exhibits a natural colour variation,” the designer explains.
“Sea urchin dots” frame some of the artwork and mirrors (endemic to tropical waters, the urchins have thick spines that form an interesting pattern when they are cross cut). Inlays of duck eggshells adorn the front of recliner seats inside the yacht’s cinema. Water buffalo horn decorates bulkheads, cabinet fronts and heavy doors designed to eliminate noise transfer. Water buffalo are important to rice farmers in Asia until they are no longer able to work, at which point they usually end up on dinner plates. Their deeply ridged horns can be as long as 1.5 metres.
Barbara also carries live creatures. Living Color Aquariums in Deerfield Beach, Florida, created the fish tank that separates the formal dining area from the saloon. The fish seem quite at peace in their properly maintained and enclosed environment. Captain Roche says that they have had good luck with their finned guests, barring a few early on.
“We haven’t lost any in quite a while now. One of the Nemos, the clownfish, went missing one day, and we were wondering, ‘where has he gone? Has he been eaten?’ He actually wound up down in the tank in the engine room [via the water filter] where they found him swimming. They fished him out and plopped him back in,” the captain says.
Barbara may be a floating workplace for her owner but she is also a platform for entertainment and relaxation. The saloon’s ceiling slides open to reveal party lights and the crew then clears the furniture to allow dancing. Of course, there is a superyacht beach club, a garage filled with toys, including custom Vikal tenders, a private spa pool and an observation deck with a fully equipped gym.
Sore muscles and tired arms and legs can recover quickly with help of a masseuse and vigorous water jets in the experience shower. “I have not been in it myself, but I have seen it working. It looks like a car wash,” the captain says.
Oceanco Yachts
( www.oceancoyacht.com )
Hulking in Pendennis’s 150 metre dry dock, 85.6 metre Aquila is an imposing refit project. When launched as Cakewalk in 2010 she was the largest yacht built in the US since the 1930s, and here she has become the biggest vessel yet refitted in the UK.
But gazing up at her hull, and knowing how quickly she’s been transformed, it is the speed as much as the scope of this superyacht refit project that seems Herculean. “No single job was that tricky,” says Stephen Hills, project director at Pendennis, who managed the Aquila refit programme, somewhat surprisingly. “The challenge of this project has been the volume of the changes in the timeframe that was set.”
Indeed, one year was all the Cornish yard had in which to transform the elaborate, traditional design of Derecktor’s 2010 Cakewalk into a clean, elegant yacht that could pass as freshly launched. That’s 85.6 metres — in one year.
“Nine hundred people between England and Germany have been involved in this project,” says Tony Dixon, design director at the studio responsible for the refit, Redman Whiteley Dixon. Not to mention craftsmen all across the US. “Something like 750 square metres of floor area has been gutted and rebuilt, similar to the total area of a 55 or 60 metre motor yacht.”
With an ambitious brief, the Aquila project would involve major structural changes and gutting the interior. There was also a transformative design by Redman Whiteley Dixon and Susan Young Interiors, making this the second yacht project on which the two studios have collaborated for this client.
Layer upon layer of complex alterations had to be seamlessly choreographed to prevent a carpenter installing a cabinet before the electrician had finished wiring behind it, or a designer placing a panel of silk while a chippy could still get a dusty fingerprint on it.
Pendennis took a military approach to the Aquila project. “The way we’ve gone about it is to treat it as three distinct projects,” says Hills. “So the interior is one and is run by its own dedicated project manager. The exterior paint programme and modifications are the second project, with a project manager on it.
“And the technical changes and upgrades, again with a separate project manager. So by being very clear from the outset that it’s split, with clear leads in each area, you start to break the whole Aquila project down into more manageable amounts.”
And then, of course, there’s the unexpected, which had to be expected. Crucially Aquila’s owners trusted the yard to take decisions. As Hills puts it: “They bought into the idea that it’s better to take a decision, move ahead and achieve the programme, with the risks that involves.”
One of the most substantial elements of that programme was totally reordering Aquila’s superyacht sundeck. It had always been sequestered into fore and aft sections by a trunk of interior areas — the central staircase, lift, dayhead and various technical and service spaces — which have remained mostly intact. On Cakewalk the aft portion of deck space was sliced up by a central spa pool, along with a step down to an aft row of sunloungers.
The new configuration has removed the pool and placed it on the forward section of the deck. The now larger aft deck has a light-up bar, central seating area and loungers further back. It’s a sign of the uncompromising nature of the Aquila project that the old step was removed and a new one added, just a couple of feet further aft, to give the upper space a little more sweep.
This update involved re-teaking the whole area. The forward portion of the sundeck, meanwhile, places a large superyacht spa pool surrounded by sunpads at the more private forward end (they had to strengthen the bulkheads below), and there’s still room for a bar and sofa. A pantry has been converted to a massage and spa room inside, too.
While there is an improved superyacht beach club on the lower deck, Cakewalk’s design precluded the sort of spectacular on-water area that you might find on an 85 metre launched today. Therefore, says Toby Allies, sales and marketing director of Pendennis, “the whole idea of this deck is to create that kind of beach club scene, but on the higher sundeck area”.
On the aft bridge deck below, outdoor lifestyle has also been enhanced. Teak pillars were refreshed and the deck has been sparingly furnished with modern, low-slung furniture, the pièce de résistance of which is circular seating with a fire pit in the middle. Forward, at the entrance to the bridge deck saloon, large wooden cabinets have been removed. Now the broad glass flank floods Aquila’s new interior with light.
The décor throughout is the polar opposite of Cakewalk’s honey tones — cool off-whites and dark smoked eucalyptus woods, taupe suedes, blue and grey velvets and nickel highlights. It was installed by German superyacht stalwarts Metrica, whose precise methods fit well with the exacting nature of the Aquila project.
“The brief was to transform it into a really elegant, modern yacht, within the existing framework,” says Dixon. “He likes a traditional style, with panelling, and she prefers the more modern treatment. By using flat panels and a lot of fabric on the walls, it doesn’t look like a study anywhere that it’s not supposed to. Dark panelled interiors with white look really crisp and sharp.”
The owner’s deck saloon, one level below, has a gentlemen’s club feel with a spectacular bar that Redman Whiteley Dixon and Susan Young Interiors coated with tobacco leaf to give it a rust brown patina, backed with ripple-faced mirrors and metalised fabric wall surfaces by Silverlining, which also made the dining table and bubble-glass doors in Aquila’s bridge saloon.
Sliding glass panels backed with a mirror-like coating were installed behind the bar to create a dramatic foil-like feature. They slide to reveal two TVs, transforming the use of the space. These panels were designed by Susan Young Interiors and fabricated by Peter David Studio.
Forward, in the owner’s cabin, the design was also fundamentally reimagined. An exterior ladder ran from the bridge deck to the foredeck, cutting down the centre of the owner’s cabin’s forward windows. That has been removed and a proper floating staircase has been created, set apart from Aquila’s superstructure, allowing much more light into the large master suite.
Inside, things changed substantially, too. “The whole owner’s deck was reconfigured,” says Dixon. “We moved the cabin bulkhead aft, opening the whole boat up at the front.” The cabin now takes in part of what was a broad lobby-cum-sitting room that covered nearly as much space as the cabin itself, but offered far less functionality.
And there’s still room for a grand entrance hall in grey veined marble and leather panels, two spectacular bathrooms to either side, his-and-hers dressing rooms, a hairdressing and massage room, pantry and large study.
With the enlarged cabin and the bed moved to port — “having a bed on the centreline, you waste a lot of space because you end up with essentially passageways on either side,” says Dixon — there was space for a sitting room to starboard. There is also now direct access from the cabin to Aquila’s foredeck, which has been enlarged from a technical access walkway to a 60 square metre Portuguese bridge-style deck that provides a neat private enclave for fresh air.
If the owner’s deck got the biggest dose of glamour, then Aquila’s main saloon one level below has become a family haven. “There was a dining room, all enclosed with sliding doors, and these massive wide walkways down either side,” says Dixon. “Then you had this fireplace at the back with a couple of armchairs — a funny little lounge that no-one would have used.”
A new dining table replaced the seating area aft and the semi-enclosed dining saloon forward was demolished and a high-tech cinema was put in its place. The 98-inch widescreen has a professional grade 7.2.4 Dolby Atmos surround system of seven in-wall Genelec speakers and four overhead speakers, plus two Artcoustic subwoofers with powerful 1kW amplification, with a Crestron control system.
“The inside of the cinema has its own false floor,” says Hills, “with a resiliently mounted deck, so that it’s independent from the steel structure underneath it and you reduce structural-borne vibration into the cinema. And when the cinema is in full blast, there is as little as possible transmission of the noise out of the cinema.” On top of this there are heavy doors with acoustic seals and special insulation in the bulkheads.
Forward on the main deck, new flooring, hardware and en-suite bathrooms have been upgraded throughout the guest cabins on Aquila. Even where there are remnants of the older boat, the way they have been used is impressive. “The main staircase is probably one of the most striking changes,” says Hills. “There’s much more of a wow factor to it now — you would not have thought that just changing wall claddings and colours and finishes could have such an effect.”
The floral carpet has gone for a silky grey, and curling wrought ironwork replaced with stainless steel bars, but the wooden base and handrail remain, albeit stained darker. And the central chandelier by Czech company Preciosa is, as Hills puts it, “quite a piece of engineering in its own right”.
On her lower deck Cakewalk already had a spectacular tender garage that opened on both sides — with a Riva Aquariva and a Vikal Limousine tender, both fully serviced in the refit. This area has remained largely unchanged but the beach club aft has been reconfigured and a skylight built in.
Access has also been improved, with a stairwell added to starboard and the watertight door from the tender garage moved to that same stairwell, so the beach club won’t be used as a corridor to the stern platform. There’s also a top-notch superyacht gym on board Aquila.
The crew mess has a new layout, with better seating and counter space, there’s new AV and showers in crew cabins, and functional improvements were made in Aquila’s galley. The factory-sized engine room had a five-year survey and gained a new Hug exhaust filter system. Air-conditioning has been replaced throughout, as has the lighting/blind control system, now by Lutron. She’s also been rewired for LEDs and tech upgraded to UHDTV, high-end audio and state-of-the-art WiFi.
Outside, the finished article was given a suitably cool-toned repaint by Pinmar with a midnight blue hull and ice white superstructure, electrostatic paint guns ensuring a super-even finish. It’s one of a mass of jobs undertaken with a thoroughness that has resulted in a superyacht that feels every bit as fresh as a brand new boat.
Pendennis
( www.pendennis.com )
