Blohm+Voss 74.5mt Enigma

Martin Francis’s iconic creation is finally stepping into the spotlight 25 years after her launch. The designer reveals all about the birth of Enigma, her remarkable first owner, and those amazing windows...

Martin Francis has been waiting 25 years for this. Enigma’s designer was denied the opportunity to speak to any media when the yacht was launched back in 1991 and so she has remained true to her name ever since — off the radar, a little mysterious.

But now Enigma’s for sale, the shroud has been lifted and Francis is basking in this long-delayed moment in the sun. “I’m terribly emotional,” he says on board. “I’ve given so many years to this boat.”

Born Eco, renamed Katana and finally Enigma, she is still a gut-punch of a design: a long, lean destroyer dressed in silk. Technically, she’s a profound achievement. She was the first superyacht to be fitted with an underwater foil, which provides 120 tonnes of lift at the stern to help her achieve that outrageous top speed of 36 knots.

Those iconic windows are a masterstroke of design and construction. And, after all these years, Enigma’s still totally vibration-free — even when the centrally mounted gas turbine is flicked on and winds up to its max output of 18,500hp.

This boat should be fêted, up in lights, on the marquee in massive capital letters — ENIGMA. Francis, meanwhile, should be one of the most in-demand superyacht designers in the world.

Yet… Francis’s phone didn’t ring for eight years after Enigma was launched. Meanwhile, some of the exciting young designers he had incubated at his South of France studio — Espen Øino, Dan Lenard, Mark Smith and Jonny Horsfield — drifted off to conquer the world on their own.

“It doesn’t always pay to be ahead of the curve,” he says a little ruefully as we tour the yacht. But regrets? Not one. Enigma was Francis’s first motor yacht design after a career spent penning sailboats and working with the likes of Norman Foster, and the pride he feels when showing me around the boat is evident. “See the shower drains?” he motions in the master cabin’s bathroom. “I even designed those.”

It’s easy to recognise the brilliance of Enigma’s design today, but back when she was launched the reviews weren’t all glowing. Naval architects queued up to rubbish her: the bridge is on the wrong deck; the windows will break; who sticks a big appendage under the water when you’re trying to reduce drag? “The boat initially came in for an enormous amount of stick,” Francis remembers. “It was really quite vitriolic.”

Fortunately, he was working for a man who occupies a special place in the pantheon of visionary superyacht owners: Emilio Azcárraga. The Mexican billionaire was a media titan, owner of mega-brand Televisa, which ran — and still runs — TV networks and radio stations across Mexico and the US. He was, Francis says with genuine feeling, “the most amazing client I’ve ever had”.

Designer and owner became almost symbiotic, with Francis going on to design a number of projects for the Mexican, including a roof for the giant 100,000-seat Azteca Stadium in Mexico City.

Azcárraga loved the boat Francis designed so much he chose to die on it. “He had homes all over the world, but he lived the last six months of his life on board, in Miami,” says the designer. In the six years of his ownership, Azcárraga became famous for the time he spent on board, including six transatlantics.

In one memorable season, he joined the yacht in Hamburg, took it up to St Petersburg, then across to the UK, down into the Med and the Balearics, then across the Atlantic to the Caribbean, through the Panama Canal and up to Los Angeles. To assist all that passage-making, Azcárraga’s rep, the ageless George Nicholson, of the Camper & Nicholsons dynasty, bought a tanker so she could refuel mid-Atlantic.

“I found it in Denmark,” he recalls. “It was the smallest tanker that I could buy at 1,000 tonnes. We called her Eco Supporter. It would buy fuel at the best prices, then clean it so we always had a 200-tonne tank full of clean fuel. We used to send the tanker way ahead of Eco and make a rendezvous somewhere at sea.”

Nicholson also remembers the owner fondly. He sold him a 36 metre CRN, Caribe III (now Nordic Star), in 1974, kick-starting a long association. Azcárraga then went on to buy two Feadships, Azteca (now Lionwind) and Paraiso, both designed by Jon Bannenberg.

In the mid-1980s, he started thinking bigger and asked Bannenberg, Francis and the famed car designer Giorgetto Giugiaro to dream up some concepts. “The ideas and suggestions from Martin were by far the most radical and pleasing to the client,” Nicholson says.

But Francis recalls the process of settling on a final design being slightly tortuous. Initially Azcárraga asked for something akin to Azteca, the 1983 Feadship designed by Bannenberg in his faceted, militaristic style, but he wasn’t happy with the proposals he was getting back.

Frustrated, Francis says he stormed back into the office one day and said: “Throw everything he said out of the window. We’re going to make it long and with everything curved.” So conceived was the legend.

Those windows are the first thing you notice. The idea came from curved Parisian windows, which are designed to limit internal reflections. Their installation on Enigma didn’t serve any practical purpose — it’s all about style — but the effect they have on the view from inside is dramatic. All the glazing was made by Flachglas in Germany and caused a few palpitations when first proposed.

“At that stage we did not know if the hull and superstructure would be really stiff, and were afraid that these large and special windows would crack,” recalls Nicholson. To date, in 25 years, only two panes have.

“It was a work of art to get them right,” says Francis, not least because the Lloyd’s surveyors weren’t big fans, thinking the frames fronting the bridge wouldn’t be able to take the force of a big wave — a problem on slender boats like Enigma, which tend to be wet.

They demanded Francis design some removable mullions that are supposed to be slotted into place to strengthen the screen in a big sea. “We’ve still got them,” says Enigma’s captain, Stuart Lees. “We never use them.” The 19mm toughened glass has withstood it all — helped by a locker-cum-wave breaker on the bow.

The positioning of the bridge on the main deck was the main thing that riled rival designers when Enigma first appeared, with one even suggesting that placing a wheelhouse at this level should be illegal. The original plans had it higher but Azcárraga wanted the best views for himself.

“He said, ‘but that’s the best place. I want to be there. The pilot of my plane never looks out of the window. I don’t see why the captain needs to’,” remembers Francis. “And that was that. He had spoken.”

The current skipper says he has no complaints about the positioning, and often finds himself piling on the power when the water starts hitting the screens. “Sometimes, when it gets rough and the sea is picking up, especially if we’re heading straight into it, we’ll go faster and it just lifts the bow a bit and it almost wave-pierces through, so where you’re actually pitching quite heavily at 15 knots, at 25 knots you’re wave-piercing through it and you pull yourself out of bad weather.”

When it comes to Enigma’s power, Francis loves one particular story. “On one of the first sea trials, we were having a problem with the gas turbine. We got it sorted out around lunchtime. We were off Palma and Azcárraga said: ‘Captain, let’s go to Porto Cervo’.

“The mistral had been blowing so we set off in a swell and had a Mexican lunch at about three and a siesta, and then watched a few movies, and a late dinner, and at midnight we were in Porto Cervo. There’s nothing out there that will do that. Nothing. Twenty-five years later there’s nothing that will do that.”

Speed was central to the brief from the start, Nicholson says. The engines chosen for the job were heavy-duty Deutz lumps, outputting 5,000hp. They were coupled to Kamewa waterjets, since Azcárraga loved nosing into deserted — and often poorly charted — anchorages, and had damaged props in the past.

The two diesels will get Enigma up to nearly 20 knots, but the punch to top speed is provided by the central General Electric gas turbine. “It was the first production turbine for civilian use,” says Nicholson. “I had to sign an official secrets paper in order to buy it. The Aga Khan bought the next three engines for his transatlantic record-breaker, Destriero.”

All that muscle comes at a cost — Enigma is a thirsty ship at speed. At her 36 knot top end, she’s burning 5,000 litres an hour. In 48 hours at full pace she can empty her 240,000 litre fuel tank. “I know because we’ve done it several times,” says Captain Lees.

Drop back to her cruising speed of 18 knots and Enigma’s range extends to about 2,200 nautical miles. Her efficiency is helped by a piece of revolutionary hydrodynamic hardware — a large underwater wing that sits slightly aft of the transom jets and attaches to the hull with two struts.

It took 11 tank-testing campaigns to settle on a final design for the hull and foil, which not only prevents the stern from “squatting” at speed, it also limits Enigma’s trim, which varies just 1.5 degrees from zero to 36 knots.

It was originally thought hanging so much steel off the boat would have drag penalties at low speed, but in fact it was found that at 18 knots efficiency improved by almost 20 per cent. “The foil wasn’t in the original spec,” says Francis, “but when they saw how much performance it gave them, they couldn’t afford not to put it on.”

What was in the spec from the get-go was the Maule amphibious seaplane, which was stowed on the expansive aft deck. Azcárraga had lost a number of friends in helicopter accidents and so the plane was the only choice — and quite a challenge to incorporate into the design. It could be stored on board without folding the wings and was powerful enough to take off and land in the boat’s length.

The plane was ditched by Enigma’s second owner, Larry Ellison, who turned the aft deck into a basketball court. He also added a glass-enclosed superyacht gym on the main deck aft, a new exterior stair to the upper deck and a spa pool on the top deck’s wing station.

Plug-in controls (now removed) meant the yacht could be controlled from this level and legend has it the former captain used to moor the boat while having a soak. Zero-speed stabilisers, meanwhile, were added in 2009.

The layout has been fiddled with rather than ripped up by the three successive owners — an upper deck dining room is now a saloon, for instance, while the position of the bed in the owner's cabin has changed a few times. Each time someone has wanted to change Enigma, they’ve called in Francis. He designed her interior originally with François Zuretti, working on his very first yacht.

A beam of 11.2 metres is modest for a 74.5 metre yacht, yet you don’t feel too pinched on Enigma’s main deck. High central topsides mean the guest accommodation enjoys the full beam, and large windows give a real immediacy to the view.

The upper deck is the owner’s enclave and can be isolated from guests with a partition door. Another door on the deck above means the owner can turn the forward part of both decks into an exclusive duplex.

Sitting in that sundeck saloon, looking out at the world through those convex windows is a unique experience, doubly so because they’ve never been copied. In an industry sometimes notorious for producing “just another big white boat”, Enigma stands truly alone.

The only coverage Azcárraga would allow about the yacht all those years ago was an article in the February 1992 issue of this magazine, about her incredible performance.

“Eco is one of those very special superyacht projects where the designers and builders have been encouraged to redefine the boundaries of their trade; to explore the limits of their ideas and to push the frontiers of technology and engineering,” we wrote.

Were Enigma launched tomorrow, those words would still apply — and might still in another 25 years. She is an icon, a great, a hall-of-famer and, after a quarter of a century, unmasked.




Blohm+Voss

( www.blohmvoss.com )

Pendennis 85,60mt Aquila

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 )

Feadship 70mt Joy

His first yacht, Joy is a 70 metre Feadship, but this is one owner for whom size is not everything, says Stewart Campbell.

The bigger the saloon, the less it gets used. Despite this being one of the few generally accepted rules of superyacht design, boats are still pouring out of sheds with wide-open acreage on their main and upper decks. Designers earn their money making these spaces feel as comfortable as possible, but there’s often no hiding the fact that they’re just really big rooms. And who feels comfortable putting their feet up in one of those?

Clearly not the owner of 70 metre Joy, who has pulled off something of a magic trick with this, his very first yacht: he’s made it feel cosy. “I did not want some floating villa with vast internal spaces compromising the relationship with the ocean and the interior,” he says.

“We did not need to be compromised by some preset platform or convention. We designed Joy with our own lifestyle and vision in mind.” To achieve this, volume has been turned right down. Joy carries fewer gross tonnes (around 1,100) than any other 70 metre motor yacht on the water.

Even Heesen’s low-slung and sporty Galactica Super Nova is packing a bigger interior. Benetti’s stacked 70 metre Freedom, by comparison, has almost twice the internal volume, at 1,975GT. “I wanted a yacht that was progressive and not afraid of challenging convention,” Joy’s owner adds, consigning the superyachting mantra of “more and bigger” to the dustbin.

Actually, that’s not quite true of the whole boat. By keeping the interior human-sized, the decks have been exaggerated. You can comfortably walk two abreast down Joy’s ample side decks, protected the entire time by the high bulwarks and deck overhang above.

The owner’s deck, meanwhile, should really be known as the “promenade deck”. You can stroll hand in hand around the entire superstructure, all on one level. You could even jog in tandem. Feadship claims there’s more teak on Joy than any other comparable superyacht. I can believe it — it just keeps going, ending up on the owner’s deck in a basketball and badminton court all the way forward.

Joy wasn’t always going to have such expansive outside spaces; she grew from 50 metres to 63 metres and finally to 70 metres. Simon Rowell, creative director at Bannenberg & Rowell, which designed her exterior and layout, says: “Once Joy was mapped out and engineered [at 63 metres], the owner asked us to study a longer prow, in essence for two simple reasons: he felt that a longer external foredeck visually gave more breathing space between hull and superstructure and leant the yacht an elegant stance on the water; secondly, he would benefit from a very large terrace forward of his suite, effectively extending his family deck significantly.”

It was a savvy move from the young owner, whose defiance of yachting norms extended to his choice of collaborators in the creation of his boat. Joy is the first exterior design by Bannenberg & Rowell to hit the water, while for the interior he turned to London-based Studio Indigo, which had designed boats before but never on the scale of Joy.

The company is led by Mike Fisher, who said he was asked to create an interior that was “unique and non-boat like”. He continues: “The client and his wife are young, energetic and visionary. They look to the future and rarely to the past. They hoped the design of Joy would create a real sense of contentment and comfort, without making the boat feel like every other yacht and avoiding the clichéd details that would date in years to come.”

The approach has led to an interior that’s not easy to pigeonhole, but which Fisher describes as “vintage, without being overtly fashionable”. Equally outside-the-box is Joy’s superstructure, which looks as if it was carved.

“We wanted to connect with the surroundings, to garner the best views,” says James Carley, director of exterior design at Bannenberg & Rowell. “Chamfering the edges [of the superstructure overhangs] effectively raises the external deckheads, both around the side walkways and the overhanging aft decks.” This drive to provide a generous outlook from every internal space led to some “ongoing but friendly” battles with Feadship, says Rowell, who with Carley pushed to make sills and coamings on Joy as minimal as possible, to allow the maximum possible glazing.

The best example of this is to the rear of the bridge deck, where the entire space has been given over to Joy’s glass-walled superyacht gym, kitted out with the latest Technogym equipment. It’s a hybrid space — both inside and outside — and was an important requirement for the owner, who says enthusiastically: “The gym on the bridge deck may be the best place to work out anywhere in the world!”

Carley adds that he would have removed the entire structure from this area if he could, but the exhaust casings were non-negotiable. Still, Joy’s gym is an incredibly bright and inviting space, one that is actually quite hard to walk through without an urge to better yourself — a benefit of placing a wellness area like this in an unavoidable part of a yacht, rather than squirrelling it away on a lower deck.

Double stairs forward sweep up to the superyacht sundeck and its pool, which together create an exclusive perch at the top of Joy. The gym’s blurring of what is exterior and interior extends across the main and upper decks, which both have winter gardens that can be closed off with glass to take them from outside to inside with a nod to a deckhand.

The challenge for Studio Indigo was managing this interface, to make sure there’s no jarring as you enter the yacht proper. “We used a great many finishes and textiles as well as materials and styling of furniture to make the exteriors feel like an extension of the interior spaces,” says Fisher. “Moreover, each living area has windows looking out on to the wide walkways — making the rooms feel much larger than they are.”

Then there are the carpets in Joy’s upper and main saloons that demand you walk barefoot, drawing you into the comfortable interior. The main saloon’s is silk and nettle and made by German firm Jan Kath, represented by Front Rugs. The seating in here is low and comfortable, while an Irish whiskey bar to starboard, made in the UK by Silverlining, keeps things social.

The only other saloon on Joy, on the upper deck, couldn’t feel more different. This is very deliberately a family space. “There were certain vital principles that we were determined to achieve to make the yacht work and flow with different groups and situations,” the owner says. “There are elements such as the owner’s deck, which is almost a penthouse so I can be alone with my family.” Joy’s layout reflects this, with a master suite forward and a pair of double cabins amidships for the two children the only accommodation on this level.

Studio Indigo used more than 250 finishes throughout Joy — “too many to mention!” jokes Fisher. “We gave each area its own unique and highly individual character by using diverse materials and patterns. We didn’t just want to give each cabin a theme, we wanted to make each one an experience — a memorable space full of colour and texture.”

The design for each room started with a single item, playing on the owner’s love of tactile materials. A Yastik cushion, for instance, was the initial building block for the owner’s and VIP cabins on Joy. Hand-woven ikat fabric from Indonesia and Suzani textiles from central Asia informed other areas. “These materials tell their own stories using colour, weave and pattern. The story of these cushions seemed to fit perfectly with the client’s vision and the feel of what we were all aiming to achieve,” adds the designer.

His proudest achievement on Joy the central cantilevered superyacht staircase, which winds up from the lower deck around a lift shaft. You ascend on hand-woven carpeted pads past windows, beautiful églomisé panels made by DKT Artworks and oak marquetry.

You emerge at Joy’s bridge deck, which, apart from the gym, has an office that is treated to its own fold-down superyacht balcony, mirroring one on the starboard side. No hydraulics or electrics are used — “they have been developed to be operated manually, by simply pushing down”, says Carley.

Electrics and hydraulics are required, however, for the other openings on board Joy. Two sections of bulwark fold down pantograph-style, forward on the main deck, to release the tenders stored there. And the large transom door levers up, to create a shade for the bathing platform and to open up the superyacht beach club.

The other access to the beach club is via a set of bomb bay doors on the main deck. They reveal a cinema space, with beanbag chairs and a huge video wall made by VBH, which can be used to screen movies or play computer games. And in the teak floor — the owner’s star sign displayed in LEDs.

It’s Rowell’s favourite part of Joy. “The combination of bomb bay doors and pivoting transom door is very successful. The visual connection between decks, particularly when one considers having parents on the main deck and kids on the swim platform, really proved worthwhile. The geometry and engineering of these features is not easy, but the relatively compact lower deck beach club ‘den’ is immeasurably improved by this interaction.”

Feadship has kept everything squeak-free, as you’d expect. It’s a testament to Joy’s build quality, too, that while underway, even with all that glass and those huge overhangs — features that terrify engineers tasked with keeping a yacht quiet — there is not a rattle to be heard.

In fact, the ship is almost eerily silent when running, even when weaving figures of eight in two metre seas for the photographer in the helicopter hovering above. “She is my first Feadship,” says the captain after the shoot. “I have been impressed with the overall build standard and attention to detail. Joy is very stable and quiet as a mouse underway.”

To stay out of the images, everyone on board is asked to hide away in Joy’s main saloon. I sink into the sofa scattered with Holland & Sherry cushions to wait it out, as the skipper swings us left and right. It’s only a few seconds before I’m forcing down the urge to put my feet up on the custom coffee table. But the fact that I want to — feel irresistibly compelled to — tells you everything you need to know about Joy.


Feadship

( www.feadship.nl )

Heesen 45mt Amore Mio

The rewards of delayed gratification can far outweigh the frustrations, something that the owner of Heesen’s custom-built aluminium 45 metre Amore Mio learned firsthand. Just as the serial yacht owner was due to take delivery of another Heesen yacht, 40 metre Galatea (now called Taurica), an offer came in that was too good to refuse. He sold the 40 metre and found himself at square one and boat-less, a frustrating position for any yacht owner.

Luckily, there was something ready on the shelf at Heesen. The Dutch builder’s first ever 45 metre sportster, then known as Project Necto, was a year into build at the yard. Started on spec, all the aluminium — hull, deck and bulkheads — was finished. Taking the financial gains from the quick sale, he turned his 40 metre into a 45 metre.

“It’s a great stage to come into a build, because you save all the time it takes for that rough construction process, as long as you like the general layout — and we did, the owner loved it,” says Amore Mio’s Captain Tripp Hock, who has worked for the owner on various builds, including multiple Heesens, for 16 years. The spec-built semi-displacement 45 metre motor yacht was at an ideal stage for the owner to come along and put his stamp on her while not having to wait too long to enjoy her.

What he had on his hands wasn’t just any Heesen, but a unique blend of high-performance and long-range capabilities, bold exterior lines and a layout that put a priority on outdoor living. The latter was perfect for this owner, who was looking for a summer house on the sea, to be enjoyed by the family and used for outdoor fun, with a bulging toy box that far exceeds what you’d find on other yachts of similar size.

Amore Mio might be the first Heesen of her kind, but she has a strong familial heritage. Designed by regular collaborators Omega Architects, who have penned more than 90 designs for Heesen including concepts and builds in progress, that’s no surprise.

“We combined the comfort of a three-deck yacht, like 42 metre Alive, with the sportiness of a raised pilothouse yacht like 40 metre Galatea,” says designer Frank Laupman of Omega Architects.

“Furthermore, Alive’s exceptional bow was used as inspiration.” The result is a 2.5-deck yacht, as Laupman describes it, with aggressive exterior styling, dominant knuckle bow and bold angles. Family likeness aside, Amore Mio has no problem standing out amongst her kin.

“This is the next generation,” says Laupman. “The sporty rocket-style exterior with chiseled lines and the long hard chine forward emphasises her sharp and edgy appearance.”

Laupman used window placement artfully and expressively in Amore Mio’s exterior design. The bridge is set between the main deck and superyacht sundeck, with wheelhouse windows wrapping around like a heavy black brow. “The upward curving glass windows give her the character of an open sportster,” he says. “They were created from three straight windows instead of five — beauty goes with functionality, non-curved glass prevents distortion and offers a less obstructed view.”

The main deck glazing that looks like one continuous swathe of glass stretching from master to aft deck is, in fact, two distinct sections that parts midway on the side decks, marking the path to the bow and the entry to the crew quarters on the port side. The bulwark is lowered to encourage excellent views from inside. Amore Mio’s hewn lines and a black stripe along the bulwark flow all the way back to the gently sloping transom.

Amore Mio is one of those boats that looks fast when she’s sitting still. Powered by twin MTU 16V diesel engines, she packs a punch to match her energetic exterior profile, reaching top speeds of 30 knots. Sitting up top at the open helm on the sundeck when she’s moving at speed, it’s evident that Heesen’s largest sports yacht to date is designed for performance. She’s also intended for longer-range excursions, with a range of a 2,750 nautical miles allowing her to pootle around the Med or cross the Caribbean without having to fill up the tank.

However, Amore Mio’s owner has spent most of his time since taking delivery bobbing off Malta and using his summer home at sea as intended. The owner arrived on the build scene at the point where it wasn’t too late to change a few things he wasn’t in love with, such as the superyacht spa pool and bar on the flybridge. The owner preferred to rip these out for more deck space where he and his wife could roll out their yoga mats, part of their daily routine when on board. As far as the owner is concerned, what’s the need for a spa tub when the sea is right there?

Instead, the toy box is ample, with everything from Seadoos to flyboards and high-flying towables to stand-up paddle boards. A 5.9 metre Boesch mahogany tender is stowed in the garage. The 90 square metre sundeck seems massive without a spa to clutter the way. The hardtop shades an al fresco dining table and teppanyaki grill station.

“The exterior spaces are vast for a 45 metre boat,” says Captain Hock. “I think it’s smart; minimise the interior to what you need, and all the emphasis goes to the beautiful outdoor space, massive sundeck, great aft deck for a 45 metre, having both a dining table and a separate aft seating area.” There’s also a bow seating area, with a sofas and sunpads.

While the priority is placed on the exterior, there isn’t any skimping on the interior with a total of ten guests accommodated. The forward main-deck owner’s suit is full-beam and has a dressing room and bathroom with tub. The lower deck arrangement is traditional but ample, with two equally sized VIPs and two twin guest rooms. Space is intelligently used — by creating a smaller lobby on the lower deck, 6.5 square metres were able to be saved and redistributed amongst the guest rooms.

The elegant interior is designed to match Amore Mio’s beach house purpose, as interior designer Cristiano Gatto tells it. “The owners arrived on the project in quite an early stage, and we developed the colour board and the material selection in close collaboration,” says Gatto, of his fifth collaboration with Heesen. “[Amore Mio’s] designed to be contemporary but without the modern trappings of cold, impersonal interiors.”

Gatto’s interior is all about consistency and harmony, with a subdued palette, linear shapes and round edges all meant to convey softness and warmth. Calnetto walnut and white lacquered wood blend with leather, parchment stone and steel details, while cushions and throws in blue, green and red provide pops of colour.

The simple interior design belies her many nuanced details. “Take a look at the dining table edges,” says Gatto. “The table corners are four half spheres of leather whose stitching has been executed manually by extremely skilled artisans. And all marble surfaces on board Amore Mio come from a single block of Breccia Sarda. What I’ve tried to do with this project is to make consistency and coherence win over complexity.”

A special feature is the guest staircase set abeam in the main saloon. Topped by sliding glass at its apex on the bridge deck, there is an atrium affect with light filtering into the living spaces below. The superyacht staircase is fronted by a wall of floating walnut beams supported by polished stainless steel columns and sanded glass, all giving a further illusion of height and openness, and adding a wow factor to the dining room.

The layout is planned so guests and crew avoid collision, with this separate guest staircase leading from the lower deck through the main deck saloon to the sundeck. The separate crew stairway is placed forward, creating an easy thoroughfare from the crew accommodation, past the galley and through the bridge to the top deck.

Based on his years of experience, Amore Mio’s captain added in his own innovative solutions and storage requirements. He points out panels that move away to reveal storage where you’d least expect it. One interesting feature he promoted is a bespoke man-overboard system. When such an incident occurs, a life-saving device is instantly deployed to the victim in the water while the spot is marked and tracked via GPS so the captain can easily find them. It’s a safety measure that’s sure to assure a family cruising with young children.

Combining high-performance, long-range capabilities, expansive outdoor living and singular style, it’s easy to fall in love with Heesen’s new 45 metre aluminium motor yacht. So will Amore Mio see sisterships in the near future? While the aluminium 45 metre was started with the intention of being a series, the builder may be looking to even larger yachts for its spec-built offerings and a second hull isn’t yet in the works. But any would-be Heesen owner could certainly order this hull. Or for those to hate to wait, they could buy Amore Mioherself.

Her owner’s love affair has been on the passionate but short side. After only one season enjoying his summer house on the sea, Amore Mio is offered up for sale as her owner is already looking ahead and building his next — and bigger — yacht with Heesen. Once again, he’s choosing to delay gratification for greater rewards.


Heesen Yachts

( www.heesenyachts.com )

Wally 33,51mt Barong D

The 33.51 metre Wally 110 sailing yacht Barong D has been delivered to her owner, the Italian yard has confirmed.

This all-carbon sloop was developed for an existing client of the Italian builder. The new owner, an experienced yachtsman, previously owned 28.5 metre Wally Barong C and before that 24 metre Barong B.

Barong D was designed by Frers Naval Architecture and has been created with performance in mind. “Wally employed all its advanced know-how to produce a fully equipped cruising superyacht displacing only 65 tons: two tons lighter than predicted,” explained Wally's president and CEO Luca Bassani.

“We succeeded in delivering a truly exceptional performance cruiser that accommodates in full comfort the owners who spend several months of the year on board.”

As well as the use of pre-preg carbon fibre throughout, advanced technologies and materials have also been used on the electrical system and the hydraulic systems, which can provide up to 350 bar of pressure.

The interior was built in blocks to achieve the maximum quality while reducing the weight. Designed by Wally and Luca Bassani it includes a forward owner’s suite with two large separate beds for comfort under sail. On top of the two en-suite double guest cabins there is a main saloon, while the four-person crew and service area features a galley, crew mess, two double cabins and engine room.

“As often happens with happy owners, Barong D is the larger evolution of their previous yachts, featuring similar style and deck and interior layouts,” Bassani added.

Auxiliary power comes from a single Cummins QSB6.7 diesel engine, giving Barong D a top speed under power of 13 knots and a cruising speed of 10 knots.

Other projects currently under development at the Italian yard include hull number four in the Wally Cento series and the upgraded WallyPower 52 dayboat.



Wally Yachts

( www.wally.com )

Lloyd Weft Luna 115m Refit

Pinned to the wall of the well-appointed captain’s office on board the 115 metre explorer yacht Luna is an ambitious plan for a world cruise, laid out in a series of printed sheets, with routes and ports of call marked in red. Included are some of the world’s finest cruising grounds — the Galápagos, Sea of Cortez, Alaska and the endless archipelagos of the Pacific.

Captain Lui Anphin catches me staring. “We’ve been planning it for a while,” says the native of Copenhagen, who has been with Luna since her launch in 2010. In all that time arguably the world’s most famous explorer yacht has done remarkably little exploring, instead sticking mostly to familiar cruising grounds in the Med.

But all that might finally be about to change. With new owners and fresh from a 14-month, €50 million refit, Luna is looking good — and ready to take on the world.

Originally envisioned as a more elegant version of 113 metre Le Grand Bleu, Luna, when launched, made headlines for two reasons: the celebrity of her first owner, Roman Abramovich, and in more specialist press for that long, low aft deck that sacrificed interior volume for sun worship. That famous pool, the biggest ever seen on a superyacht at the time, is still jaw-dropping, especially when empty and its full scale is revealed.

It was designer Frank Neubelt’s idea to devote so much space to outdoor living. “I wanted a real pool, and lots of relaxation zones for friends and family,” he says today.

Luna was bought by her current owners in 2014. They spent a season on board in the Med before releasing the yacht in October that year for an extensive refit that would wrap in her five-year survey.

The yacht's swimming pool is netted, the crew are busy washing the decks and superstructure, and canvas hides all the sunloungers, but the huge spaces that make Luna so special are impossible to cover up.

And even on this grey, overcast day in Gibraltar, her hull absolutely pings: flawless, faired and painted a special new colour christened “Luna Blue”. It’s a marked difference. The yacht’s first owner wanted to reinforce her rugged aesthetic by making a show of her plate seams and welds, but giving her a shiny new coat was the biggest item on the to-do list when Luna was laid up at German Dry Docks in Bremerhaven, northern Germany, in late 2014.

“The previous paint wasn’t very attractive,” says the owner’s representative. “Just a top coat over bare hull. Luna now has the most high-quality paint job to date on such a vessel. It’s a complete mirror finish.”

The work was done by local firm Thraki Yacht Painting and constitutes the biggest single change to the boat in its six-year life. It took 70-80 painters eight months to fill and fair more than 2,000 square metres of hull, while also refinishing Luna’s superstructure. But first the hull was sandblasted to remove any remnants of the old paint.

“We then applied more than 20 tonnes of filler,” says Thraki’s MD Ritvan Metso. “This was followed by two epoxy primers, a show coat and top coat.” The result is an uninterrupted shine as you look down the hull, with no blemishes or movement in the finish. “This is what Luna was missing,” adds the owner’s rep with clear pride.

Neubelt led the design team from German studio Newcruise in defining Luna’s exterior lines. He calls it a “boy cool” look — tough but elegant. It was the first major motor yacht project worked on by the German designer and remains the biggest.

Outdoor life, obviously, was key to the design and, of all the proposals put in front of Luna’s first owner, he was “most amazed by the idea to create a very open outer deck”, says the designer. “So we quit all the earlier concepts with lots of toys on board and I was free to create her style.”

The deck below might not be rammed with superyacht water toys but there is still plenty of room — in fact, more than you’d think. To port, two tender garages sit opposite a gym and behind all of this is Luna’s expansive beach club wrapping round a spa, with steam bath, plunge pool and sauna.

This whole area was changed extensively in the refit. Updated equipment from Technogym has been installed in Luna’s superyacht gym, alongside new mirrored panels lining the length of the space. “Gym equipment keeps changing — and we only like the best,” says the owner’s rep. The glass means you can fold down the huge 12-metre shell door and look out over the water without anyone seeing you sweating inside.

Conversely, the platform means it’s possible to do morning routines outside, with the water lapping almost at your feet. A further shell door opens behind and Luna’s transom door folds up, to create the feeling of a single, open, water-level space.

The teak throughout this area has been replaced, alongside a host of other cosmetic changes: new mosaic on the walls in the steam room, upgraded AV and a new pantry area to ease service. The sofa in the rearmost section of the beach club now faces backwards — with a view of the sea instead of a TV on the bulkhead, in place of which is now a beautiful fish-eye sculpture discovered in Greece on one of the yacht’s travels. “Who wants to see a huge TV in a beach club?” asks the rep. “Luna is a boat to relax on! There are 80 other TVs on board.”

Included in the new sofa design are drawers for storing shoes, the idea being that you board via the bathing platform, sit on the sofa, put your shoes in the drawer… “and relax”, he adds. Luna’s boarding steps have been modified, too: they’ve been opened up to allow guests to walk directly up from the tender, instead of being forced sideways, making it much safer, and easier for crew to assist guests.

Luna’s owner and his family sometimes take breakfast at the beach club dinette to port, a space they’re already planning to change in the next big yard period by adding a large new shell door on the port side — bringing the number of major openings in this space to six — and 18 portholes in the transom, to give a view and let in light even underway.

Beyond the superyacht's beach club, the entire lower deck is dedicated to Luna’s crew, who are well served with spacious cabins forward, all of which were upgraded with new upholstery, curtains and AV/IT. Further crew quarters are found on the deck below, but the main attraction here are the machinery spaces.

Big yachts such as Luna have large, impressive engine rooms, but this one stands apart, not just in the volume dedicated to housing the engines and electric motors, but in the polish applied to it. “It’s the most spotless engine room I’ve ever worked in,” reports chief engineer James Burden — the result of a fastidious owner who regularly visits the crew areas.

As a result, the chequerplate floor is polished once a week and you could shave in the cylinder heads. “We even painted the toolboxes the same colour as the engine to keep things neat,” he adds.

Luna’s seven generators output a total of 15,000hp and they power electric motors coupled to each shaft. “Diesel electric, in terms of operating a ship, is great,” says the chief. “It’s less real estate taken up, it’s less vibration, it’s more economical, it’s more flexible for the owner and it’s more flexible for us to operate.”

She’s got massive power — designed to nudge Luna through shallow ice — and can run at her full speed of 21 knots and still have one generator offline. With all generators engaged and running at full revs, Luna could power a town of 25,000 people. In the yard, the shafts were taken out for survey and maintenance, and seals and bearings were replaced, while air-con was added in a number of the working areas to improve conditions, among a host of other jobs.

The main hot work happened in the living spaces decks above. The lounge fronting Luna’s observation deck has always been a superb place to be when coming into a new port or anchorage, but it’s been made even better by an extended deck cut-out, creating an entirely new exterior seating area.

“You can now walk to both sides, relax or sleep on the sofa and use it for dining,” reveals the owner’s rep, who has spent considerable time on board Luna. “It was incredible being up there when coming into Cuba. The new exterior observation lounge was very useful.”

Other changes have been made to the rear of the bridge deck, with new extendable wind breaks installed to protect this main outdoor dining space when it’s blowing. The teak has been perfectly re-caulked all over the boat and the two helidecks are now clad in Future Teak from Bolidt, embellished with Luna’s name and logo.

Donald Starkey was the original interior designer for Luna but joined the project when the yacht was only about 70 per cent complete at its build yard of Lloyd Werft. He worked hard to impose himself on a boat mostly built and won some concessions — extending headroom throughout the living spaces and adding a dining room, which wasn’t on the original GA.

“I did this by subdividing the upper deck lounge on the starboard side,” he says. “I separated the lounge and dining room by a wall incorporating a fireplace, which can be appreciated from both sides.” The stone-panelled finish to this unit is contextual in an interior that leans heavily to the natural.

“My intention was to try and create an elegant but calm feeling, away from the hard-edged traditional glossy interiors,” he says. This extended to sourcing oak panels in Germany cut from large logs that could be sliced into 70cm veneers, to avoid too many joints. The panels were then wire-brushed to expose the deeper grain and stained pale.

Starkey’s original intention had been to lay the oak floor using antique 17th century beams, but was dissuaded by concerns about splintering and combustibility. Modern oak was used instead and “aged” to create the same effect, which extends throughout Luna and grounds the entire design.

The floor, it should be noted, is also an absolute pleasure to walk on. One of the quirkier design flourishes involves the main deck guest corridor on Luna, with its arched separations, which not only add visual interest to an otherwise straight corridor but also serve to hide watertight bulkhead divisions.

Six years on and Starkey’s interior is still pristine, thanks to an owner with a meticulous eye for imperfections and a crew dedicated to making sure there aren’t any. Some updating was done in Luna’s refit period, including the addition of new fabrics in the corridors and updates to all cabins, but the soul of Starkey’s design is very much intact.

And while the owner gets the pick of those cabins, with its huge views and access to a private terrace forward, it’s the guests that get the easiest access to Luna’s headline feature, through the guest corridor on the main deck that leads straight out on to the aft deck. It’s a proper playground and perfect for the family’s children to run around, in complete safety.

A new raised section of this deck, just aft of the pool, was added in Luna’s refit and helps create distinction on the massive platform. The area can be tented and is a great spot for “tea and fruit in the afternoon”, says the rep.

Throughout Luna’s 14-month refit, around 130 jobs were completed, ranging from the tiny (the installation of new wine fridges) to the tricky (the separation of the ballast tank system) but, taken as a whole, they have managed to improve on a classic.

Until now few people have ever seen inside Luna and, as for being featured in a magazine, forget it. But finally here’s proof of her pedigree — Luna has risen. And if all those plans pinned to the captain’s wall become actual, real-life passages, she’s coming to a port near you soon, wherever you are in the world.

Lloyd Werft

( www.lloydwerft.com )

Rossinavi 49mt Polaris

Polaris is the second in the powerful Prince Shark superyacht series from the Italian builder Rossinavi. On the outside, she closely resembles her predecessor, Param Jamuna IV, but her owner pushed the designers, architects and family-owned shipyard to achieve further refinements, particularly in terms of performance.

The Prince Shark concept was developed by Team for Design with naval architecture by Arrabito Naval Architects. Designer Enrico Gobbi’s dynamic and clean lines give the aluminium, semi-displacement Polaris a sporty and aggressive look.

Details recall commercial or military ships, such as the reversed pilothouse glass installed at a 45-degree angle, a style line echoed in port and starboard fashion plates and the supports for the fixed awning on Polaris’ sundeck.

Another goal for the series was to create well-proportioned volume that guarantees comfortable and spacious interiors within a superstructure sized to remain coherent with Polaris’ sleekness and especially to fit below the 500GT threshold.

Strong horizontal elements and stretched windows make Polaris appear longer than she really is but this streamlined look does not come at the expense of views. The extensive use of notches in the coamings in front of key windows, which reach nearly full height in the saloon and the owner’s suite, guarantee panoramic vistas and plenty of light on the main deck.

“All elements of this project have been carefully studied to obtain the optimal proportions that compose the yacht’s architecture,” says Gobbi. Polaris, even with three decks and a flying bridge, maintains harmonious volume, ensuring an elegant line, which is not so common in yachts of such volume, he adds. In recognition of her excellence, the yacht won the 2015 World Superyacht Awards class for 40-metre or above semi-displacement or planing three-deck motor yachts.

One of her best features is the large lounging and sunbathing area at the centre of the foredeck, a position that guarantees good views while Polarisis underway and privacy at anchor. The most impressive exterior area, however, is the flying bridge deck. An arch that incorporates large smoked-glass windows shields passengers from the wind and sun but allows them to enjoy optimal views from more than nine metres above the water.

The aft section of Polaris’ flying bridge is designed around a 3.6-metre superyacht spa pool. A recirculating waterfall from the louvred hardtop cascades down a glass panel separating the pool from the dining area, so that guests can enjoy the sound of water even if the sea, from this high vantage point, is too distant to be heard. The whole deck boasts details in crisp teak and stainless steel, while the pool bottom is lined with Murano glass tiles, a detail that reveals something about the designer’s proud Venetian origins.

The interior of Polaris features a compromise of contemporary influences with a dash of eclecticism stemming from the personal taste of the owner, a young entrepreneur. Precious materials convey timeless elegance and opulence. Varnished ebony, used primarily for the custom-made furniture, and other dark materials are found in combination with a light ivory-coloured maple and high-quality leathers in off-white.

The choice of materials creates a chiaroscuro enriched with marbles that give Polaris her distinct personality. Embossed and polished stainless-steel details used on the furniture and the walls, together with some deep colours, add a touch of modernity.

“We have worked intensely on the details with the entire team to make a welcoming and warm atmosphere [that is] luxurious and distinctive,” says Gobbi. “The fitting out of all areas plays an important role in giving Polarisher eclectic and exclusive style. Cottons, silks and velvets hail from Armani Casa’s textile collection. Decorative objects in Murano glass have been placed in prominent areas, where they are highlighted by means of a clever lighting system.

“Last but not least, a selection of fine paintings, including two rare works from the 18th century, confer importance and prestige on Polaris’ lobby area, ensuring a sophisticated welcome to the guests stepping on board.”

The main hallway offers an impressive welcome and guaranteed “wow”. Here, Gobbi left Venice to embrace the rigorous geometry of Swarovski’s Austrian glass artisans. A chandelier made of thousands of Swarovski crystals, three decks high, fills the space within Polaris’ superyacht staircase and projects awesome flashes of light onto the surrounding walls.

All these beautiful spaces and materials made the work of the naval architects a little more challenging. Giuseppe Arrabito, owner of Arrabito Naval Architects, explains what makes Polaris so complex. The owner wanted the most volume for this length, while remaining under the 500GT threshold.

Next, the full-beam decks, the enormous superyacht sundeck, the pool and the decor – including over nine tonnes of stone – added substantial weight, as did acoustic insulation, an advanced system of floating floors and the most complete array of state-of-the-art equipment and electronic entertainment systems available. Yet Polaris’ owner did not want to compromise on performance.

“[The owner] requested that we reach a maximum speed of 23 knots and a cruising speed of 16 to 17 knots and, weight notwithstanding, obtain optimum fuel consumption for long-range crossings,” says Arrabito. “This weight, much of it at the top, made it more difficult to comply with the performance and, above all, Polaris’ stability requirements, and mandated a very accurate and refined study of the hull and lines.”

He is justifiably proud that Polaris floated exactly on her lines at launch and that no fixed ballast was required to obtain correct load-line trim. Moreover, the yacht, with her two MTU 12V 4000 M93L engines creating 3,460 horsepower at 2,100rpm, exceeded requirements and reached a maximum speed of 24.3 knots during sea trials, which were undertaken in less than ideal conditions.

Param Jamuna IV topped out at 23 knots. The surveyor’s report noted that the tests were carried out in Force 4 sea and wind conditions with gusts up to 30 knots. The hull form also met the requirement of low fuel consumption. Fuel burn is only 90 litres per hour in total at a speed of nine to nine-and-a-half knots, giving a range of more than 4,800 nautical miles at this “transfer speed”. At the cruising speed of 17 knots, consumption is around 580 litres per hour, whereas pushing to full speed consumes around 1,300 litres per hour.

There are a few differences between the first and second Prince Shark that account for different performance results. In contrast to Hull No. 1, for instance, Polaris does not have a superyacht elevator and has one less cabin in the forepeak area. At full throttle heading into the sea, the surveyor noted the vessel “is particularly dry, showing a very good performance of the spray rail”.

Federico Rossi, COO of Rossinavi, says: “With Polaris, we have reached even better performance than on Param Jamuna IV by adopting various weight-saving measures.” He recounts with pleasure the sea trials conducted with RINA. “The yacht, going at 24 knots, had to turn at full radius and remain within a set heel range. We all grabbed on, expecting a big heel, and instead the incline was limited to two-and-a-half degrees.

“This performance is due to the hull form, which is straight at the bow and then widens quickly to provide lift and stability. As to the comfort level,Polaris has obtained the highest rating available in RINA’s comfort class, thanks to the yard’s vibration and noise-dampening techniques, with decibel numbers comparable to those of a displacement yacht.”

The next chapter will come with the third Prince Shark iteration, which is already under construction in a large waterfront shed that the Rossi family owns in an industrial area near Pisa, a few miles from Rossinavi’s Viareggio home base. No. 3 is being built in steel and is a full-displacement hull.

While the three Rossi brothers who founded this company began building yachts under their own name only a few years ago, they have worked with steel and aluminium materials since the 1970s. They constructed hulls and parts for other well-known shipyards in the Viareggio area of Italy, and later launched a series of passenger ferries.

Their office in Viareggio, which now employs two generations of Rossis, includes an engineering department that designs custom parts such as hatches, doors, hinges and accessories. One of the brothers, Paride, heads that department, while his nephew Federico, the COO, who also has an eye for design, has been instrumental in building a portfolio of enticing projects, including the Bahamas series which he created with Axis Design to appeal specifically to the US market.

“We are very pleased with the work done, including at Rossinavi and in particular with our relationship with [CEO] Claudio Rossi, who has been a reliable partner, passionate about his work,” says Polaris’ owner, embarking on his first cruise.

“Polaris has met all my expectations, be it in terms of exterior or interior design, and exceeded them in terms of performance. And she was delivered on time!”


Rossinavi

( www.rossinavi.it )

Heesen 70mt Galactica Super Nova

The largest Heesen superyacht ever built, 70 metre Galactica Super Nova, has been delivered to her owner, following four days of extensive testing in the North Sea.

This is not only the biggest superyacht built by the Dutch shipyard to date, but - with the benchmark of yachts entering the Top 100 Largest set at 78.3 metres - Galactica Super Nova comes in just a few metres under the world’s largest rankings.

Size, however, has little to do with this yacht as this yacht offers far more. The revolutionary Fast Displacement Hull Form (FDHF) technology by Van Oossanen Naval Architects and the addition of a third engine to power a booster jet, means Galactica Super Nova will be able to reach top speeds of more than 30 knots.

The design, drawn by Espen Oeino, and interior decor by Sinot Yacht Design is both an evolution of Heesen’s long experience in the superyacht sector and combines that pedigree into one incredible project.

Beyond size and speed is efficiency, and further more, luxury. Galactica Super Nova’s toys and tenders are housed in the garage located forward, which doubles as a beach club to bring owners and their guests much closer to the water.

Other key features include the 13,500 litre swimming pool on the main deck aft with contra flow system for swimming, a waterfall and integrated Jacuzzi - not forgetting the glass bottom which allows natural light to filter through to the beach club below.

Another feature, found forward on the main deck, is the touch-and-go helipad which doubles as an outdoor cinema, completing an enviable lifestyle which offers owners and guests the highest levels of luxury.

Twelve guests can be accommodated in absolute luxury across six stateroom with the master suite on the main deck forward, four guest cabins on the lower deck and a VIP found on the wheel house deck aft. All of this is enclosed in a beautiful Espen Oeino exterior which is built on an established engineering platform provided by Heesen in-house experts.

She will be undergoing extensive sea-trials in the North Sea before being delivered to her owners in May and journeying to Montenegro and the Mediterranean for the summer in time for her debut at the Monaco Yacht Show 2016.

Heesen Yachts

( www.heesenyachts.com )

Kusch Yachts 101mt I Dynasty

Building the most complex yacht in history was not what Richard Hein, founder of Monaco-based studio The A Group, originally intended, but with I Dynasty, that is exactly what he achieved.

Designing for a client who wanted to cruise regularly with more than 12 in his party, Hein faced a choice: design the 100-metre-plus motor yacht to Solas passenger ship rules or to the new Passenger Yacht Code (PYC), created specifically for yachts with 13 to 36 passengers and still in development.

To build to PYC would grant more design freedom but its regulations for safety and materials were a moving target. Realising this standard would be the wave of the future, Hein and his client took the road less travelled: I Dynasty is the first yacht delivered to full PYC certification without additional restrictions.

A bit of backstory on the project is useful. Besides being a naval architect and designer with The A Group, Hein was also a yacht builder, having served as president and equity partner in the Dutch yard Oceanco from 1992 to 2004. After selling his interest in the yard, Hein travelled extensively and discovered an affinity for Japan and its culture. He was impressed with the quality of Japanese commercial and patrol vessels and invested with a Japanese partner in a new manufacturing facility, opening an office in Tokyo for his project management company, VegaYachts.

Vega’s first contract was for an 86 metre yacht to be built in Japan. Just before construction was due to start, the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami struck, followed by the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster. “Besides the potential radiation contamination issue, Japan’s manufacturing efforts shifted almost overnight to rebuilding its infrastructure,” says Hein. “We had to seriously consider starting over outside Japan.”

The client, however, was not discouraged; quite the contrary. Not only did he ask Hein to engage a European shipyard, he asked him to enlarge the vessel. He was adamant that Hein would serve not only as the naval architect but that he and his team would be the conduit through which I Dynasty was built. In essence, VegaYachts was employed as owner’s representative and general contractor for a turnkey project that included Studio Massari as the interior designer.

“The owner had some clear ideas: creating a multi-generation yacht with high manoeuvrability and heavy displacement for continuous cruising and boarding in all seas, efficient propulsion to minimise carbon emission and lots of pools and direct water access. Other things he left up to us,” says Hein. By the time the design was complete it was clear that I Dynasty was going to have to meet the newer, more comprehensive rules of PYC 2012.

“Starting the project after the adoption of the 2012 rules gave us a higher standard than those yachts that laid keels before 2012,” says Hein. “We had the option of applying for exemptions but the owner felt that if there was a guide for building the safest possible yacht we should adhere to it, and I agreed. We all had to discover the consequences of implementing the new Passenger Yacht Code to the normal design and construction process.”

The last sentence speaks volumes. PYC’s impact was ubiquitous at the Peters Werft yard in Wewelsfleth, Germany, where Kusch Yachts was building I Dynasty. Insulation materials, the all-steel construction, the bridge wing stations’ arrangement and the number of stairway escape routes were all guided by the PYC’s demand for fire containment. In the unlikely event of a fire starting (given the restriction on flammable materials), it must be contained via fire doors, use of low-flame-spread surfaces and fire breaks or areas where non-combustible material such as stone, steel or A60 fire-rated glass separate two combustible materials.

Every interior area has a worst-case combustion heat load, and it’s up to the designer and builder to work out material trade-off to stay below each area’s allowable load. Hein notes that Lloyd’s Register and the Cayman Islands (flag state) worked closely in co-operation with the project team and Kusch to meet the PYC requirements for I Dynasty.

“I do not think it is possible for a designer to create a PYC yacht without involvement of a shipyard; it is just too complex a balancing act. It requires the designers, builder and engineers to be in a constant revision process to achieve the desired goal without compromising the appearance, the luxury or the liveability,” says Hein.

Visually, I Dynasty is a stunner but it is the amount of “hoop jumping” to meet the new code – with materials and finishes that either didn’t exist or were not in use on yachts prior to PYC – that makes her remarkable. Take, for example, a typical yacht design scheme that pairs pale leathers with the dark mahogany in the corridors: an impossibility with fire loading.

Rather than forego the elegance imparted by elaborate mahogany cornices, the project team found a supplier who could articulate the style using non-combustible plaster and faux wood paint. The fabric wall panels that designers typically rely on to cover large areas and/or absorb sound can’t be made fire retardant enough, but leather can, so beautiful stamped or woven leathers are used with abandon.

With 4,437 gross tonnes, I Dynasty offers her family tremendous interior volume and many special areas, such as a cinema, beach club and lower arrival lobby, sauna, hair salon, massage room, hammam, gym, dive centre with changing room, a forward-facing observation lounge, and main and upper saloons connected by a spectacular open staircase. Eleven cabins, including the owner’s suite and two VIPs, are concentrated on the main and upper decks.

Alessandro Massari, who designed the interior of the client’s three previous yachts, had the task of marrying The A Group’s contemporary exterior profile – with its outstanding use of glass – to an interior that honours classic design themes and a leitmotif of decorative floral elements. The owner asked for a cosy family yacht with “wow”.

Studio Massari chose warm honey-coloured woods, primarily anigre and madrone burr veneers, to form the background for stunning handmade marquetry that fronts the cabinets and built-in furniture on I Dynasty. The main saloon sole is patterned parquet because Massari believes it is more formal than carpet.

This saloon on I Dynasty is a multifunctional space aft of the dining saloon with several comfortable seating areas, including one around a fireplace, a games table to starboard and a library with a baby grand piano to port. Flanking the piano, a magnificent open staircase creates a tangible link to the upper saloon. “Together with Richard (Hein), we discussed how to deal with the number of family members cruising; that is why the two main saloons are directly connected,” says Massari.

“Part of the family could be downstairs while the rest is above engaged in a different activity entirely. It really is the heart of the yacht. The stairs minimise the feeling of being in two different spaces.” A custom five metre chandelier from Cenedese of Murano creates a waterfall of light.

The “wow” factor of I Dynasty’s décor is particularly evident in a fantastic stone foyer where dark Port Laurent marble recreates a design by Michelangelo across a field of white and Calacatta Gold marble. The light marble is the backbone of the staircase that wraps around a large glass elevator leading to the upper deck.

A wrought iron balustrade with gold-plated details takes up the floral motif. “It embraces you while climbing the stairs,” says Massari. Gold leaf appears throughout in accents and tray ceilings. While gold leaf itself is not low flame spread, the sealer is, according to Massari.

Each of the cabins on I Dynasty is a world unto itself with enormous space and rare marbles, some with powerful veining and striations, creating an unusual colour scheme. All of the guest cabins feature a backlit 3D oyster shell headboard with fan patterns mimicking the paving stones in Italian piazzas.

The mix of traditional and contemporary continues outdoors, where multiple dining areas, a covered cinema, pools and sundecks fore and aft, plus a float-in tender garage/salt-water pool, provide plenty of options for living at sea. Equally impressive are the spaces Hein dedicated to machinery, workshops, dry and cold stores, laundry, guest services and quarters for the 32-strong crew.

“From the beginning the stated goal was to design a very robust vessel built completely in steel to prevent dissimilar metal distortion while cruising,” says Hein. “Plate thicknesses in excess of that required by class were used to reduce distortion due to welding, thus minimising the use of expensive filler, while also adding a margin against future corrosion.

“From a technical point of view, our main goal was to maximise all engineering and construction solutions to prevent the unnecessary use of diesel power and related exhaust gas emissions.”

The diesel-electric powerplant on I Dynasty utilises a full package of Rolls-Royce equipment and five engines, with power generation limited strictly to electrical load demand, thus hindering unnecessary fuel consumption and inherent gas emissions. Huge particulate filters occupy an exhaust silo underneath the mast, allowing clean emissions at anchor or in port.

The yacht’s power management system is seamless and offers surge-free power with a clean supply from 690 to 110 volts. I Dynasty does not rely on battery banks for smoothing peak loads but on generators of variable sizes that start or stop automatically. As propulsion and hotel loads vary, the full range of operating scenarios can be covered efficiently. “This is an important achievement,” says Hein. “This isn’t about propulsion any more, it is power management.”

The wheelhouse on I Dynasty is a masterwork designed by Rolls-Royce and the client’s captain after he spent substantial time in the Rolls-Royce bridge simulator. It looks like an updated version of the bridge from Star Trek’s USS Enterprise. Two custom high-tech helm chairs slide back and forth on rails to suit the preferences of the helmsman. Each of the chair arms are fitted with controls and the ability to switch any combination of information displays to the centre LED screen.

There are also full control stations port and starboard on the console and, of course, wing stations outside. A large navigation area is behind the con to port with a monitoring station to starboard. The Global Maritime Distress and Safety System station and a night-time working area with night-vision-safe low-level illumination are aft of the bridge proper.

I Dynasty is highly manoeuvrable – she turns in her own length at 16 knots thanks to a pair of Rolls-Royce Azipulls. Used with the bow thruster, they provide I Dynasty with a full dynamic-positioning mode useful in deep water or fragile seabeds, as well as for positioning the tender side-boarding platform away from the wind and waves.

The naval architecture, engineering and exterior design also contribute to the owner’s demand for “wow”. The floodable 10 metre tender garage holds a custom Pascoe limo tender launched via a system engineered in collaboration with Kusch Yachts. When I Dynasty’s tender is deployed, the space becomes a huge pool deck with light and air also flowing from a 12.5 metre starboard-side shell door that opens to launch a Riva.

A brilliant piece of engineering allows the tender to clear the stern opening while maintaining a closed pool for children to swim in. To keep water from sloshing unpleasantly, a teak-planked slope aft dampens motion and allows water to spill back to the sea.

The exterior lines on I Dynasty are slick and fresh and the walkaround side decks are so large they invite placement of steamer chairs. Glass is both a feature and a structural element, with floor-to-ceiling windows on the main and upper decks capped by glass “shark fins”.

A signature attribute, they form a windbreak and a visual transition from the strong horizontal lines of the lower profile to the top of the mast. The A Group and Massari worked closely to design exterior living areas that, thanks to hidden glass doors and windows, are usable in all weather.

Although I Dynasty passed PYC certification with flying colours, Hein admits there are still parts of the code that make it challenging to meet owners’ expectations. For example, rules mandate additional crew and extra escape routes via stairs rather than ladders, which use considerable space in both owner and crew areas.

Hein does not take issue with the extra research and design, build costs, the eight mandated watertight zones on the two lower decks or the continuous double-bottom requirement. It’s that some of the rules demand materials that are yet to be developed to acceptable yacht standards, such as fireproof and waterproof exterior deckheads. It’s also the lack of transparency that leads to different interpretations of some of these rules by surveyors and flag states.

“At The A Group, we don’t just design, we design to build,” says Hein. “Designing to build to previously unknown rules has been a challenge for me as the naval architect and exterior stylist, and also as the owner’s representative and partner in the building process with Mark Dethlefs of Kusch Yachts. To accomplish this in three and a half years’ build time is, as I look back on it, more than we could have imagined possible.”

Kusch Yachts

( www.kusch-yachts.com )

Abeking & Rasmussen 81mt Romea

How do you do justice to the work that’s gone into making a superyacht? It’s a nearly impossible task, especially when the interior encompasses no fewer than 182 different finishes garnered from all over the world, as is the case on 81 metre Abeking & Rasmussen yacht Romea.

Take, for example, Romea’s dining table, a true work of art with a hand- carved base and a lacquered top. “The dining table is finished with a particular hard-wearing Japanese lacquer that was originally developed for the scabbard of Samurai swords,” says the interior designer, Terence Disdale.

Like everything else about the Samurai tradition — and really all things Japanese — the making of the sword’s scabbard was a fastidious affair, involving the sap of trees cured and applied following precisely timed steps to create (sometimes with the addition of silver or gold power) a light, resistant and precious lacquered finish.

“It is a very lengthy task to apply this lacquer as each of the twenty or so layers has to dry hard before the next is applied,” Disdale says. “To my knowledge this is the first time it was ever applied to such a large surface, which took many months. The effect relies on the final sanding, which means the finished effect can only be viewed when the table is completely done. Only at that stage can you fine-tune the other finishes in the room.” Carved oak panels, their grooves sanded by hand, echo the patterns on the table.

Many yachts with elaborate interiors have emerged from Germany’s family-owned Abeking & Rasmussen (A&R). Witness Amaryllis or Excellence V, each with Reymond Langton interiors, for instance; they both have an enormous amount of complex, beautifully executed details.

Another characteristic of the yachts launched at the Lemwerder shipyard on the Weser river in Lower Saxony is that they tend to be rather discreet, despite — or perhaps due to — their growing size.

As if to confirm this fact, the largest yacht yet delivered by A&R bears the name Secret. A Sam Sorgiovanni design, she left the yard in 2013 and her Jim Harris-designed interior has never been shown. Superyacht Romea’s identically sized predecessor, Kibo, was launched in 2014 and has also kept a low profile.

“We do seem to attract owners who seek privacy,” says Till von Krause, the yard’s director of sales. He says yacht clients appreciate that A&R is a family business and that they can speak directly to the company’s CEO, Hans Schaedla, who, in 2009, succeeded his father at the helm of the soon-to-be 100-year-old shipyard.

A little more visible than recent yachts to emerge from A&R, Romea made her world debut at the 2015 Monaco Yacht Show and is available to a rarefied group of clients able to afford its close to seven-figure weekly charter rate (once you factor in taxes and incidentals).

She is nonetheless a bit of an enigma. The owner’s representatives, Imperial Yachts, are reluctant to provide details on how the yacht came to be and the owners are, naturally, off-limits. Company representatives prefer to let the “oohs and ahhs” speak for themselves, and there were plenty of those during the well-choreographed show visits.

Romea will be among the largest yachts available for charter. Close to 269 feet in length, with an elaborate beach club encompassing a Finnish sauna and one of several media rooms, a beauty-dedicated area with massage room, walkaround decks that compare favorably to promenade decks on small cruise ships and an irreproachable, easygoing interior bathed in light, Romea will be a standout from the Mediterranean charter fleet that gathers at events such as the Monaco Grand Prix.

Imperial, with offices in Monaco and Moscow, prides itself on its professional and discreet service to its clients who seem to have in common the goal of building outstanding superyachts and keep themselves out of the limelight.

One of the first grand yachts that Imperial helped produce was Arkley, launched in 2009 at Lürssen, followed a year later by the Amels’ Bel Abri. The company works with the world’s leading shipyards and designers but also likes to keep close tabs on all of its projects.

“As owner’s representative and construction manager of Romea, Imperial installed a large team at the shipyard from day one, and every exterior and interior detail was supervised from the very start by Imperial in respect with the owner’s requests and budget,” says the company’s chairman, Evgeniy Kochman.

In this case, the company is also involved in managing the charter program and helped select the 23-member crew, carefully chosen and trained to offer a five-star or even six-star experience. They are assisted in this task by a logical and practical layout dedicating two decks to their quarters, galley, split-level engine room, garage, laundry and stores.

Imperial dismisses parallels to previous vessels. Involved from the get-go in the extensive specifications, the company stresses that Romea is a custom project whose elegance mirrors the owner’s good taste. “Romea clearly doesn’t look like any other superyacht; her interior and exterior layout are completely made to suit the owner’s requests,” Kochman says.

“The layout was selected by the owner in close collaboration with Terence Disdale and Imperial. It is built mainly to satisfy his requests while on board. Charter clients will recognise this process while living on board; every single element was designed to make your journey unforgettable.”

Disdale says one of the yacht’s strong points is the “practical layout that rotates from the central stairway leading through the decks up to the sun deck”. An elevator, clad in stainless steel details polished to a jewel finish — “You can’t imagine how much work we did on it,” says von Krause — provides an alternative to ascending the comfortable stairs to the top, where a private sun deck with Jacuzzi is located.

Privacy is also paramount in the owner’s area, which takes up about half of the upper level’s interior accommodation with a cabin for children, an ample study, identically sized his-and-hers baths, dressings and a spectacular bedroom. A privacy wall/headboard anchors the bed, which sits at the centre of wraparound windows offering views of a discreet terrace and the sea beyond. The owner’s guests certainly won’t feel shortchanged, their cabins vast, comfortable and enjoying a prime location on the main deck.

Despite imposing dimensions, no one space feels either too large or underutilised. Wide passages outside provide a sense of ease that is replicated inside with great headroom. Soothing colours and meticulously selected materials, including oak, leather, silk and stone, live in perfect harmony. While ever consistent, the décor is not repetitive. “Too much matching decoration from space to space will create a ‘corporate’ environment without any visual surprise,” says Disdale, who also avoided the “startling wow factor”.

Although the interior was developed in close consultation with the owners and their representatives, Disdale says, “The overall philosophy of the interior is not really a departure from our day-to-day mantra of avoiding glitz and visual ostentation in decoration.” The goals were to “create a calm environment, easy on the eye but including finishes and detail that entertain the eye as well as the mind,” and, Disdale adds, “above all, create an environment that functions as well as being aesthetically pleasing.”

There is a great sense of ease moving throughout the decks. To make room for a wide corridor enabling guests to get to their soundproofed cabins, the designers chose to “pinch” the space a bit at the bathroom level rather than taking away from the staterooms.

Shapes, sounds, lights, art and even smells all work in concert to envelop guests into an atmosphere of utmost comfort. Feet can also participate in the discovery of sensations, from thick silk carpets that surround the toes to round pebbles that massage the soles. And if you happen to be tall enough, you can also feel with the tip of your fingers the texture on the ceiling, created by a British artist.

Behind this sense of ease is an elaborate process of creation. Disdale, winner of Boat International Media’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014, has spanned the globe in search of new ideas and finishes that grace the interiors of several of the world’s most iconic yachts. Romea is only the second yacht he has designed to be built at A&R, but he’s already made his mark.

Von Krause, who visited the iconic design firm in Richmond, UK, and marvelled at the samples available for clients to peruse, shows a real appreciation for Disdale’s unique creative process, even if it may add a little to the complexity of building a superyacht. Von Krause estimates than no fewer than 250 trucks transported goods to and from the German yard when it came to outfitting the yacht.

“The logistics can become a challenge in production when the fitted furniture is made in Germany and shipped to South America to be finished with dried cow horn, lacquered and returned to the vessel,” says Disdale, “but that is typical of what we do in our constant search for new finishes.”

As for Imperial, what they sought to do was “simple: deliver a state-of-the-art motor yacht within time, costs and quality deadlines,” says Kochman. “And Imperial is delighted to confirm that we achieved successfully the task.” With art from all over the globe, Romea is truly out of this world but also remains very rooted.

Abeking & Rasmussen

( www.abeking.com )