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ISSUE 128 NOVEMBER 2011
6XSHU\DFKW TRUTH • OPINION
KNOWLEDGE • IDEAS
A N D E X P E R T I N D U S T R Y A N A LY S I S
5(3257 PEGASO
NUMPTIA
PAINTING WITH LIGHT
A visit to Freire Shipyard to meet the team. Plus: A close-up of her fiveperson diver-lockout VAS sub. Page 68
The owner talks about how the yacht has confirmed his faith and all the time invested in the project. Page 100
What must be considered during the lighting design process and who should be involved? Page 187
FORMERLY
THEYACHT The leading magazine for the design, construction, management, ownership & operation of luxury yachts
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7KH
6XSHU\DFKW
5(3257
FORMERLY
THEYACHT The leading magazine for the design, construction, management, ownership & operation of luxury yachts
report
Editor
Martin H Redmayne
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European Editor Justin Ratcliffe
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Asia Editor Captain Tork Buckley
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Pacific Editor Ellie Brade
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Business Editor Don Hoyt Gorman
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Superyacht Sailing Editor Jason Holtom
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Managing Editor Liggie Pelekani
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Assistant Editor Rebecca Dark
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News Editor Will Mathieson
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Chief Sub-Editor Dani Malone
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Designer & Production Manager Felicity Salmon
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Picture Editor Luke Sprague
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Contributors Robert Barron, Andrew Johansson, Eliot Kingsley, Wim C Koersvelt and John Roberts
Head of Digital Media John Mitchell
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Group Editor in Chief Martin H Redmayne
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Group Consultant Editor Captain Tork Buckley
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The Superyacht Report is printed on Lumiart, a FSC mixed credit paper, which is an elemental chlorine free (ECF) fibre sourced from well managed forests. The paper manufacturer is ISO14001 & 9001 certified. The printers of The Superyacht Report are also ISO 14001 certified.
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Chairman
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Personal Assistant to the Chairman Olivia Rae
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Account Director
08/02/2011 11:35
Roland Archdall
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Account Director
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Account Manager – Italy Luciano Aglioni
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Account Manager
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Account Manager
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Cover image: 70m Numptia built in Viareggio by Rossinavi in 2011. Naval architecture by Axis Group Yacht Design. See report page 100.
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[email protected] Tel: +44 207 924 4004 and ask to speak to Subscriptions. Your subscription includes: 10 issues of The Superyacht Report, 9 issues of The Crew Report, special yacht reports throughout the year, plus full access to SuperyachtNews.com. Cost to subscribe for one year: UK: £60.00 Europe: £75.00 ROW: £90.00 For subscription information contact:
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[email protected] www.superyachtreportgroup.com ISSN 897878 20 The Superyacht Report is published by TRP Magazines Ltd Copyright © TRP Magazines Ltd 2011. All Rights Reserved. TRP Magazines is a division of The Redmayne Publishing Company. The entire contents are protected by copyright Great Britain and by the Universal Copyright convention. Material may be reproduced with prior arrangement and with due acknowledgement to TRP Magazines Ltd. Great care has been taken throughout the magazine to be accurate, but the publisher cannot accept any responsibility for any errors or omissions which may occur.
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THE SUPERYACHT REPORT
contents FEATUR ES 68
100
147
132
FEATURES 47
Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show Preview
Ahead of FLIBS TSR presents a selection of the products and services currently available on the US market.
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Pegaso
TSR was invited to Freire Shipyard in Vigo, Spain, to meet the team behind the secretive project. Plus: The Black Submarine A close-up of the five-person diverlockout VAS sub that Pegaso’s owner is so passionate about.
100 Numptia A yacht that has drawn accolades throughout the industry, while
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confirming the owner’s faith and all the time he invested in the project. He talked about the experience with TSR’s Jason Holtom.
132 My Cup Runneth Over Sailing is a passion, and any opportunity to participate is rarely passed up. When Perini Navi’s CEO, Giancarlo Ragnetti, sends a personal invitation to sail at the 2011 Perini Navi Cup in Porto Cervo, it’s impossible to say no. MHR reports.
147 Endeavour For the best part of the past two years the J-Class JK4, better known as Endeavour, has been out of the public eye, undergoing a major refit at Yachting Developments in
New Zealand. Twenty-one years after her restoration at Royal Huisman, the iconic yacht was in need of a major refit to upgrade her systems and ensure her smooth running over the coming 20 years. Ellie Brade reports.
162 Toby Walker Interview The new managing director of Dubois Yachts sat down with TSR to discuss how he made the move from Camper & Nicholsons International, his plans for growing sales, charter and management services, the question of ethics in the industry, and his wish for a return to Great British yachtbuilding.
THE SUPERYACHT REPORT
contents
REGULARS, INSI G H T & F O C U S – D E S I G N & L I G H T I N G REGULARS 27
INSIGHT
Business News
169 Predictive Asset
Fleet News
Using predictive analysis techniques may reduce equipment failure risks without ‘going overboard’ on preventative maintenance, writes Eliot Kingsley.
Superyacht news and updates from across the global industry.
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Up-to-date launches, deliveries and data on the global superyacht fleet. For more information on fleet intelligence and superyacht market data, visit superyachtintelligence.com.
COLUMNS 17
Editor’s Comment
Justin Ratcliffe, our European editor, who also heads up TSR’s sister publication, SuperyachtDesign, takes the helm at the editorial this month and offers readers a comprehensive and thoughtful look at all matters ‘design’.
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US Column: the America’s Cup 2013
With high-profile challenger series all over the globe between now and the America’s Cup finals in 2013, we must seize a wonderful business opportunity. MHR explains.
Management
FOCUS – DESIGN & LIGHTING 187 Painting with Light
What needs to be considered during the design process and who should be involved? Lighting experts shed some light on the topic.
177 Finance from a Yacht
Builder’s Perspective
Wim C Koersvelt asks some important questions: What is the impact of new financial circumstances on new yacht-buying behaviour? Are builders looking at potential buyers in a different way? And what alternative financing possibilities may develop?
181 Scrapping Uniform
Waste
Robert Barron examines the findings of several years’ on-site research which suggests that crew uniforms are the largest form of waste from a financial and timespent standpoint on any given superyacht.
223 Stern Words:
Why Ignorance is No Longer Bliss
We must counter the lack of understanding that governments, international media and the general public have of the superyacht industry.
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Editor’s comment DESIGN IS THE KEY With this issue of The Superyacht Report dedicated to design, it has fallen to me as editor of SuperyachtDesign to offer a few introductory comments. It’s never easy to talk about design, in the sense of styling, as so much depends on subjective questions of taste. Mark Stumer of Mojo Stumer Associates, the Long Island firm of architects behind the interior design of Heesen’s 50m Sky last year (and working on a new 51m displacement yacht in build in Oss), highlighted this very fact in a recent interview for SuperyachtDesign: “You can’t put a judgement on an aesthetic, as long as whoever has carried it out has done it well,” he announced. “There are bad houses and there are bad boats. There are great houses and there are great boats. There are great contemporary boats and there are great classic boats. I tend to lean towards the excitement of contemporary, but that doesn’t mean a well-designed classic boat can’t be exciting. I do find, though, that there is a lot more cutting-edge modernism in architecture than there is in yacht design.” Stumer raises two relevant issues here: what constitutes good design, and are today’s yacht designers too entrenched in the nautical aesthetics of yesteryear? In June 2008, an article entitled ‘What is good design?’ was posted on The New York Times website. “The stock answer is that good design is generally a combination of different qualities – what it does, what it looks like, and so on,” the article began, “but as our expectations of design change, so do those qualities and the relationship between them… Whatever [the object] is, and whatever other great
qualities it has, it can’t be well designed if it doesn’t do something useful.” The first part of this statement is undeniable, but I disagree with the last sentence. Instead, an object must fulfil its prescribed function – useful or not – efficiently. We all know there is nothing useful as such about a superyacht. Indeed, in our Vertigo special report featured in issue 127 of The Superyacht Report, Ed Dubois likened owning a superyacht to owning a piece of art:
Justin Ratcliffe, our European editor, who also heads up TSR’s sister publication, SuperyachtDesign, takes the helm at the editorial this month and offers readers a comprehensive and thoughtful look at all matters ‘design’.
The belief that new is better has been around a long time, but few established designers find anything more annoying than innovation for its own sake. “There’s no logical excuse for buying a superyacht. It’s a bit like buying art – you just fall in love with it. But a boat has to actually work and they are complicated bits of kit, as we know. If stuff goes wrong it’s really annoying, even if you’re the wealthiest guy in the world, and you can fall out of love with it very quickly.” Exterior or interior styling is secondary to this functional aspect, but not very far behind. After all, an owner usually wants to have an idea of what his or her yacht will look like before knowing how it will perform, and who wants to own an efficient but ugly yacht? This is where the tricky subject of aesthetics comes in. The belief that new is better has been around a long time, but few established designers find anything more annoying than innovation for its own sake, which often results in unbuildable concept projects. >>
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EDITOR’S COMMENT
In Q3 of SuperyachtDesign I wrote that: “Innovation also carries an undertone of financial return and market performance expectation” – two notions of immediate relevance to the superyacht industry. Dubois puts it another way by focusing on valueto-cost ratio: “In other words, what you pay for it and what you can get when you sell it.” Quality and performance are both factors, but so too is the notion of timeless good looks. Achieving this Holy Grail of yacht design requires a very delicate balance between cutting-edge and conservative solutions. Many of the most successful yachts, from both a design and commercial perspective, have been those that subtly challenge our preconceived notions, not blow them out of the water – the same reason why Marcel Breuer’s chairs and Dieter Rams’ electrical products for Braun look as new today as they did in the 1920s and ‘50s.
Efficiency has to be a primary objective at every stage of the development and build process. “Our faith in the new has also been shaken by environmental concerns,” continued The New York Times piece. “What’s the point of designing something gorgeous and useful if it makes us feel guilty because we know that it’s ethically or environmentally irresponsible? Once such concerns were dismissed as the hang-ups of a cranky minority. Not now.” It’s important to remember this was written in 2008 before the financial crisis and the consequent soul-searching that has affected so many luxury markets, the yachting industry among them. Again, most commentators would agree there is no such thing as a ‘green’ superyacht, even a sailing superyacht. But if they are not to be consigned to the Darwinian dustbin like so many glorious yet ultimately ill-adapted dinosaurs, they will have to meet with both owner and public approval. Design is the key. Efficiency has to be a primary objective at every stage of the development and build process. “How can we consider something to be well designed unless we feel confident about the way it was designed and made, and will eventually be disposed of?” to quote The New York Times one last time. This is as relevant to a superyacht as it is to a biodegradable supermarket bag – more so, in fact, when you consider the immense resources that go into making it. The process is under way and there are many developing technologies that shipyards have already appropriated or are looking into to reduce energy consumption and emissions. While The New York Times journalist was penning her online piece in 2008, 58m S/Y Ethereal was approaching
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editor’s comment/READERS’ FEEDBACK
completion at the Royal Huisman yard in Vollenhove. When Bill Joy commissioned the yacht with a hull drawn by Ron Holland and faired to ensure the lowest possible drag and a hybrid electro-mechanical propulsion system that can recharge her lithiumpolymer battery bank whilst under sail rather than relying on generators, he might have been considered one of the “cranky minority”, albeit a very wealthy one. Instead, he was sticking his neck out and leading the way
as one of a new breed of forwardthinking and responsible owners. The latest example of this trend was 55m Galileo G, the second in the Picchiotti Vitruvius motoryacht series launched last July, which features in issue 127 of The Superyacht Report. Built under the 500gt threshold to Ice Class with the slippery Briand Optimized Stretched (BOS®) hull form, the yacht combines timeless good looks with efficient design.
The continued evolution of superyacht design depends on innovations – technological, conceptual and cogitative – such as these. Darwinian theory is based on the notion of ‘survival of the fittest’, which is just another way of saying ‘survival of the most efficient’. g To comment on this article, email
[email protected] with subject: Editor’s comment
Readers’ feedback Our mailbox here at TSR is overflowing this month, and we’ve published a selection of letters and responses to our articles from industry professionals around the world. History repeats itself Some 15 years ago, I was working in a different industry. Our field of work was equally highly complex and interdependent and we too frequently got kicked in the teeth by all sorts of ‘experts’ who couldn’t grasp the impact of their ‘messing about’ on the final success and longevity of each project, product and the quality of our workmanship. Similar to the landscape of the yacht industry today, we were confronted with trendy ‘one-stop shops’, IT lopsided logistic service companies, corporate (industrial) designers, ‘Ariba’ networks etc. that mushroomed during the late ’90s. Many of them lacked the (financial) resources and stamina to successfully bridge the many gaps between the supplier and the client. Subsequently, our industry regularly had to fight off all sorts of unjustified claims and quality issues that would never have occurred if the (king) client or his agent had ‘properly listened’ in the first place and had understood and respected the fundamentals of
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our trade. Of course we too had to cope with bombastic egos of designers that actually had never dealt with our industry before, yet were proudly nominated by our clients. Their fantastic, costly designs frequently had to be (partly) abandoned at some given stage of the project, as they collided with ergonomics, human rights and other serious issues and simply could not be adapted to the actual task (but caused budgets to explode).
The golden rule: fullest protection of the buyer’s interest and total transparency on our retainer (with or without cap). Consequently, I initiated a new business plan and with the assistance of a number of (equally annoyed) European professionals from key areas of the industry I (we) began to consult and coach projects for corporate clients, whilst adhering to the fundamentals of the industry we knew so well. The golden rule: fullest protection of the buyer’s interest and total transparency on our retainer (with or without cap). The initial step for us was to create a watertight script of requirements (that is, preparation for tender with technical and service/performance specs), duly signed by the client.
After that we screened the market and invited for bids and offers followed by further in-depth evaluations etc. It goes without saying that our skilled team applied modern project management methods, assisted with the necessary technical know-how and legal advice, benefited from profound procurement knowledge and seasoned negotiating tactics. The underlying formula to secure a solid client ROI was fairly simple: PC+MC=TC (project costs + management costs = total costs). The transparency of our business approach made it easy for the client to follow how his money was being spent, and respectively how we managed to significantly reduce costs and stay below budget. History repeats itself, or so it seems, and based on my commercial shipping genes and after having actively spent almost 10 years in the fascinating yachting industry, I am about to professionally recreate the same ‘missing link’ business scheme again. Your Stern Words in issues 124 and 125 are the ‘proof of the pie’ and hence I look forward to discussing this ever so up-to-date issue with you in the near future. John Günther Be Corporate! Consulting Zurich
>>
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readers’ feedback
On ‘Facing The Facts’ The article Stern Words in issue 126, page 171, presents a nice synopsis of the industry. The semi-custom vessels/brands need liquidity in their respective markets for them to be able to build new.
With regards to visitors at shows, there needs to be a concierge mentality with everyone from baristas to builders, vendors and brokers, and your point of builders or brokers turning away potential clients at the passerelle during a show is indicative of an industry-wide departure from a common sense, ethical, long-term approach to fostering a fun, positive, business environment that will grow and sustain. Keep up the forward-thinking approach, as a blue sport coat and a large exhibit is only an accessory to a fast changing industry.
Philip Purcell
Vice-President,
Westport Yachts Fort Lauderdale
LY2 >12 PAX Exemption – Is it Really Understood? There is an exemption allowed under MCA LY2 (Annexe 5. 3.2.2.) whereby a private yacht may carry more than 12 passengers and less than 36 under certain criteria. The exact text is as follows: “For Coded vessels while operating as pleasure vessels, the MCA may issue an exemption to regulations applicable to UK passenger ships subject to a maximum of 36 guests being carried, sufficient life-saving appliances, and a Safe Manning Document (including vessels under 500GT) being in force. Applications will be considered on a case-by-case, and voyage-by-voyage basis.” As this exemption was developed by the MCA and implemented within the LY2 Code, I asked them for clarification on how the exemption was granted. Their answer was as follows: • An LY2 certificate is only valid for the carriage of 12 passengers maximum; • The exemption to which you refer is very rarely granted, and then only upon individual application. A considered case must be submitted for each application, and will only be considered within anchorages or sheltered waters to a max of 36 guests.
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It is not granted for seagoing voyages; • So, in practice, this is only for dinner parties or similar in safe locations. It is not an excuse to extend the number of permitted guests; • A successful application requires, as a prerequisite that all LY2 requirements are current, not just constructional aspects; • Unless a Passenger Ship Certificate is in force, carriage of more than 12 passengers is illegal and renders the insurance invalid. The owner and captain would be liable to prosecution; • Hours of work and rest regulations are applicable to charter yachts; • Flag State or Port State should be advised of any known breaches, so that relevant enforcement action may be undertaken.
The wording of the exemption and the interpretation of it by REG Flag States and industry professionals have led to a situation of confusion and potential illegality... I quizzed the MCA on the term ‘voyage-by-voyage basis’ which seems to contradict the statement above. The reply was: “Several years ago, MCA HQ made the ruling that seagoing voyages were not permitted, and this exemption could only be applied within sheltered waters or at anchor”. From recent experiences it is clear that the MCA has not communicated this in any effective way to REG or industry, as the following would suggest: • Management companies with a poor understanding of the exemption and the need for a vessel applying/ operating under such exemption to comply with all the requirements of LY2 including the need for SMC and ISSC, hours of work and rest, etc. – maybe not wholly their fault as Flag States have not issued any formal guidance on this; however, the inclusion of ‘Coded Vessel’ within the exemption should be sufficient notice of full compliance;
• REG Flag States who have been ambiguous in their own interpretation and application of the rule, whereby the exemption has been granted almost as a norm in the past, and vessels are allowed to carry excess passengers whilst underway; • Poor policing by the Flag State to ensure the vessel properly complies with all the requirements of LY2; • Private yachts carrying more than 12 PAX as the ‘norm’; • Owners with a false impression that they are at liberty to carry more than 12 guests as and when they wish – as they would have been advised by various industry professionals, captains, management companies, brokers and shipyards, one can only assume that they have been deliberately, or unintentionally through lack of understanding, been misled; either case is not a justifiable excuse with an investment in such a high value asset and the creation of false expectations; • Private yachts being built with capacity to carry more than 12 passengers. Some of this additional capacity is for staff, which is allowed, providing they are listed as crew not normally part of the crew complement, undertake onboard familiarisation as required by STCW 95 and are not assigned a duty on the muster list. However, the fact that many of the additional capacity is by way of guest cabins and pullman berths it would imply that the carriage of staff is not the primary objective. Given that SOLAS and UK conventions are implicit in their categorisation of a passenger vessel as one that carries more than 12 passengers, the way this exemption is being applied and issued is a concern. By their own comments the MCA is allowing this exemption to be applied to ‘static’ events providing other criteria have been met. However, this has not been communicated effectively. The wording of the exemption and the interpretation of it by REG Flag States and industry professionals have led to a situation of confusion and potential illegality – in the event of a serious accident or incident the subsequent investigation could lead to serious ramifications for
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READERS’ FEEDBACK
the owner, captain, management company and industry. There needs to be urgent clarification and consistency in the application of this rule and that it complies not only with Flag, but also international and littoral legislation; the latter is not effectively considered when the exemptions are granted. In addition, owners and industry professionals must be properly informed and educated on this rule. Anonymous To read responses to this letter from the MCA, Cayman Registry and various managment companies, please visit the crewreport.com/over12pax-
Gilmour Spot-on The article by Barry Gilmour, issue 126, page 139, is one of the most professional articles I have ever read on a topic that is actually not known to most of the people dealing with yachting and such issues.
There are a lot of yachts presently ‘onservice’ that need to be examined more closely in order to understand their history in the case of a valuation. In the yachting industry, there are a lot of yachts presently ‘on-service’ that need to be examined more closely in order to understand their history in the case of a valuation. I am referring to yachts that have been built at yards which have been sold, acquired, have changed hands or become bankrupt, that have actually been very well known during their time, but are no longer spoken about or written about as magazines, related papers or people (brokers, younger ones mostly!) have no idea of them. In this case, I am not sure if the valuator
does any hard digging in order to find out the roots of an old lady (yacht) who, at the end, would give a penny to tell her story, especially if the buyers (mostly) have no idea about the designers, yard, reputation, year of build, LOA, LBB, engine type, canoe stern and heavy displacement, etc. But saying that, even if a valuator put all the parameters down for a yacht (for example) built in 1988, classed, perfectly maintained in tip-top condition and gave a price/value of X million euros, who can be convinced to take this yacht or another with the same value (less or more in other parameters)? What I’m saying is that I believe that in the end, the prospective buyer would definitely include the aesthetic factor in the parameters, which is definitely one of the factors in an evaluation. Elias P Tsoukalas Athens, Greece To have your say, please send your letters to
[email protected]
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SuperyachtNews.com SuperyachtIndex.com
Business news Superyacht news and industry updates from around the world. Visit superyachtnews.com for the latest news and reports.
‘Big Five’ in talks to form new industry body This year’s Monaco Yacht Show was a hive of activity, with the major yacht brokers vying for space, visibility and supremacy. Some of the smaller houses struggled for recognition amongst the myriad of large yachts on display for sale by the ‘big five’. Burgess, Edmiston, Ocean Independence, Fraser Yachts and Camper & Nicholsons all rose to the challenge of bringing the best fleet to the show.
The new RS Global Building is open for business. RS Global was awarded the 12-year concession to renovate and manage the building, located within the STP shipyard, which will focus on businesses in the superyacht refit industry. With over 3,000sqm of space, the building features 24 offices and nine workshops, each with private bathroom facilities. In addition, the building features its own restaurant, access for the disabled, WiFi access, solar-powered hot water, sound insulation, telecommunications exchange and reception area.
This position of strength is taking a new twist in 2011, and our sources suggest that changes are afoot in the brokerage arena. With such a dominant position established by the ‘big five’, discussions are underway about a planned new association for the brokerage community, which is anticipated to be announced soon. The Mediterranean Yacht Brokers Association (MYBA) has, for many years, been the voice and body of power representing the interests of the professional brokerage community, primarily in Europe, and more recently, internationally. MYBA sets out in its objectives, among other things, their policies as an industry association that delivers credible monitoring of professional behaviour and business practices in the sales and purchase arena, with commissions, contracts and communications forming a key part of their remit. However, we have heard on the show waves, that the ‘big five’ are considering a move to create a new association under the acronym LYBRA – Large Yacht Brokers Association. Our sources tell us that the bigger brokerage houses have considered this move for some time and feel that with the arrival of associations like SYBAss (the Superyacht Builders Association, an elite body of the most credible shipyards in the market focused on building yachts over 40m) the time is right to create a similarly professional body to represent the interests
RS Global Building officially opens
Italian refit association launches of leading brokers who handle the majority of the biggest and finest tonnage. We expect to know more in the coming weeks or months, and we anticipate an interesting reaction from the smaller brokerage houses, with some significant changes to the way the market works. One source has indicated that central agency listings may in fact change, whereby the yacht listed under a LYBRA member may only be available for charter directly through a LYBRA broker; it will be an interesting development for the market. We hope to speak to the marketmakers in due course to obtain a clearer understanding of their plans, and we will continue to report on the latest developments as they happen. Image: Monaco Yacht Show
‘Marea’, an association of Italian companies has been established, offering a comprehensive range of refit services for superyachts. Based in Livorno and Viareggio, ‘Marea’ will offer yachts a comprehensive range of services from its nine partner organisations, including resolution of design or construction problems, emergency repair work, maintenance work and extensive refits such as structural modifications and new interior design. The association will be managed by design and consultation company Studio Scanu.
MHR
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business news
Victoria International Marina plans closer to completion
Plans to construct a luxury superyacht marina at Victoria Harbour, Vancouver Island, have received a boost as Victoria’s Mayor and Council unanimously approved a crucial development permit. Two buildings that will sit either side of the now reduced 29-slip moorage marina have been granted the permits. It comes after two recent milestones were achieved in the permit process, with the vital concurrence of local First Nations gained in March and approval for the seabed lease occurring in June 2011. The project is due for completion in Spring 2012.
Yacht Concierge Club launched in Cannes
The Yachtique Concierge Club has been created to provide Azimut-Benetti yacht owners with a multi-lingual support team available to look after their on- and off-the-water requirements. The support team will be available to members around the clock, offering assistance and advice in four key areas: bookings and reservations, marine experts, deliveries and member discounts. The team specialises in booking five-star luxury accommodation and marine concierge services, as well as restaurants, taxis, flights, beauticians, golf courses and babysitters, among other services. Yachtique has a stable of maritime professionals it can call on to provide expert advice to a yacht, as well as delivering relevant updates such as weather forecasts, sea conditions, navigation, itineraries, local advice, medical information, radio frequencies and dealing with other questions or issues that may arise.
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Temporary closure of Derecktor’s Connecticut yard SuperyachtNews.com spoke to Derecktor’s Director of Yacht Service Sales, James Brewer, who shed some light on local news reports that Derecktor is poised to close its Bridgeport, Connecticut, yard. The move is said to be an attempt to streamline operations and reduce the company’s financial burden. The closure would not be permanent, and would instead temporarily decrease Derecktor’s wage bill and operating costs. Brewer acknowledged the central role that America’s faltering economy had played, stifling the growth of not only Derecktor but also many of their US competitors. The temporary closure would, he said, alleviate the financial strain, but he was quick to reiterate that any closure would not become permanent. This, however, is difficult to guarantee, as history demonstrates; after all, a dormant operation is far easier to wrap up than a functioning facility. Brewer, though, pointed to the strength of Bridgeport’s sister yards as evidence of Derecktor’s robustness and resolve to continue trading. Why then has the Connecticut facility borne the brunt of a sluggish US market? “We deal in a different market up there,” Brewer said. “It’s a yacht yard exclusively; the Florida yard is seasonal and we’ve
had a pretty strong summer. The New York yard too, is doing OK. Connecticut finished Cakewalk and that job probably insulated us for two years of the recession. However, we came out of Cakewalk with no new build contracts.” As Brewer affirmed, new build contracts in the US are few in number these days and Derecktor has struggled to operate at the capacity that the construction of Cakewalk demanded. Instead the company has been surviving on commercial service work, but the reality is that companies are operating on the ‘bare necessities’. Consequently, “There hasn’t been enough business to sustain the sort of workforce that we had for Cakewalk; it’s been a pretty dry season for us.” The decision has yet to be finalised and executives are considering various options. A temporary shutdown, Brewer said, would only facilitate the restructuring of the yard’s business model, ensuring its renewed prosperity upon opening. Furthermore, he said that no specific timeframe had been placed on a decision and referred to Paul Derecktor’s public statement that, “We’re not planning on leaving Connecticut”. Images courtesy of Derecktor Will Mathieson
Derecktor‘s Bridgeport, Connecticut, yard is poised to shut down temporarily, but sister yards in florida & New york (inset) are still going strong.
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SuperyachtNews.com
WORK BEGINS ON NEW MULDER SHIPYARD SITE
Dutch yard Mulder has begun work on its new shipyard site. Totalling 7,000sqm, the new yard will be located at Zoeterwoude-Rijndijk, 10km from the existing Mulder facility in Voorschoten. The new yard will allow Mulder to build yachts of 30m and above, specifically focusing on the refit and construction of yachts between 18m and 40m. The current yard will then focus on yachts up to 18m. The facility will have two building halls: the first will have two dry docks of 55m x 13m and the second will be able to accommodate four yachts up to 30m. The site will also incorporate a 100T lift and office building. Anco Kok, marketing manager for Mulder, explained that the new site was demonstrative of the company’s resilience and ambition: “We are building for the future and it gives us the possibility to grow,” he said. The new site will be operational by the end of 2012, by which time the project will have been almost two years in the making. During this time, the industry has faced challenges in the form of stuttering growth and issues with customer demand. However, Kok feels that quality will continue to shine through, and sees the new site as proof that Mulder has not only weathered the storm, but also flourished: “We need the space because we’ve had requests for bigger yachts; we have two under construction at the moment and we expect that to grow in the future. People are not making decisions at the moment because of all the problems with the Eurozone…we had an upturn last year and then it fell slightly again, but at some point the economy is sure to recover.” Image courtesy of Mulder Ellie Brade & Will Mathieson
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BUSINESS NEWS
CANNES FIRST STOP FOR HOLLAND YACHT EXPERIENCE The Holland Yacht Experience, a pioneering business that showcases the best of Dutch yacht building and marine services under one roof, has opened an office complex on the main boulevard of Cannes, La Croisette, in the redeveloped harbour of Port Canto. There are five companies currently participating: Mulder shipyard, Balk, Van der Vliet Quality Yachts, Wayer Wayer and Arie de Boom Marine, who will offer clients the ability to have their boat refitted, order maintenance activities, put their yacht on the market or request a berth.
OYSTER GROUP TO OPEN PALMA FACILITY Oyster Group has announced that it will establish a Mediterranean headquarters in Palma de Mallorca to support the fleet of superyachts either refitted or rebuilt by its subsidiary, Southampton Yacht Services. A team of four comprising a broker, a salesperson, a charter manager and an after-sales manager will initially staff the facility. Oyster already conducts small-scale refits in Palma, but the aim is to be able to perform more substantial works without the need for owners to travel to the UK.
SPANISH MATRICULATION TAX ON VESSELS DECLARED UNLAWFUL Following months of legal wrangling between tax authorities on the mainland and the Canary Islands ship registry, the European Commission has intervened on the controversial Matriculation Tax issue that has engulfed the Spanish nautical industry in recent months. In a decision that will delight yachtsmen and service providers alike, the Commission has deemed the taxation of charter vessels from other EU registries unlawful, as it infringes upon the principle of the freedom of provision of services, as outlined by the EU Court of Justice. Commissioner Algirdas Semeta announced at a press conference that any future rate of taxation should be proportional to the duration of use. Spanish tax authorities have already responded to the ruling, outlining their justification for the tax, and they are now awaiting the Commission’s response, which will identify why it considers Spain to have failed in its obligations as an EU member. The issue was brought to the Commission’s attention in the form of an official complaint by MEP Rosa Estaràs, a member of Partido Popular, the centre-right party tipped to take power in the upcoming Spanish election. Estaràs said of the tax: “[It] prevents the development of charter yacht activity in Spain and means they are not on an equal footing with the rest of the EU. [It also] violates the principles of freedom of movement of persons, and freedom to provide services to maritime transport.” This view was echoed by the President of the Chamber of Commerce for Mallorca, Joan Gual de Torrella, who claimed that the tax has been very damaging for a type of tourism that is potentially very lucrative for the local economy whilst stunting the growth of companies involved in the construction and maintenance of yachts in Spain. Many in the industry have welcomed the news including Mike Sizeland, project engineer at Blue Ocean Project Management and Engineering, who said:
“This progress is the result of hard work from the Association of Nautical Businesses Baleares (Asociación de Empresas Náuticas de Baleares), of which we are a member; they have been pushing awareness and lobbying to try and resolve this issue that is hurting local businesses and tourism. “With elections approaching many are hoping for a change in government, which then may be more proactive in solving this problem, and can therefore open up the market for large charter yachts, which presently don’t want to risk coming here.” Alex Chumillas of Barcelona Tax and Law explained the legal idiosyncrasies that have triggered the debate: “The Matriculation Tax is not strictly speaking against European law, as it is a non-harmonised tax and Spain has the right to apply it. (This is supported among others by the response given by the EU Parliament in June 2005 – Petition 0008/2001.) On the other hand, when considering the Matriculation Tax on charter activity, we should say that it infringes the principle of the freedom of provision of services, as outlined by the EU Court of Justice. This is because it has been interpreted that a commercial yacht already registered in another EU state and occasionally used for business purposes in Spain should suffer a future rate of taxation proportional to the duration of use in Spanish waters.” Unfortunately, Chumillas believes that the news does not equate to a victory for Spain’s mariners: “This tax measure must be considered not as an isolated tax initiative but as linked with other tax issues: inward relief regime for yacht repairs, which are terribly difficult to obtain in some cases, or reduced VAT rates for charter vessels to better promote charter activity.” As Chumillas said, “When considered in relation with…our EU competitors – France, Italy, Malta, UK (IoM) – [they] have special regimes that encourage the registration of commercial yachts with all the benefits associated to their economies.” Will Mathieson
Total of superyachts chartered in the Med: 788 Total potential income generated in the Med/week (high season): €51.8 million. Total of potential income generated in the Med/week (low season): €44.3 million. Potential income generated by charter of boats allowed to charter in Spain (high season): €0.77 million. Potential income generated by charter of boats allowed to charter in Spain (low season): €0.69 million. Estimated figures, courtesy of MYBA Image courtesy of Alamy
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THE SUPERYACHT REPORT | ISSUE 128
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FLEET NEWS Launches to date, including deliveries and current data on the global fleet.
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For more information on fleet intelligence and the superyacht market, please visit superyachtIntelligence.com
NEW ORDER 1
Columbus 125’ Hybrid
LOA: 38m | 125’ Yard: Palumbo Shipyard Location: Naples, Italy Date of delivery: August 2013
Following the launch of the 54m Columbus 177’ Prima, Palumbo Yachts has secured an order for a 38m Columbus 125’ Hybrid. A Russian buyer, who is being represented by Jimmy Broddesson of Bluewater Yachting, placed the order. The owner has also secured the option to buy the second yacht in the series. The vessel will have an 8.2m beam and
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be laid out over three decks. Eight people can be accommodated in one owner’s suite and three guest cabins, and for crew there will be three cabins plus the captain’s cabin. Designed by Sergio Cutolo of Hydro Tec Naval Architecture, who also designed Prima, the yacht will be full displacement and the superstructure will be built in aluminium. The yacht has a diesel electric hybrid propulsion system, constructed with the intention of having a minimal impact on the environment with a large cruising range of 5,000nm. palumbo.it
CHRISTENING 2
Vava II | Project 55
LOA: 96m | 315’ Yard: Pendennis Plus (formerly Devonport Yachts) Location: Falmouth, UK Date of delivery: October 2011
The 96m Project 55 was christened Vava II on 10 September and is the largest private motoryacht ever built in the UK. Built in Falmouth by Devonport Yachts (now rebranded as Pendennis Plus), to SOLAS-36 passenger ship standards, Vava II ’s exterior was created by Redman Whiteley Dixon, while Rémi Tessier was responsible for designing her interior. The yacht has an array of features including large tender garages aft and forward, folddown beach club and variable depth swimming pool. Her sea trials began this October, with her delivery scheduled shortly. devonportyachts.com
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FLEET NEWS
NEW CONSTRUCTION 3
40m sloop
LOA: 40m | 131’ Yard: Mengi Yay Shipyard Location: Tuzla, Turkey
Under the management of Yacht Marine Ltd, the build of this 40m sloop, with naval architecture and design by Ginton Naval Architects of Holland, has commenced at the Turkish shipyard Mengi Yay in Tuzla. The hull of the vessel is being built from steel with an aluminium superstructure and will be built to RINA commercial classification. Six guest rooms will accommodate 12 guests onboard towards the aft, while there is accommodation for seven crewmembers forward of the mast. The main deck will feature the main salon and dining area, a gym and a wheelhouse with a seating area aft with a bar, dining table and lounge area. A section of the aft deck can also be lowered when the transom door is open to provide a large swim platform. The flybridge deck will have space for two tenders, a pair of steering consoles and additional seating. Two Caterpillar C18 engines will give her a speed of 14 knots and a cruising speed of 13 knots when not under sail. The sloop is due to be launched in 2013. ginton.com
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new order christening new construction refit launch delivery 2 4
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REFITS 4
Dona Amélia
LOA: 71m | 233’ Yard: Pendennis Plus (formerly Devonport Yachts) Location: Falmouth, UK Date of delivery: December 2011
Undertaking its first refit project, Pendennis Plus (formerly Devonport Yachts) is working on the 71m Dona Amélia for 12 weeks. The yacht, a classic vessel from 1929 and previously named Haida G, will have maintenance and service carried out on her main engines, watermakers, thrusters, hydraulics and windlass. Aesthetic work will include the overhaul of her traditional teak decks, exterior bright work and bowsprit. The project is being overseen by Devonport’s Stephen Hills, who has an extensive background working on 60m+ projects. pendennis.com
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FLEET NEWS
LAUNCHES 5
Sarafin | Oyster 100-01
LOA: 30.48m | 100’ Yard: RMK Marine Location: Tuzla, Turkey
A project that brought together Dubois Naval Architects, Oyster Group and RMK Marine, the launch of the first Oyster 100, Sarafin, took place in September following
S u p e r Ya c h t s
successful sea trials. Built by RMK Marine, the vessel has a threestateroom layout aft for guests with two crew cabins located forward. A raised salon offers a panoramic view and leads forward and down to a more intimate lounge and separate dining area. Forward of the main living area is the crew mess, galley and the crew cabins. She is equipped with a Cummins QSM11 ‘C’ (Continuous)
R a c e Ya c h t s
rated 264.7kW diesel auxiliary engine and is built to Lloyd’s +100A1 G6 MCH and MCA LY2 classification. Sarafin will be heading to the Caribbean for the winter season and is due to take part in the St Barth’s Bucket Regatta in March 2012. duboisyachts.com oystermarine.com rmkmarine.com.tr
M o t o r Ya c h t s
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Fastnet Marine Insurance Services Limited Notebeme House, 84 High Street, Southampton SO14 2NT, UK t +44 (0) 23 80 63 66 77 f +44 (0) 23 80 63 66 78 e
[email protected] w fastnet-marine.co.uk
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FLEET NEWS
6
Harbour Island
LOA: 54.9m | 180’ Yard: Newcastle Shipyards Location: Fort Lauderdale, Florida Date of delivery: August 2011
Due to make her debut at the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show (FLIBS), Harbour Island is the first of the Newcastle 5500 hull series. Measuring 54.9m, her naval
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architecture and exterior styling is by Murray and Associates, while Claudette Bonville designed her interior. She features guest accommodation for 12, including a master suite on the main deck and one on the sky lounge deck forward. Twin 3512B Caterpillar engines at 1,051kW power her and she has a cruising speed of 13 knots. Harbour Island, like all the Newcastle
5500 models, is built to ABS Maltese Cross A1 YS and AMS and is MCA compliant and has trans-Pacific range. Harbour Island is undergoing dock testing at St Augustine and will be then be heading to Rybovich Super Yacht Marina and Refit to undergo final outfitting before her FLIBS debut. newcastleshipyards.com
FLEET NEWS
DELIVERY 7
Baron Trenck | Project 507
LOA: 43.5m | 142’ Yard: Eurocraft Cantieri Navali Location: Savona, Italy Date of delivery: 31 August 2011
Baron Trenck is the first of two explorer yachts to come from Italian yard Eurocraft, with the second hull of the two, hull 607, still in build. The 43.5m Baron Trenck accommodates 10 guests, including the owners in a master suite with his and hers’ bathrooms, Jacuzzi and walk-in wardrobe and office, located on the main deck, and there is a full-beam VIP suite, a double and two twin cabins for guests on the lower deck. Baron Trenck has a top speed of 14 knots powered by two 609kW MTU 12V 2000 M60 engines. She also has a cruising speed of 12 knots. eurocraft.it
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fleet news
Price reductions soar & new central agency additions increase
A
s we approach the final quarter of the year, yacht sales over 30m are up by 21 per cent on 2010 despite the disappointing amount recorded over the last two months: seven sales in August and 10 sales in September. Sales in September reached an average asking price of e10.86 million at an LOA of 41.77m, one of the lowest recorded this year. The largest yacht sold was 49.85m La Naturalle Dee, built by Proteksan Turquoise in 1994, sold by Burgess. Other interesting sales include the 2011 launch 36.4m motoryacht Nomade, built by Tansu Yachts and sold by Fraser Yachts; the 44m sailing yacht Lionheart built by Claasen Jachtbouw, sold by YPI and Hoek Brokerage; and the 45.7m Palmer Johnson motoryacht Vantage, sold by Moran Yacht & Ship. New central agency additions have increased to 39 at an average price of e14.26 million. Of these, eight were new launches, including Philip
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Zepter Yachts’ 49.9m JoyMe, Bilgin’s 45m Tatiana and Heesen’s 55m Quinta Essentia. Burgess has been appointed central agent for the largest addition this month, Hanseatic Marine’s Smeralda. The 77m vessel is due for delivery in spring 2012. Two concepts have also been listed for sale: Kingship Marine’s 75m Arctic Whale and the Wider 150. The 75m explorer yacht is for sale through YPI and will be built at the Kingship yard once an owner is found. The 45m Wider concept was unveiled at the 2011 Monaco Yacht Show in collaboration with Camper & Nicholsons and is the first superyacht to be launched by Italian yacht design and production company Wider. Price reductions have soared up to 45, the largest amount recorded in 2011 so far. Total reductions amount to e59,267,500 at an average of e1,317,056. The largest reduction recorded was for 45.4m Atmosphere listed
The 45m Wider concept
with Edmiston. Her price has been reduced by e9 million and now stands at e16 million. The final quarter of the year has brought many surprises over the past few years so we will wait in anticipation to see the intelligence that will be revealed. Liggie Pelekani Please keep us updated with all brokerage news at newsdesk@ superyachtreport.com
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06/10/2011 12:53
FLIBS preview Yachts in attendance
The Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show (FLIBS) 2011 is gearing up to host a wide range of exhibitors who will showcase their latest unveilings to the superyacht market. As well as publishing a full list of yachts expected to attend this year’s show, we include an analysis of the current American order book from Pacific Editor Ellie Brade. Yacht Name
LOA
Builder
Type
Year
Presented by
Position
Adriana III 33.52m Horizon Yachts M/Y 2008 Dwight Tracy & Friends LOM A Dock 1A Allure Shadow 67.00m Shadow Marine M/Y 2007 Merle Wood & Associates, Inc The Sails Marina Anjilis 49.00m Trinity Yachts M/Y 2008 International Yacht Collection Face Dock 19, 19A-E Antara 46.93m Perini Navi SPA S/Y 1991/2007 Perini Navi SPA Face Dock 15A AR-DE 37.20m Burger Boats M/Y 2002 Northrop & Johnson HOF FD 59 Azimut 105’ Azimut Azimut Yachts SPA E Dock 500, 500A-O 46.00m Northern Marine M/Y 2008 Yachtzoo HOF FD 51-53 Bella Bri Bellissima 38.70m Baglietto M/Y 2004 Fraser Yachts Worldwide Face Dock 20, 20A-E Benetti 105’ 32.00m Benetti M/Y Azimut Benetti SPA Face Dock 14A-C Benetti Division 32.00m Benetti M/Y Benetti Face Dock 14A Benetti 105’ Benetti 116’ 35.35m Benetti M/Y Azimut Benetti SPA Face Dock 14A-C Benetti 145’ Benetti Division 32.00m Benetti M/Y Azimut Benetti SPA Face Dock 14A-C Benetti Tradition Benetti Division 49.07m Trinity Yachts M/Y 2009 Merle Wood & Associates, Inc HOF FD 30-37, 55-58 Blind Date Bossy Boots II 41.45m InterMarine M/Y 1998 Merle Wood & Associates, Inc HOF FD 30-37, 55-58 Broward 34.13m Broward M/Y 1999 Luke Brown Yachts LOM B Dock 13, 14, 20, 21 Burger 103’ 31.39m Burger Boats Denison Yacht Sales LOM X Dock 124, 126 Calypso 30.78m Feadship M/Y 1971 Allied Marine Brokerage Face Dock 1, 1A, 1B Camelot 37.49m Royal Huisman M/Y 1985 Denison Yacht Sales LOM X Dock 124, 126 Carpe Diem 45.72m Trinity Yachts M/Y 2002/2006 International Yacht Collection Face Dock 19, 19A-E Cheoy Lee Bravo 30.48m Cheoy Lee Cheoy Lee Shipyards Face Dock 3, 3A, 3B Claire Too 35.00m Merle Wood & Associates, Inc HOF FD 30-37, 55-58 Crili 40.23m Trident M/Y 1999 Merle Wood & Associates, Inc HOF FD 30-37, 55-59 Crystal 140’ Benetti M/Y Azimut Benetti SPA Face Dock 14A-C Cuor Di Leone 49.68m Benetti M/Y 1999 Ocean Independence LOM B Dock 12, 12A DaBubba 30.17m Hargrave 2005 HMY Yacht Sales D Dock 412-430 Destination Fox Harb’r Too 49.07m Trinity Yachts M/Y 2008 Northrop & Johnson HOF FD 39-46, 39A-44A, 58A Diamond Forever 36.27m Royal Huisman M/Y 1987 Edmiston & Company Ltd HOF 301, Don’t Worry 35.35m Crescent Beach M/Y 1995 Skywater Yachts LLC LOM X Dock 120 Dreamdancer 39.62m Westport M/Y 2007 Gilman Yachts HOF FD 48-49, 48AA-53A Dreamer 41.45m Hargrave M/Y 2011 Hargrave Yachts LOM A Dock 3-11 Brokerage & Charters Elle 46.00m Tacoma M/Y 1993/2008 Marine Group of Palm Beach LOM E/F Dock 1-5 Ellix Too 47.54m ISA M/Y 2004 Edmiston & Company Ltd F/G Dock 1, 2 Estancia 34.13m Westport M/Y 2008 Westport HOF FD 10-18 Feadship 130’ 39.62m Feadship Northrop & Johnson HOF FD 39-46, 39A-44A, 58A Felicita West 64.00m Perini Navi S/Y 2003 Northrop & Johnson FTL Hilton Slip 2 Ferretti Custom Line 100 30.48m Ferretti Ferretti Group E Dock 500, 500A-N Four Aces 55.77m Benetti M/Y 2005/2008 International Yacht Collection Face Dock 19, 19A-E Harbour Island 54.86m Newcastle M/Y 2011 International Yacht Collection Face Dock 19, 19A-E Helix 44.65m Feadship M/Y 2011 Feadship S/YBAss Dock 101 Heritage III 37.79m Broward M/Y 2007 Merle Wood & Associate, Inc HOF FD 30-37, 55-58 Ingot 46.63m Burger M/Y 2008 Burger Boat Company FTL Hilton Slip 1 Irish Rover 30.78m Marlow M/Y 2011 Marlow Marine Sales, Inc B/C Dock 1, 2, 21 Italyacht 141’ 43.10m Italyacht Rodriquez Group Face Dock 12 Johnson 31.39m Johnson M/Y Emerald Yachts LOM X Dock 122 KAI 36.56m Benetti M/Y 2008 Fraser Yachts Worldwide F Dock 622 Katya 46.00m Delta Yachts M/Y 2009 Merle Wood & Associates, Inc HOF FD 30-37, 55-58 43.28m Feadship M/Y 1987 Northrop & Johnson HOF FD 39-46, 39A-44A, 58A Kingfisher Lady Bee 43.28m Christensen M/Y 1995 Marine Group of Palm Beach LOM E/F Dock 1-5 Lady Sheila 44.19m Benetti M/Y 2008 Merle Wood & Associates, Inc HOF FD 30-37, 55-58 73.15m Delta Marine M/Y 2006 Delta Marine S/YBAss Dock 101 Laurel 40.23m Northcoast M/Y 1995 Merle Wood & Associates, Inc HOF FD 30-37, 55-58 Life’s Finest Loretta Anne IV 40.00m Alloy Yachts M/Y 2009 Fraser Yachts Worldwide Face Dock 20, 20A-E Mangusta 130’ 39.62m Overmarine M/Y Overmarine USA F Dock 604, 606 Mary Alice II 39.62m Westport M/Y 2002 Westport HOF FD 10-18 Miss Michelle 39.62m Westport M/Y 2009 Westport HOF FD 10-18
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flibs preview | yachts in attendance
Yacht Name
LOA
Builder
Type
Year
Miss Rose 40.23m Horizon Yachts M/Y 2008 Muse 37.50m Palmer Johnson M/Y 2006 Namaste 39.62m Westport M/Y 2010 Namoh 38.10m Cheoy Lee M/Y 2003 Newvida 48.77m Delta M/Y 2001 Numptia 69.79m Rossi Navi M/Y 2011 Ohana 46.93m Admiral M/Y 1998 36.88m Crescent M/Y 2003 Olga 33.53m Delta M/Y 1993 Onika 35.00m Benetti M/Y 1998 Paradigm Parlay 38.40m Ortona S/Y 1991 Perfect Harmony 30.48m Hargrave M/Y 2009 Perini Navi 125’ 38.10m Perini Navi SPA S/Y 32.91m Sanlorenzo M/Y 2007 Petrus Picnic 30.48m Monte Fino M/Y 2010 32.91m Sunseeker M/Y Predator 108’ Primadonna 38.70m IAG Yachts M/Y 2010 Princess Sarah 43.28m Richmond M/Y 2007 49.37m Christensen M/Y 2010 Remember When Resilience 34.13m Westport 1999 Resolute 39.62m Westport M/Y 2009 Seagull of Cayman 40.02m Feadship M/Y 1980 Sea Loafers III 34.14m Westport M/Y 2000 Sealyon 36.45m ISA M/Y 2007 Sea Owl 37.80m Delta M/Y 1999 Shooting Star 38.00m Danish Yachts M/Y 2011 38.10m Broward M/Y 1989 Showtime 40.23m Abeking & M/Y 1987 Silver Shalis Rasmussen 31.69m Sanlorenzo of M/Y SL 104’ the Americas 30.00m Moonen M/Y 2008 Sofia II Sorcha 46.32m Northern Marine M/Y 2005 Sovereign 36.56m Broward M/Y 1993 45.72m Richmond M/Y 2010 Status Quo Stop the Press 32.30m Lazzara M/Y 2003 33.83m Sunseeker M/Y Sunseeker 111’ Sweet Pea 50.29m Feadship M/Y 2000/2008 Sycara IV 46.00m Burger Boats M/Y 2009 Symphony II 34.13m Westport M/Y 2000 Temptation 37.49m Palmer Johnson M/Y 2005/2009 Tenacity 33.22m Hargrave M/Y 2001 The Lady J 32.00m Diaship-Heesen M/Y 1988 47.85m Christensen M/Y 2006 Thirteen Tiger’s Eye 30.00m Hargrave M/Y 2008 Titan XIV 34.02m Valdettaro S/Y 1994 36.56m Custom M/Y 2004 Touch Ubiquitous 34.13m Westport M/Y 1998 Unforgettable 30.48m Inace M/Y 1999 Unreel 30.50m Falcon M/Y 2000 36.88m Moonen M/Y 2001/2008 Victoria del Mar Westship 110’ 33.52m Westship M/Y 34.13m Westport M/Y Westport 112’ Westport 117’ 35.66m Westport M/Y Wheels 50.00m Trinity Yachts M/Y 2008 Yia Sou 31.69m Cheoy Lee M/Y 1989/2002 Zoom Zoom Zoom 49.07m Trinity Yachts M/Y 2005
PE LTD
MARINE DESIGNZ
Presented by
Position
Burgess Burgess Yachtzoo Worth Avenue Yachts Northrop & Johnson Burgess Northrop & Johnson Merle Wood & Associate,Inc Northrop & Johnson Luxury Yacht Group LLC Northrop & Johnson Monacle Fractional Yachts Perini Navi SPA Atlantic Yacht & Ship, Inc Hargrave Yachts Brokerage & Charter Atlantic Yacht & Ship, Inc IAG Yachts Fraser Yachts Worldwide Christensen Shipyards Westport Westport Northrop & Johnson Northrop & Johnson Burgess International Yacht Collection Danish Yachts AIS Merle Wood & Associates, Inc Merle Wood & Associates, Inc
G/X Dock 1-3, 7, 8 G/X Dock 1-3, 7, 8 HOF FD 51-53 HOF 311, 313, 315, 317 HOF FD 39-46, 62 HOF FD 1 HOF FD 39-46, 39A-44A, 58A HOF FD 30-37, 55-58 HOF FD 39-46, 39A-44A, 58A LOM A Dock 12 HOF 319, 321, 323, 325, 327 HOF 329 S/YBass Dock 107, 108 HOF 215-222 LOM A Dock 2-10 HOF 215-222 LOM X Dock 129 Face Dock 20, 20A-E Face Dock 11 HOF FD 10-18 HOF FD 10-18 HOF FD 39-46, 39A-44A, 58A HOF FD 39-46, 39A-44A, 58A F/G Dock 27-29 F Dock 606, 608, 610, 612 F/G Dock 3 HOF FD 30-37, 55-58 HOF FD 30-37, 55-58
Sanlorenzo of Face Dock 13, 13A, 13B the Americas Moonen F Dock 618 Dwight Tracy & Friends LOM A Dock 1A Ocean Independence LOM B Dock 12, 12A Richmond Yachts Face Dock 10 Tom George Yacht Group C/D Dock 11, 42, 43 Sunseeker USA Face Dock 2A-H Yachtzoo HOF FD 51-53 Merle Wood & Associates, Inc FTL Hilton Slip 6 Camper & Nicholsons USA Face Dock 9 Edmiston & Company Ltd F/G Dock 1, 2 HMY Yacht Sales D Dock 412-430 Northrop & Johnson HOF 319, 321, 323, 325, 327 International Yacht Collection Face Dock 19A-E Hargrave Yachts LOM A Dock 2-10 Brokerage & Charter Northrop & Johnson HOF 319, 321, 323, 325, 327 Fraser Yachts Worldwide Face Dock 20, 20A-E Westport HOF FD 10-18 Northrop & Johnson HOF FD 39-46, 39A-44A, 58A Ardell Yacht & Ship LOM B Dock 15 Moonen F Dock 618 Global Marine Capital LOM X Dock 102, 103, 105, 107 Westport HOF FD 10-18 Westport HOF FD 10-18 International Yacht Collection Face Dock 19, 19A-E Burger Boat Company HOF 305, 307, 309 International Yacht Collection Face Dock 19, 19A-E
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THE AMERICAN ORDER BOOK AN OVERVIEW A
t the American Superyacht Forum (ASF) in May, Superyacht Intelligence presented a candid overview of the state of the American superyacht industry. As was demonstrated then, order book figures for the USA are down on previous years and America’s position of strength in the superyacht industry that was once so assured is now less sturdy than it has been in the past. By number of yachts delivered, America ranks second of all the countries. By yachts in build, however, it is a different story: America has fallen to fourth place behind Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey. The effects of the economic downturn on the American superyachting industry have C.Onan1-4V-SYR.8.11.vHR.pdf 1 8/18/11 12:01 PM not gone unnoticed in the order book.
Despite this, the leading American yards remain competitive in the market and it is certainly not all doom and gloom: American yards are still building yachts and will continue to do so. Orders placed at American yards in the last 12 months include a 66m motoryacht at Delta Marine, and a 36.6m motoryacht from Trinity Yachts, whilst Westport Yachts continue with their successful business model of building semicustom yachts, many begun on spec. The placing of two 50m orders, Project Perfect Pursuit and Project Deputy Dog at Christensen last year was also welcome news. A number of orders are under discussion at American yards and we will hopefully see these convert into actual orders in the near future. With the current weak American dollar, building a superyacht in America may be more appealing now than in the past, and could represent an opportunity for the American yards to capitalise on.
With the current weak American dollar, building a superyacht in America may be more appealing now than in the past, and could represent an opportunity for the American yards to capitalise on.
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As we have highlighted many times in print since ASF, the key long-term objective for the American superyacht industry is to continue to work together to achieve its goal of a stronger, more united country that has huge amounts to offer existing and potential superyacht owners. This potential is all the more relevant considering that Americans make up one of the largest percentage of superyacht owners by nationality.
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Promoting the American brand as a positive should be a continuous focus. Hopefully, a good FLIBS for the American yards will bring a welcome, and deserved, boost to the USA order book in order for the American superyacht industry to end the year on a positive note. Ellie Brade
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FLIBS PREVIEW PRODUCTS
It is no secret that the American market has felt the full force of the recession but the 2011 Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show gives the industry an opportunity to demonstrate its continued ability to add value and innovate. With this in mind, The Superyacht Report has compiled a a selection of USdeveloped products that will be exhibited at this year’s show. Visit www.superyachtnews.com for all the latest product news.
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THE NEW AQUA MATIC WITH NMEA 2000 COMPATIBILITY The latest Aqua Matic watermaker range from SEA Recovery has a new overall design.
The Aqua Matic features NMEA 2000 network compatibility and this allows users to monitor their system from SEA Recovery’s colour LCD touch-screen remote or a network compatible display from any location on the yacht. The Aqua Matic is designed to be compact and durable, and engineers
have reduced noise production by over 3dB, which is a 50 per cent improvement on previous models. The user settings can be customised to English, Spanish, French, Chinese or Italian. The Aqua Matic can produce up to 283.5 litres of water per hour. searecovery.com/marine/ Location: booth 578/579
NEW APP UPDATE FOR TRANSAS iSAILOR Transas has launched iSailor 1.4.0, an update of its existing app for the iPad and iPhone. The app has a number of new features as well as updated navigational charts. The update has a new portfolio of charts with upgrade and restore options built in, allowing customers to transfer between their existing portfolio and the new charts seamlessly. Chart updates are then available on a quarterly basis, with a red star indicating the need to update. The iSailor has the ability to generate alarms for cross-track error, waypoint and turning point approaches, and anchor alarms. These alarms can be programmed as a background function so that they are not affected by other tasks being performed. As standard, users can also add objects to the charts such as depths, obstructions, rocks, buoys and leisure facilities. The coverage of the charts has also been increased to include the coastal waters of Latin and South America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East as well as a number of Caribbean islands. transas.com Location: Electronics Pavilion 369
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flibs preview | products
KEP Marine unveils glass pod helm package
KEP Marine has released its Glass Pod, which houses multiple sunlight-readable displays and can be installed in any superyacht bridge. The standard version comprises anti-reflection, chemically strengthened glass with an optional anti-glare 65-70 gloss rating anti-smudge treatment. Available in 15”, 17”, 19”, 21” and 22” models, the waterproof surface makes the pod suitable for pilothouse or fly bridge consoles, whilst screens can be viewed at angles of 88 degrees. The pods are equipped with dry film technology and feature high-strength lamination with optical transmission of less than 97 per cent, as well as no double refraction (birefringence). KEP Glass Pods are also compatible with multiple switching devices for easy source selection, as well as KEP Marine Bridgeview, AMX or any RS-232 equipped control system for convenient management of displays from one or more stations. kepmarine.com Location: Electronics Pavilion 308
KVH introduces global maritime HDTV
KVH has launched the TracVision HD11, a 1m satellite TV antenna that KVH claims supports HD programming for vessels in any region of the world. The TracVision HD11 provides unlimited HD and DVR support, simultaneous tracking of Ka- and Kuband satellites and an IPcontrolled Antenna Control Unit (IPACU). It employs a three-axis plus skew stabilised smart antenna system that tracks satellites on the horizon as well as directly overhead. The system has a library of up to 100 satellites, and KVH claims that it is the first of its kind to offer a multi-beam Universal World Low Noise Block-down converter that is compatible with all HDTV programming. kvh.com Location: Electronics Pavilion 329-330, 335-336 & 370-371
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Headhunter introduces touch-screen tank sentry
Headhunter has developed its existing Tank Sentry system to include a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC), enabling up to eight tanks to be monitored and operated on one touch-screen interface. The interface features embedded Ethernet with built-in Modbus Transmission Control Protocol, which allows up to five users to monitor tank levels and control pumps remotely and in real-time. This can be done using any wired or wireless tablet, smartphone or network-connected computer using Modbus TCP/IP. headhunterinc.com Location: 400/500 Tent 464
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flibs preview | products
WESMAR to unveil new stabiliser fin
Western Marine Electronics (WESMAR) will unveil its new stabiliser fin, designed specifically for superyachts over 75m, at FLIBS. WESMAR claims the 4.6sqm fin, combined with its triple axis digital DSP 4800 control electronics, will eradicate up to 90 per cent of vessel roll. The high-speed triple axis gyro system utilises a digital processor and proprietary programming. The DSP4800 adds three digital control options: the DSP4801 with standard digital stabilisation; the DSP4802 with digital stabilisation and lift; and the DSP4803 with digital stabilisation, lift and at anchor. The digital signal processing allows the fin to ‘predict’ the vessel’s behaviour and the system also memorises the roll characteristics of the boat to pre-empt rolling. The roll velocity, acceleration and the vessel’s unique roll characteristics are delivered by digital link to WESMAR’s closed proportional hydraulic system. A wheelhouse display shows real-time vessel roll and fin movement. Each fin is made of a fibreglass skin wrapped around a high-density structural foam and 17-4PH stainless-steel shaft, welded to an A36 steel core plate. The exterior is then covered in a marine-grade gel coat to prevent fouling. The fin shape used is to NACA 0015 standard fin profile. wesmar.com Location: Booths 699 & 700 in the Designer Tent
Nautical Structures’ new NS-Series light crane
Nautical Structures’ new crane system utilises ‘enhanced power density’ to improve its capabilities in a smaller and lighter package. The company has used a specialised stainless-steel alloy known as ‘Duplex’ for the extending boom section. It exhibits similar anti-corrosive properties to
316-L stainless steel alloy but with 160 per cent of its tensile strength. By using this material the company is able to increase the hoisting capacity of the linear winch within a space that previously limited the winch capacity, creating what the company describes as a “high-efficiency, non-fouling linear winch system”. Nautical Structures has also enhanced the non-fouling linear winch line payout with rigging-ratios of 10:1, providing 10cm of line pay-out for
every 1cm of hydraulic cylinder travel, decreasing the rigging ratio and lowering the risk of appliance failure. The Sampson/Amsteel Blue synthetic line turns around smallerdiameter sheaves, and is stronger than the comparatively sized stainless-steel wire rope by up to 70 per cent. New specialised slewing bearings and drive motors have also been developed to further reduce the crane’s footprint on the deck and reduce the overall weight of the crane system. The result of this newly engineered crane series is a product that is of equal quality to all previous Nautical Structures’ crane systems, but built in a more efficient, smaller package, reducing the overall system weight by approximately 25 per cent. The system is offered in three moment-capacity structures (the load the deck and surrounding structure can support), each with a variety of stowed-to-extended dimensions. The first of these new cranes will be introduced at FLIBS. nautical-structures.com Location: Stand M10 & M25
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FLIBS PREVIEW | PRODUCTS
TWO NEW PRODUCTS FROM UMT INTERNATIONAL
The UMT Diving Board was originally built by the Custom Deck Accessory Division to provide the owner of a superyacht with the thrill of diving overboard safely from a yacht. The 2012 Diving Board, due to be launched at FLIBS, will be manufactured in aluminium with polished, removable hand rails to provide additional safety prior to the dive. The frame is securely mounted to the deck by removable deck fittings, which are flush mounted, allowing the diving board to be removed and stowed when not in use. It is available in a variety of different sizes and colour options. UMT has also launched a stainless-steel shower with a variety of high-velocity showerhead fittings. The shower can be used to cool off or rinse off saltwater after swimming just like any interior shower. There is the option to install it with quick-release stainless-steel deck fittings on the aft swim platform or attach it to a railing onboard. The shower is available with a quickrelease attachment from a pipe fitting on deck, which is connected to the main water system of the yacht, for ease of operation. It also has a fitting to control the water flow. umtmarine.com Location: 400/500 Tent 573
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CARLISLE & FINCH REVAMPS ITS ‘NIGHTFINDER’
Carlisle & Finch has unveiled its new microprocessor SmartView technology, which it has incorporated into its NightFinder searchlight. The technology integrates the system into the yacht’s bridge, via RS-232, RS-422 and Ethernet ports, allowing the NightFinder to be controlled from a suitable device at any IP address, or remotely from any internet-connected PC, thanks to a ‘remote internet control feature’ that makes both camera and searchlight IP-addressable. The NightFinder now exhibits proportional-speed control, ensuring that the joystick responds to movement; the further the joystick is pushed, the faster the movement camera/searchlight moves. Furthermore, as the speed, aiming and beam-size focus controls are all located on the joystick, it allows the user to operate the searchlight single-handedly. As the NightFinder is now an integrated system, the same joystick can ‘intelligently switch’ to control any Carlisle & Finch searchlights aboard that are connected via Ethernet ports. carlislefinch.com Location: Y&B Tent 698
While every care has been taken to ensure all show listings are correct, all yachts/products to be displayed at FLIBS and show information are correct at the time of going to press but are subject to change.
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The America’s Cup 2013 With high-profile challenger series all over the globe between now and the America’s Cup finals in 2013, we must seize a wonderful business opportunity. Martin H Redmayne explains.
The UK’s race action from the last round of the America’s Cup World Series in Plymouth, which drew huge local crowds, as well as a vast global audience.
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aving met Iain Murray, regatta director for the 34th America’s Cup, and Craig Thompson, CEO of the America’s Cup Event Authority, during this year’s Monaco Yacht Show, I am even more excited at the prospect of what this global event can bring to the market. This meeting, following on from various meetings and conference calls with Niccolò Porzio di Camporotondo, Superyacht Program director for the America’s Cup, has inspired me to call to the industry all captains and owners to look seriously at what the Cup can ‘spill into our laps’ in terms of business exposure and media coverage. Events prior to the finals in 2013 include San Diego in November this year, Naples in April 2012 (and again in May 2013), Venice in May 2012, Newport,
Rhode Island in June 2012, with more America’s Cup Challenger events planned and yet to be announced, culminating in the Louis Vuitton Cup in San Francisco in the summer of 2013 and the finals in mid-September 2013. Obviously, high-performance yacht racing is miles apart from the world of the superyacht, but we need to look more closely at the event’s dynamics and the business opportunity. All the locations mentioned above have a direct link to the superyacht world, with cruising grounds and key players all at the heart of the regions and ports alongside the host city. West Coast based, US-owned yachts will potentially form the first real spectator fleet for the San Diego event. Naples at the beginning of the 2012 season may see an upsurge in yachts starting their
season early in April next year around Malta and the southern regions of Italy, moving around to the Croatian coastline and Venice. Add to this the superyacht fleet that typically migrates north to Newport, Rhode Island, in June, and with all these Challenger events, superyachts could raise their profile to the world’s media audiences. With vast numbers of column inches, clicks and views on both print and digital media, coupled with TV rights, the America’s Cup global audience between now and the third week of September 2013 is likely to reach billions cumulatively. If the coverage is going in the direction I think it is, the ultra-wealthy spectator fleets will form part of the overall spectacle. Billions of the world’s eyeballs will see the racing, and even if only a small percentage >> THE SUPERYACHT REPORT | ISSUE 128
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US column | america’s cup
left: Team Oracle’s giant trimaran races past M/Y Rising Sun during the 33rd America’s cup in 2010, then owned by team Oracle captain Larry Ellison. right: As one of the world’s oldest sporting trophies, the America’s Cup has consistently drawn a high net worth audience. President Kennedy and the first lady watch the 1963 cup from a luxury yacht.
of the world’s billionaires catch a glimpse of our products anchored around the courses and providing an elite VIP spectator hub, this has to be good for our business. We need exposure, and in simple terms the 34th America’s Cup can deliver in mug-fulls.
The America’s Cup is a real opportunity for the superyacht world... Consider too, the opportunity that 2013 and San Francisco offers. We often refer to the need to nurture new clients, and the west coast of the USA is a great hunting ground. According to our intelligence sources, California has the highest concentration of UHNWIs in the whole of the USA, with over 9,800 individuals within the state – three times the number in Florida. All of these people can afford to at least charter, and importantly, many can afford to own too. Between Baja, California, in the south, all the way north to Seattle and Alaska, there are very limited cruising opportunities. However, the target audience is there in boatloads. If our industry can encourage about 100 existing owners to consider that their itineraries should include a trip north to San Francisco in 2013, then we may attract a small percentage to try large yachts as an addon to the AC events. Not only is the event authority working hard to facilitate headache-free
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charter operations during the Cup, if one considers the audience in and around San Francisco, Silicon Valley and Seattle, the profile of potential is considerable. For example, if Trinity’s fleet of US built yachts all flagged with the Stars and Stripes, there is no reason why these yachts couldn’t charter comfortably without the Jones Act getting in the way. We know that a handful of yachts will be there as part of the team support, with a variety of individuals backing their teams and owning large yachts in tandem. As I alluded to in The Superyacht Owner magazine, this could be another dynamic aspect to the AC 2013 mission. With Oracle already emblazoned all over the event, under Mr Ellison’s guidance, the perfect scenario is for other billionaires to follow suit and back their own teams and create a floating Formula One-style sporting club. Names that spring to mind include Google, The Limited, or perhaps Victoria’s Secret might be more fun, as well as SAP, News Corp, Gazprom, Travelex, Westfield, Rusal, Goldman Sachs, Mango, TAG, LVMH, ArcelorMittal, Virgin and perhaps Microsoft, all of which have the brands, and potentially the appetite, for any high-profile, hightech, exciting global phenomena. There are hundreds more brands and billionaire yacht-owner links, and having seen the presentation of the new racing format, the Ellison invention of the new America’s Cup could just
turn the oldest sporting trophy into the most exclusive yacht racing club in the world. After all, that’s pretty much how it started. With vast TV audiences and the gladiatorial chariot-style yacht racing, one can imagine emperor-style owners, watching their teams joust with each other, similarly to elite boxes at the Kentucky Derby, the Grand Prix in Monaco, Nascar racing in Florida and the Cowdray Park elite polo gatherings. Sport is a significant part of the billionaire world, and if the America’s Cup can inspire other Ellison-types to take up the gauntlet and challenge each other to watery drag racing, three things will happen: more of their friends will be exposed to life onboard, the global audiences for the Cup will see the amazing world of the superyacht and perhaps some of the need for speed will keep driving superyacht technology forward. The America’s Cup is a real opportunity for the superyacht world, and we must make sure the owners understand the value and potential. After all, if we don’t grow our future client list, we could end up in an ever-decreasing and diminished market, which owners won’t enjoy as their assets will become less valuable. Seize the day in San Francisco.
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Opening image: Gilles Martin Raget Above images: Getty Images and Corbis To comment on this article, email
[email protected] with subject: The America’s Cup
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Pegaso At Freire Shipyard in Vigo, Spain, which routinely builds offshore research vessels, a yacht is nearing completion that, once unveiled, will surely be the 21st-century version of Jacques Cousteau’s famous Calypso. Don Hoyt Gorman was invited to see this oceanographic vessel in build and meet the team behind the secretive project Pegaso. He reports on the ideas behind her concept, the decision to build a white boat in a commercial yard, and some of the innovative features that make this technological powerhouse truly a go-anywhere superyacht.
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egaso was born as an idea on a chart table aboard the owner’s first yacht whilst cruising in Fiji. He and his captain, the late Michael Wasilewski, were discussing a custom yacht they could build to support the owner’s newfound addiction to global exploration, diving and the undersea world.
It was Moore’s sketch based on a 65m GA, with the garage and the helicopter at the stern, that caught the owner’s eye.
During the early 1990s, the owner was spending eight months of the year aboard his yacht with his family in wildly remote places, working the sat-phone to run his business interests during circumnavigation. Undersea exploration and diving had become a passionate part of his life. He was an early adopter of nitrox, which allowed for safer and longer diving, and actively participated in both the filming and editing of underwater video collected during these diving expeditions. Rebreathers – advanced diving apparatus that allow deeper, longer and near-silent operation – at that
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time seemed too technically complex. The owner and captain knew, though, that as soon as rebreather technology was perfected for recreational diving, it would be a big part of their future repertoire; and to get down to the even deeper wrecks, they started to seriously consider submarines. By the time the owner stepped aboard his third big yacht in 2005 – a previously owned Proteksan – he was quick to realise that while beautiful, it wasn’t the platform he needed. To enable his prodigious appetite for off-the-charts exploration and truly first-time experiences at and under the sea, he needed a vessel that had sophisticated and technically advanced tools, systems and services for accessing a wide range of marine environments. To achieve that, the project he and Wasilewski had proposed years earlier needed to come together: they needed to build their own research vessel.
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THE DESIGN CONCEPT By 2004, Wasilewski had moved ashore to focus on the operations of Pegaso Marine, the umbrella company that handles the owner’s yachting and marine concerns. During this time he learned that his previous nemesis, cancer, had returned. During this battle he contacted Alex Flemming, his former first officer on the first of his series of yachts – each named Pegaso. Upon coming ashore, Flemming had built a successful survey and yacht management business. Already knowing the owner, he gladly accepted the offer to take over for Wasilewski before he passed away. Today, that dream project, Pegaso, is managed by Flemming, a man of immense energy and with an infectious brand of youthful exuberance about the vessel’s evolution. In the final, tense stages of build, just weeks before the Monaco Yacht Show, when TSR arrived at the Freire yard in Vigo, Spain, to get a look at the vessel as she neared completion,
his gusto, enthusiasm and drive seemed bottomless. Once the owner decided he needed a massively capable, submarine-toting, media platform superyacht, Pegaso Marine began studying commercial research vessels that carried, launched and operated submarines. Typically, these kinds of vessels have big superstructures with A-frames on the stern for launching subs and Remote Operated Vehicles (or ROVs, undersea robots that are controlled from the mothership). But the owner wanted this to also be yachtlike – an exciting, entertaining, comfortable home at sea – not, as Flemming puts it,“a pick-up truck”. To build the spec, Peter Chettleborough and Mike Worthington-Leese of John Winterbotham and Partners started with a 72m platform and factored in all the owner’s experiences of the previous 15 years of cruising. On one occasion, anchored near Baja, California, the seawater temperature was in the mid-30s celsius, with >> THE SUPERYACHT REPORT | ISSUE 128
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Once the owner decided he needed a massively capable, submarinetoting, media platform superyacht, Pegaso Marine began studying commercial research vessels that carried, launched and operated submarines.
ambient air temperature outside in the 40s, and the HVAC system couldn’t cope. Knowing that the owner could frequently be in places like that for weeks at a time meant that the specs had to include an HVAC system that could tackle persistent heat and humidity. She also needed to be able to handle ice, and have the capacity to take a commercially operated helicopter, and dive all areas of the world from the tropics to the Arctic. For this, she needed a state-of-the-art dive centre, recompression chamber and the most advanced personal submarine ever built. The designer, Steve Howard, and Michael Wasilewski were friends and had worked together previously, so when it came to working up the initial specs for Pegaso into something visual, the Pegaso team turned to Howard, who was then at H2 design in London. Howard understood what the owner didn’t want: a design statement yacht. What he wanted was his own boat, designed around his lifestyle. At the time, Andy Moore was on the design team at H2, and it was Moore’s sketch
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based on a 65m GA, with the garage and the helicopter at the stern, that caught the owner’s eye. The H2 team had a model built based on Moore’s sketches. That model revealed a kind of muscular leanness to her lines that belies the vessel’s height. The cascade of her aft lines is graceful and clean – there are no sweeping staircases up from the swim platform to her aft sundeck. The owner’s penthouse deck, above both a sky lounge and the bridge, is a stunning feature, and truly gives the vessel the impression of being a 21st-century explorer’s vessel. She is about going far away for long periods of time, working and playing hard, seeing the world, and knowing how to do it with technology and style. It was abundantly clear from the model, just from the way it looked, that Pegaso would be a boat with great ambition. Michael Wasilewski was widely respected and regarded, and upon his passing, two memorial services, in Florida and England, had to be organised to accommodate his broad circle of friends and colleagues. >>
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At his service in London, Pegaso’s owner simply said: “Let’s do it: let’s build Michael’s legacy.” The next day, the order was put in for the VAS sub, and search began in earnest to find the yard that would bring the project to life.
THE SHIPYARD The build was a highly technical, precise job. Pegaso was clearly going to be a vessel requiring machinery and technology pulled from the commercial offshore industry – but she also had to appear like a superyacht: she needed the right look, a luxurious feel and the ability to provide the owner and his guests with the highest levels of comfort, privacy and security whether stationed over a wreck at sea or berthed alongside the many international ports she was likely to visit. Wasilewski began looking for yards that could understand the Pegaso concept and, more importantly, actually execute it. Eventually this search became Flemming’s responsibility. “We had looked at some of the big northern European yacht yards who could have offered us their 70m platform and worked to incorporate the technical requirements, but we just never got the feeling that it would be what the owner really wanted,” he said. “We flew around the world, checking out all the name-brand commercial yards we knew in Australia, China, Louisiana, saying: ‘This is what we want to build. Can you do it for us?’ The bottom line was that this had to be a real go-anywhere boat; yes, she had to be pretty, but from the beginning we were talking about a boat with a 10,000nm range. We wanted a boat with capacity to go far with great autonomy. We were talking about a one-of-a-kind luxury research vessel.” Flemming realised that the concept would result in a truly complex technical build, and this significantly narrowed the choice of yards. With his previous surveying business in Mallorca, Flemming had worked closely with Astilleros de Mallorca Shipyard, owned by the Freire family.
They also owned a commercial shipyard in Vigo, Spain, that built some of the most technically sophisticated research vessels anywhere in the world, complete with state-ofthe-art engineering and the kind of industrial-grade problem-solving that would win them the contract to build the UK’s newest Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) research ship. Plus Pegaso’s owner had favourable experience with Astilleros de Mallorca when they fitted a bulbous bow on one of his previous yachts, so was familiar with the capabilities of the team running the yard.
“We wanted a boat with capacity to go far with great autonomy. We were talking about a one-of-a-kind luxury research vessel.”
Guillermo Freire García, 33, son of the owner of the yards, had met Flemming in Mallorca during >> THE SUPERYACHT REPORT | ISSUE 128
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a post-university stint there. After working in the finance department, he moved to commercial director of the Vigo yard, and six months later, was there when the Pegaso team arrived. In many ways, the Pegaso project is a demonstration of Freire’s commercial thinking and flexibility and his dedication to building Freire’s name as a yard that can deliver technically complex and beautiful vessels. And his drive is unquestioned. As Flemming put it: “If you’re doing battle with a Norwegian ship-owner, trust me, you’d want him on your side.”
Every single detail of the vessel’s design, from the lines of the superstructure to the look of watertight hatches, was openly discussed so that the Pegaso team could ensure the yard really understood what they were looking for.
In the summer of 2006, Freire, his two other brothers in the business and their father, Jesús Freire, sat down with the owner for the first time and started a presentation on their history and yard’s capabilities. Key to the presentation was the combination of Astilleros de Mallorca’s experience, with its pedigree of luxury yacht work, and the real, hard-core industrial experience of the Freire shipyard. “The vessel the owner wanted was unusual,” explained Freire. “It has a lot of systems and equipment that are really for research vessels and the offshore industry. And we’re experts at that.” They showed how they built boats that combined dynamic-positioning
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systems, cherry-pickers, helidecks and ROVs. After about half an hour, the owner raised his hand and said: “Stop. I like you. I can do business with you.” The owner himself has a family-run business and so had a good sense of how the father and sons worked together. “He was impressed by what we were doing as a family,” said Freire. “I think we persuaded him that the tradition of the business was key. He definitely responded to that.” The fact that the owner is a Spanish speaker made the case even stronger. After pricing negotiations, during which the yard, according to Flemming, was thorough and very transparent, the deal was agreed, and Pegaso finally started her build.
BUILDING & LESSONS For the yard, there were plenty of lessons working with a yacht team as opposed to their typical shipowner clients. The commercial offshore vessels that the Freire shipyard delivers are custom tailor-made builds, but always built on a proven concept. Freire works with Norwegian design offices that are world-leaders in the latest offshore technology, and they often receive fully completed specs and designs for projects; all they have to do is build them. In other cases, they do the design and >>
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naval architecture work in-house. But with Pegaso, the entire approach to the build was different: more apt to change, and based on newly available features and adjustments on the fly. “The yard appeared to really enjoy that once a month everybody would show up – the designers, surveyors, lighting designers, engineers, captain – and we’d work things out together in a very open way,” Flemming said. “I don’t think there’s another way we could have done it.” Every single detail of the vessel’s design, from the lines of the superstructure to the look of watertight hatches, was openly discussed so that the Pegaso team could ensure the yard really understood what they were looking for. “For a commercial yard, when the spec says weather-tight hatch, it could just be a hatch that passes the hose test,” said Flemming. “We went through options with the yard and showed them pictures of features on yachts. It was a detailed process of informing them how we wanted the vessel to look.”
The wait for the thrusters had led the Freire and the Pegaso team to throw their full confidence into the Vigo yard to complete the project. Although they hadn’t planned it, it was exactly the test that Freire thought his yard would rise to. He saw it as an opportunity.
The Pegaso team’s approach may not have been familiar to the yard, but they quickly adapted to the kind of creative customisation required of this particular client and project. “When we started, we thought that the specifications the Pegaso team provided had been validated from a naval architecture point of view, for instance,” Freire said, “but, in build, we had to increase the draught and beam of the vessel to comply with stability expectations.” Freire worked with the H2 design office in the UK initially, following their superstructure lines and GA. What made the process challenging was the details. In commercial vessels, when the yard has a decision on parts, they usually know there are, say, two options. They can choose equipment based on the delivery time they’re working to. If the owner then decides to go with another choice, these typically don’t then involve major changes to the project, “but on yachts and vessels like Pegaso,” Freire explained, “a minor decision can have a major implication on the design.” The yard learned that unlike in the commercial world, luxury vessels require very specific, detailed designs before the start of construction.
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“In the future, we would approach an owner and his team with that kind of awareness and experience,” Freire said.
Decision to not go to Astilleros de Mallorca The plan was to get all of Pegaso’s engineering, hull and superstructure fundamentally complete at the Freire yard so the vessel could get to Mallorca on her own bottom by April 2011 to receive her topcoat, the installation of her teak decks, final electrics, lighting and any other outstanding work. But the yard ran into a serious problem with the thrusters, key to the yacht’s dynamic positioning system. According to Freire, when the team had originally sat down to make final decisions on key suppliers, Van der Velden was the only company they believed could supply the electrically rim-driven (and thus very quiet and efficient) DPS thrusters that the Pegaso team had wanted. “The other developers of this technology were working a bit longer to address issues they were encountering,” Freire said. “Van der Velden clearly took a risk. We’d heard that there had been some problems with the classification of the equipment, but we felt that given our timeline, they would have addressed the problems by the time we received the equipment. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen that way.” A recall had been issued due to water ingress in the thrusters, and this ended up causing a major delay: Pegaso was put back in drydock to await replacement equipment. At the time Van der Velden had recalled the thrusters, they’d estimated that replacement equipment would be delivered and installed within a couple of weeks. “Pegaso was in drydock for the installation, and we just ended up waiting for the thrusters to arrive,” Freire said. “We could have taken her to Mallorca, but we decided with the owner that we would complete Pegaso at the Freire yard in Vigo. They were pleased with all the work we had completed up to that time, so they were OK to stay.” The wait for the thrusters had led Freire and the Pegaso team to throw their full confidence >>
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into the Vigo yard to complete the project. Although they hadn’t planned it, it was exactly the test that Freire thought his yard would rise to. He saw it as an opportunity. “Finishing off in Mallorca would have been better for marketing, as it’s more of a pedigree issue than an issue of real quality,” Freire said. “Maybe in Mallorca, they could get some of the final details done better, but really, it’s basically the same. And in terms of delivering a yacht with this level of technical complexity, I don’t think there are many yards anywhere in the world that can achieve what we have achieved.” Diego Colón de Carvajal, general manager of Astilleros de Mallorca, worked with the Freire yard to help oversee the finer points of the project that he would otherwise have been in charge of in Palma. “Diego took the opportunity to visit the vessel many, many times during the construction,” Freire said. “His advice was really useful to the project.” “The Pegaso team was very supportive of us,” Freire said. “The owner knew that Freire were not experts in the superyacht market, and so it was always part of the plan that the Pegaso team would assist us. We solved all the problems together.” Flemming brought in Pegaso’s captain, Steve Probst, an intensely focused man who exudes competence and ingenuity. He hired a highly experienced crew, including an engineering department from the commercial world and three other watch officers, to enable simultaneous DP and submarine operations. As they and the rest of the crew became involved at the yard, they brought their expertise and passion to the build and started the process of turning Pegaso from a worksite into a living, breathing boat.
THE INNOVATIONS & DESIGN The Helideck According to the Helideck Certification Agency (HCA), Pegaso’s is the only commercially certified, retractable helideck on a seagoing vessel. It’s another example of the yard tackling an engineering issue with
the kind of solution you would expect from people who otherwise build oil-rig support vessels. “We hadn’t asked for a retractable helideck,” said Flemming. The owner’s preferred helicopter is an McDonnell Douglas Explorer, but when the Freire and Pegaso teams looked at the D-value (the overall length of the helicopter from the front of the rotor disk area to the rear of the tail rotor disc area) required for the Explorer, they realised that the deck needed to extend further aft from the superstructure than was specified in Andy Moore’s very pleasing exterior lines. So the yard came up with the solution to make the deck retractable. HCA looked at the new retractable designs and pointed out that by extending the pad design by a further 120mm, the D-value would enable a broader range of helicopters to land, including the Eurocopter-135 (currently a popular choice in the yachting community). Everyone approved, and the yard built it. Alex Knight, general manager of HCA, who surveyed the helideck, remains in awe of the project as a whole, and the helideck in particular. “Pegaso is unique, imaginative and inspirational. There are many yachts out there that can’t fit a helideck due to limited clearances,” he said. “These owners, captains and brokers will see the Pegaso solution as a way forward for them, so we might see more such decks in the future.” Pegaso is also challenging the need for lights around the helideck by painting the landing markings in UV pigment that will be lit by a big UV light on the main mast. If this works as well as the Pegaso team expect, it will present another step forward for helideck solutions for yachts. “You have to admire their audacity in these types of approaches,” Knight said. “Their only guarantee was HCA’s preparedness to keep an open mind when looking at their innovations.”
“In terms of delivering a yacht with this level of technical complexity, I don’t think there are many yards anywhere in the world that can achieve what we have achieved.”
Probst and his officers will be using an HMS-100 helicopter monitoring system from Kongsberg, which monitors helideck attitude and vertical velocity, wind speed and direction, air temperature and barometric pressure and presents this information to the bridge and helicopter to indicate landing conditions. It’s a system >>
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typically used offshore on floating production and storage vessels (FPSO) and seismic vessels, but works perfectly here in conjunction with the rest of the Kongsberg integrated K-Bridge system. When not in use, the commercially compliant teak helideck becomes a big sundeck, which will soon have an awning, which would be specified to be able to be downrigged in 30 minutes or less for helicopter use. The Sub Crane Freire shipyard is used to the installation of complex cranes aboard offshore research vessels, but the 14-metric-tonne VAS submarine required a crane that operates in a totally new way.
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Again, the issue for the yard was the fact that while the principle of launch and recovery of ROVs and other vehicles from the side of ships was one they were completely comfortable with, all of the previous equipment they had to work with was commercial, and built to a tested standard. The Freire engineers could simply plug in which model of ROV or submarine needed lifting, and the requirements for the crane became clear from the outset. Everyone knows what to expect. But with Pegaso, and the VAS, things changed over the course of the build. “We had changes in the sub during construction, in size
and in weight, so we had to adjust everything in the middle of the build of Pegaso,” said Freire. The challenge for commercial ships is that if the subs or ROVs don’t launch, the entire vessel is useless – there would be no operations to carry out aboard. But with Pegaso, the challenge for the commercial suppliers was to combine their successful technology with beauty. The solution was an overhead gantry crane that hoists the sub snugly up into two reverse chocks and then rolls out 2.16m from the side of the vessel on the centre-points of the lifting hooks. The gunwale edge of the garage is 1.77m above the light-load waterline, so the sub doesn’t have far to descend (and thus to swing) before she’s in the water alongside, up against an innovative underwater fender system being developed by Probst and the team exclusively for the VAS aboard Pegaso. Recovery will work the same way, but in reverse, with lines running aft from midships to the sub to help bring her alongside, and likely some help from the support tender. Suffice to say, launching and retrieving a submarine is serious business – similar to helicopter operations in complexity. Pegaso, of course, has both, so the crew will quickly be masters at each procedurally precise operation. >>
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The Dive Centre Diving is the soul of Pegaso, and as such no expense has been spared to equip her with the finest diving equipment on the planet. The swim platform leads straight into the dive area that is fully kitted out with custom dive racks and lockers for wetsuits and storage. With teak flooring and comfortable benches, it’s a full wet area designed for heavy use. Pegaso commissioned Nautilus, the same company that provided the VAS and with whom they had worked for over a decade, to design and build a custom designed breathing-gas system that was capable of reliably providing large quantities of safe and ultra-pure oxygen, air, nitrox and trimix. The system was built at their factory in Florida and flown to Vigo as two modules that were welded into the hull during construction. There is a veritable arsenal of rebreathers, scuba gear, underwater scooters and a recompression chamber. The VAS sub is equipped to work with a toolkit of advanced scientific and exploration apparatus, including state-of-the-art underwater video cameras. Adjacent to the dive centre is the professional video-editing suite complete with a wet area for handling underwater cameras and getting video safely secured and processed into the vessel’s servers for editing and viewing. The Tenders The 14m by 10m+ athwartships garage contains, aside from the VAS sub and her crane, an 8.8m D-Max Goldfish 29 tender with 65 knot top speed, on the port side and a custom-designed aluminium dive boat by McMullen & Wing to starboard.
On the foredeck are the two Pascoe 6.2m tenders, one a SOLAS rescue boat, the other with teak decks, iPod player and shower. The two Pascoes and the Goldfish were supplied through EYOS Tenders. The McMullen & Wing tender was designed in large part by the captain, to carry out its very specific dual mission as a support vessel for the VAS submarine and a custom dive tender. It carries a 12” chart-plotter screen with video switching for the submarine’s directional tracking, which is measured using a sonar probe, machine-lowered through the towing post 1m below the tender. To carry the heavy rebreather units, she has custom racking that can be removed and covered with cushions to make a sunbed area. There’s a removable awning and benches that fold up to hold two euro-sized palettes side by side for ferrying supplies to Pegaso. It has remote-control searchlights, digital radar, AIS and an iPod speaker system.
Diving is the soul of Pegaso, and as such no expense has been spared to equip her with the finest diving equipment on the planet.
The engine install is impressive for a tender. She uses two Yanmar 315hp engines – enough power to tow the submarine – with all fuel lines in stainless steel and double-filtered, and a small catwalk in between for the engineers. The automatic anchoring from the console is provided by the Lewmar Profish 700 anchoring system. The custom dive ladders, built to Probst’s specifications, fold down on the stern and are removable; a third ladder fits into the stanchion holes by the boarding area so that the dive master can get into the boat on the side, then come around to help guests get aboard at the stern. And she may get her own registration as an extra bureaucratic advantage when on distance explorations up remote rivers. >> THE SUPERYACHT REPORT | ISSUE 128
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ABOVE: THE MAIN SALON BELOW: GUEST AREA COMPANIONWAY
Design & Style of the Living Spaces The main salon is quite a big (800sqm) open-plan space with a wet bar, dining area, lounge area and cinema/big-screen projected TV in the four quadrants of the room, which also holds cards and games tables. It’s a very casual but useable space that opens up to an equally large (900sqm) al fresco area on the aft deck complete with solar blinds and windbreaks so that the owner can leave the doors open and use the whole space as one large living and entertainment area. The sundeck, above the main salon, features an observation lounge forward (above the wheelhouse), which is a luxurious space with a Portuguese bridge forward with a sun seat that’s conceived and designed entirely for the enjoyment of scenery outside. Directly aft of the observation lounge is the Jacuzzi and gym area, which can be enclosed by sliding doors. Aft of this is the helideck/sundeck.
impressive. Because of its vertical distance from the engine room, it’s also very quiet. Aft are the owner’s balcony and his office, which offer commanding views of the surrounding scenery. The desk area in the office is atop a 22cm riser so that when he’s at his desk, the owner can see out of the windows clearly – a key consideration in the original designs. Forward is the bedroom and bathroom, where large skylights above the bed and bathtub (a nearly one-tonne half-orb of carved limestone) continue the theme of visual access to the natural world outside. Flemming points out that while it’s unusual on yachts for the owner to have the top deck, it’s essentially a penthouse. “The owner deserves the best view in the house,” he says. This owner is used to the sea, so for him, concerns of movement weren’t an issue. “The owner is used to conditions that one would normally associate with delivery crews,” Probst points out, “so he’s totally fine with it.”
The top deck on the vessel, is
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The Bridge The finish on the bridge is sleek and well-designed. The wheelhouse is both wide and long, being on the same level as the salon, with two decks above it. The captain and his first officer had gone up to Kongsberg to train on the integrated bridge and dynamic positioning systems and then the Kongsberg people came down to work with the team to get the layout Probst wanted. There’s a walkaround feature forward of the main control screens and consoles enabling easy access to the back of the consoles, and fold-out wing stations that are integrated into the bulwarks of the bridge deck with conning screens tied into the bridge and camera interfaces. AV/IT & Lighting Pegaso is a media platform, and as such has a heavy-duty set-up for video editing capabilities, including an AV/IT room with independent air conditioning for, among other equipment, the Apple Mac Pro server running Final Cut Pro. There’s a 9 Gigabit fibre-optic link between
the editing lab and the office in the owner’s suite, (that network is also run to each cabin). Wireless is via a Cisco frequency-boosted radiating cable throughout the vessel.
ABOVE: OWNER’S STATEROOM, WITH SKYLIGHT BELOW: sky lounge bottom: owner’s companionway
The owner is a Mac guy, so all the lights, blinds, air conditioning, sound system, exterior door locks are controlled by iPad, with the work done by AVIT in Palma and the electromechanical control done by KNX – an IP driven control system that’s being deployed aboard a vessel for the first time on Pegaso. MTN is supporting both C and Ku-Band VSAT systems on Pegaso, which will provide the vessel with global coverage, with the exception of the poles. MTN will also be hosting a fixed TVRO system at its Miramar facility in Florida, enabling Pegaso to stream premium cable networks via satellite to the vessel’s onboard TVs. The Engine Room The resounding feature of the engine room is the commercial standard in which it is designed and constructed. >>
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SPECIFICATIONS Shipyard Freire Shipyard, Vigo, Spain Freire project number C700 Construction start date October 2007 Launch date 17 March, 2010 Delivery date 8 September, 2011 (final completion of post-delivery works, November 2011) DESIGN
This was where Freire engineering was able to proceed without as much yachtdesign direction as elsewhere, and it’s clear by the size and robust look and feel of valves and other general components. Pegaso is running two Caterpillar 3516C engines providing 4700kW through a pair of Reintjes LAF 1173L gearboxes to the Berg 4-blade variable-pitch props. She has a pair of Quantum QC-2200XT 9m2 zero-speed stabilisers, and (as of this writing) replacement Van der Velden EPS thrusters, 400kW in the bow and two 250kW at the stern. There are three main generators (Caterpillar C-18s with 450kW) in the engine room and an emergency generator (another C-18 at 275kW) concealed starboard aft on the sundeck.
CONCLUSION “This wasn’t the typical case of a shipyard that gets involved in this kind of project and goes bankrupt after delivery because the numbers didn’t fit at all,” Freire said. “Our expectations for the budget were certainly better, but the real numbers aren’t bad.” There’s a lot the yard learned during the build of Pegaso, and Freire believes there are plenty of reductions in cost that could be applied to a similar kind of vessel. The yard spent hours of engineering and production time that wouldn’t need to be repeated. “I think we would produce a second Pegaso-type vessel at the same price, but at reduced cost.” Freire said that the Freire family and the shipyard in Vigo want to take the Pegaso experience and continue to develop their ability to produce highquality oceanographic yachts. Prior to
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2008, the yard was actively shopping its services to the yachting community, “but when the crisis came, everything was different,” Freire explained, with a sigh familiar to the breadth of the industry. “Once orders were cancelled at the big yacht shipyards, and space was available again there, it became very difficult for us to compete. But we had Pegaso.” Owners and brokers who read and hear about this remarkable project can only know that the owner had placed his trust in the yard. They have yet to see the final product and judge for themselves whether the yard is up to the standards they expect. Shortly before this article went to print, the owner, team and yard decided not to try to rush the final stages of the yacht’s completion and proceed to the Monaco Yacht Show. Instead, they chose to complete the project in the spirit that it was conceived, and will continue to be run and operated: with an audacious confidence in the idea, and as a legacy for a pioneering captain and friend. The partnership of the Pegaso team and the Freire shipyard looks set to continue, in the knowledge that once fully operational, this boat will attract all and sundry with her lithe looks and powerful capabilities. She is, with little doubt, bound for fame. Both the Pegaso team and the Freire shipyard are now, finally, ready to show the superyacht world what they can do. At TSR, we’re standing by for her completion and will be bringing you updates on her and her itinerary as they become available. g
Hull lines BMT Nigel Gee & Associates Naval Architect Sermarine SL Design concept Pegaso Marine Interior styling Mark Berryman Design Ltd Exterior Styling Andy Moore Design Flag Malta Classification Lloyd’s 100 A1 (research vessel) ICE Class 1D +LMC +CSS, UMS, MCA LY2 unlimited LOA 73.6m (241’) Beam 13.2m (43’) Draught 3.8m (12’) Gross tonnage 2,059 tonnes PERFORMANCE Cruising speed 14.5kt Maximum speed 18kt Maximum range 10,000 nautical miles (14.5kt) TANKAGE Fuel tanks 342,690 litres Water tanks 67,610 litres Images: Pegaso Marine and Chou Pesqueira. To comment on this article, email
[email protected] with subject: Pegaso
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THE BLACK SUBMARINE Pegaso’s owner was so passionate about undersea exploration, he signed the contract on this five-person diver-lockout VAS submarine before the contract for Pegaso.
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he technology and pedigree of the VAS submarine are highly impressive. Built in the industrial heart of Italy by Dr Giunio Santi, a Renaissance man with 35 years’ experience building submarines for global military and industrial applications, the VAS is the ultimate ocean explorer’s tool: she’s fast (six knots), efficient (eight hours mission time), safe (96 hours life-support, RINA classed and CISR compliant) and smart (distortion free optics, side scan sonar, HD camera systems, sub-to-diver communications, iPod stereo, and WiFi). Divers can exit the submarine underwater, conduct a dive and re-enter the submarine again, decompressing in a dry environment with the submarine underway. And she’s obsidian black. “It’s not the easiest colour, but it’s the sexiest by far,” Sean Dooley of Nautilus, the company that provided the sub to Pegaso explained, laughing. “A lot of smaller submarines are painted international distress orange because it is easy to see. The client wanted black and, underwater, it’s going to be just epic. This submarine is going to look amazing in a picture surrounded by sharks or next to a shipwreck.” And while the media buzzes about Branson, Cameron and Schmidt planning dives nearly seven miles down to the dark and cold Challenger Deep, Pegaso’s owner will be exploring the vibrant and colourful waters of the undersea world from inside, and outside, his submarine.
THE DIVER LOCKOUT Using technology perfected over the last 35 years for the military, the diver-lockout design is a key feature of this sub: it enables divers to exit the submarine through a side hatch and conduct their dive. Guests enter the lockout compartment from the main passenger compartment through a watertight bulkhead that, when closed, creates two separate environments. The forward chamber contains all the electronics and batteries, is always dry, and remains at one atmosphere
(1ATM) of air pressure. The diver lockout is designed to accommodate three divers with rebreather equipment and cameras. When fully flooded, the top third of the chamber remains an airspace, allowing divers to speak to one another prior to diving. There are shelves to hold sandwiches and bottled water for the divers to have post-dive or during any required decompression time. Upon completing the dive, the divers re-enter the flooded lockout chamber and close the side hatch. Seawater is pumped out, allowing the divers to remove their gear and begin their ‘ascent’ in comfort and safety. Since dive computers measure pressure, either dry or wet, the divers slowly adjust the internal air pressure inside the submarine to replicate an in-water ascent. The ability to manage the internal pressure of the diver lockout chamber allows it to serve double-duty as a recompression chamber.
The VAS ingeniously solves any issues of distortion by using flat optics, which produce a true viewing experience for the passengers...“Seeing a true image is not only the main point of being in a submarine, but is also a major safety issue when you are piloting in close proximity to objects or using manipulators.”
The owner of Pegaso is an expert rebreather diver, and will be using mixed gas in his future deeper dives. Deeper depths increase the risk of decompression illness, but with the integrated recompression options of the VAS, the safety of divers is optimised – ideal for an owner who will be conducting three-hour dives in remote locations. The lockout chamber drains quickly, shedding the weight of water from the sub, which is then able to surface from the dive for any reason. Once at the surface, passengers can disembark from the forward compartment while the divers remain safely under pressure. There is a manual back-up pumping system for safety.
ZERO-DISTORTION OPTICS Probably the most obvious, and yet very clever, feature of the VAS is its windows. Having your own sub means being able to travel through and see, firsthand, the undersea environment. Therefore, maximum consideration should be placed on the ability of the passenger to view sea life in its truest form. The majority of submarine designs use curved, hemispheric acrylic for their viewports or pressure hulls; but the laws of optics need to be respected as much underwater as in
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air: a hemispheric window with water on one side and air on the other acts exactly like an optical lens, distorting the path of light.
BRING ON THE SCIENCE The owner of Pegaso, whose passion for undersea exploration is riveted into every feature of the yacht’s concept and design, wanted to provide access to the vessel and her capabilities to ocean conservation groups. So he hired Ocean Preservation Alliance (OPA), founded by Sean Dooley and Bryce Groark, to act as their bridge to the ocean science and exploration communities. The yacht chooses a region and OPA then asks their science and exploration partners: “What important work can we achieve in this location?” Options are collected, reviewed and presented for final selection based on merit and interest to the owner. OPA then provides coordination and logistics to ensure the expedition – whether for wildlife and habitat research, submarine and diving operations, surveying marine protected areas, seabed mapping, historical shipwreck location or documentary and other media production – is efficiently organised and executed. “OPA is about getting the owner and crew involved in the process of ocean science and exploration,” Groark said. “When it is personal and exciting and relevant, people begin to realise they can make a difference.” OPA has decades of diving experience and has led expeditions around the globe with superyacht owners. “We realised that connecting with, and ultimately bringing, scientists on expedition enriched the owner’s experience,” Dooley said. “The owners and the scientists both loved it: a real win-win.”
The VAS ingeniously solves any issues of distortion by using flat optics, which produce a true viewing experience for the passengers. The VAS’s main forward viewing window is a flat 1.4m acrylic optic at 20cm thick (costing about e60k) and, like the smaller flat windows along the sub’s side, is protected by acrylic protectors embedded in the sub’s exterior hydrodynamic envelope. As Dooley pointed out, “Seeing a true image is not only the main point of being in a submarine, but is also a major safety issue when you are piloting in close proximity to objects or using manipulators.”
Since Pegaso’s mission is ocean diving and exploration, a larger than standard team of divers and pilots has been selected to support the submarine. Max Depth
The manufacturer of the VAS can make submarines that can go as deep as 2,000m; however, the Pegaso team preferred to build their submarine within the guidelines provided by the US Navy diving manual (the global gold standard for diving). According to the manual, the maximum depth for a mixed gas rebreather diver is 170m, which means that’s the maximum safe depth Pegaso can send a diver to physically assist the submarine. One issue that any submarine must consider is entanglement, and while the VAS has jettisonable fins and prop, there is no substitute to physically sending a diver down to visually evaluate and assist in untangling the submarine. “And besides,” Dooley
There are thousands of conservation and research projects waiting to happen. “For scientists, getting to sea usually involves months of grant applications, scheduling and politicking,” Dooley said. “We offer them a path that cuts through all of that, and we end up having access to world-class projects and people as a result.” OPA have worked with several yachts on these types of expeditions in the past, but many are not interested in the limelight and ask to remain anonymous. “The owner of Pegaso is one client who has given us full permission to share their experience and help give OPA an exciting, visible platform,” Groark said. “It’s a beautiful match.”
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pointed out, “at 170m, even in the clearest water in the world, you wouldn’t see much without big lights.”
SAFETY Setting the maximum depth at 170m was one operational advantage that Dooley and his team employed to ensure the safety of the guests and crew. From a mechanical perspective there are no safety ‘options’ on the VAS, as the decision was made from the beginning to include all safety systems as standard. The VAS is equipped with a 250m spectra cable (with breaking strength 10 times the diving weight of VAS) attached to a buoy containing an EPIRB (distress beacon)and a strobe that can be launched from within the sub in an emergency. This emergency equipment provides divers a guide straight down to the submarine, and can be used to pull the VAS to the surface using the yacht’s windlass. As further back-up, Dooley claims his team can scramble a rescue operation that can be at the sub anywhere in the world within 36 hours. All of this safety and rescue planning is required to properly insure the submarine and its occupants.
LOADING & OFF-LOADING The design of the VAS enables guests to board her when she is sitting in the water. The VAS is the only submarine offering stairs, as opposed to a ladder, for an easier and more elegant entry and exit. The stairs were originally designed to unload six commandos,
their weapons and an inflatable in less than 60 seconds. The advantage of not spilling a cocktail upon entry seems like a more likely application. Its 14gt weight and freeboard push surface waves around the submarine, preventing the typical surge up and down of a tender. Once launched, it can be set up at the swim platform for guests to board, it can be towed to the dive site (max tow speed is eight knots) or it can drive to the dive site under its own power and wait on the surface for the guests to arrive. At the swim platform, where there can be significant difference in movement, a ‘horseshoe’ collar – a three-sided surface float made of same material as RIBs – can be used to pull the VAS to the surface using the mother ship’s windlass. Once on the dive site, the owner and his guests can arrive in a tender, pull up next to it, step on the submarine and be down on the dive site in minutes. Once the dive is completed, the submarine can return to the surface and the guests can jump into their tender or simply board the yacht and have lunch and relax.
DRIVING IT Learning to drive the submarine requires the completion of a fourweek pilot’s course, partially done in the 60,000-gallon test tank at the factory and the remainder done at sea. Since Pegaso’s mission is ocean diving and exploration, a larger than standard team of divers and pilots has been selected to support the submarine. The owner is also scheduled to get his pilot rating in the
The stairs were originally designed to unload six commandos, their weapons and an inflatable in less than 60 seconds. The advantage of not spilling a cocktail upon entry seems like a more likely application.
MANSON SUPERYACHT COLLECTION • Sizes 10 - 4300 kg • Stainless or galvanised • Six different type approved Superyacht anchors in range • Handcrafted in New Zealand since 1972
UCT NEW PROD BOWMASTER SUPERBOX SWIVEL
BOWMASTER CHOCKS
MANSON KEDGE ANCHOR
MANSON HIDING ANCHOR
[email protected] | www.mansonanchors.com FORT LAUDERDALE: 754 Builders tent. METS: 02.222 Hall 2 TSR128 pp90-97 Pegaso Sub final dm'd.indd 95
BOWMASTER BOLLARDS
• Chocks size 1-12 • Bollards size 1-12 • Superbox Swivel connects anchors sized 50-8800kg
[email protected] | www.bowmaster.co.nz FORT LAUDERDALE: 754 Builders tent. METS: 02.222 Hall 2 06/10/2011 16:05
yacht report | The black submarine
A Luxury Version (VAS LE) A new 130m+ yacht is taking delivery of a luxury version of the VAS in a few months. This model replaces the diver lockout with an enormous central lounge to provide a relaxing area for passengers. All the sub’s batteries were moved aft to provide a large forward passenger compartment featuring an enclosed bathroom, minibar and two refrigerators. The interior is by a well-known Italian design firm. Dooley believes this luxury version will comprise the majority of future orders, as most people aren’t technical divers and “would just want to go for the ride to see the marine environment from a navigable undersea lounge”. Nautilus is currently developing a 10m, eight-person luxury VAS design for a 90m+ vessel.
Systems are centralised and routed through the onboard computer, which allows the pilot and passengers to view up to four monitors of systems information and underwater camera angles.
VAS, and he will likely have the luxury of getting his final ocean training in the south Pacific. The interior of a submarine is compact and finite. There is always a certain amount of equipment that has to be incorporated into the available space, and the challenge is to keep it ergonomic, comfortable and efficient. The analogy to car interior design is very apt, and indeed the VAS utilises seating based on the SmartCar seats. With their comfort and low volume, the decision was unanimous to adapt them into the design. The design of the VAS interior places a strong emphasis on streamlining and simplifying, at least to the observer. Many control systems are centralised and routed through the onboard computer, which allows the pilot and passengers to view up to four monitors of systems information and/or underwater camera angles. Making one valve perform the functions of four required a lot of design and customisation, but like a high-end automobile, the beauty is in the details. Steering is ‘fly-by-wire’, with two joysticks providing steady and smooth operation. The VAS utilises a complex proprietary system of sea-water and fixed-weight ballast and foam and air-bank buoyancy, all of which can be either electronically or manually
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controlled (every electronic system on the VAS has a manual counterpart for safety). The ballast system allows the VAS to adjust its pitch and roll underwater to maximise viewing options. For instance, when the VAS is hovering above a shipwreck, an adjustment of the system enables the sub to pitch down and roll sideways to allow guests to clearly see below them while comfortably still in their seats. The VAS aboard Pegaso will enable an entire family to participate in a truly unique and adventurous underwater excursion. The ocean is an integral component of yachting; being able to explore the world beneath the hull seems only natural. g
Images: Nautilus To comment on this article, email
[email protected] with subject: The black submarine
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SPECIFICATIONS Dimensions/Weights 8.4m L, 2.5m H, 2.5m W, 14 metric tonnes (displacement 14.9 tonnes). Interior standing height of 1.8m. Certification/Classification RINA Capacity Five persons (up to three divers for lockout). Operations 525ft (170m) maximum operating depth, 200ft (60m) maximum diver lockout depth. Eight-hour mission time with 96-hour emergency life support. Six knots top speed 25 nautical miles capable range Manipulator and high-definition u/w video cameracapable. (The Pegaso team is adding these in 2012 to allow for the very latest available technology.) Special Features Diver lockout Zero-distortion optics Emergency surface buoy Side scan sonar: for mapping the seabed and/or looking for wrecks. Underwater communications: Ability to communicate with surface (tender and/or mothership) and divers outside the VAS. WiFi: Why not? Useful for an owner who wants to check his e-mails between dives without leaving the VAS. (VAS has to be within 1,000m range of Pegaso or the support tender.) Price Current pricing for a VAS like Pegaso’s is approximately €5 million.
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Numptia The choice of a relatively unknown designer and shipyard was a brave decision for an owner determined to build his fully custom 70m yacht in Italy. The result has drawn accolades throughout the industry, confirming his faith and all the time that he invested in the Numptia project. The owner talked about the project with Jason Holtom.
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It is refreshing to hear about a relatively unknown Italian yard and unknown interior designer producing a significant large yacht of obvious quality and elegant style that was developed as a total custom project.
I
t was interesting to listen to the favourable comments at the Monaco Yacht Show from respected yachting professionals who had been aboard the recently launched 70m Numptia, built by Rossinavi in Viareggio. In an age when the leading yards seem to be mostly promoting concept yachts drawn by the well established designers or semi-custom series designs, it is refreshing to hear about a relatively unknown Italian yard and unknown interior designer producing a significant large yacht of obvious quality and elegant style that was developed as a total custom project. The lead in this case was an Italianborn owner from the USA who had a very clear vision of what he wanted and was willing to put in the necessary time to achieve his desires. Hearing that Numptia’s owner had spent over a week of every month in Italy over the 38-month build, preceded by an exhaustive nine-month development period prior to signing the contract, it is easy to see that this is not the route to yacht ownership that would suit every superyacht buyer, even if they could spare the time.
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A WORK OF PASSION ‘Passion’ is the word that seems most appropriate when describing the build of Numptia, and when TSR was shown around the yacht in Naples by her owner it became clear why. “Naples is my hometown; this is where I was born. I left here for America as a young boy when I was 14 years old. Which explains why I chose to build Numptia in Italy,” he declared with an infectious laugh and clearly proud smile. Lying serenely at anchor in the early morning on a mirror-glass sea off the Neapolitan coast, the clean flowing continuous longitudinal, vertical and transverse curves of the upper decks lend softness to the profile with the slope of the dark blue sheer line of the hull amidships curving gently down towards the sea. It is not surprising, surrounded by his friends and family, that this owner is justifiably proud and emotional about his return to his hometown with such a major statement of achievement, not just in yacht building, but also in his life. And the passion is not just for Numptia, but also for Italy. After a
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period of chartering, he built his first yacht, a 61.3m, at CRN in Ancona in 2000, with Paolo Scanu exterior styling and a François Zuretti interior. Surprisingly, he sold her just a year later when showing her for charter at the Monaco Yacht Show. “A gentleman came onboard and asked the captain would I be interested in selling? Within two weeks the gentleman owned the boat. Yes, it was a profitable venture.” His project manager on the CRN build was Marco Martinelli and it was not until 2007, after he had sold his business, that he decided to build again. “I really wanted a project that would occupy my time and give me the pleasure that I had on the previous build.” Central to this vision was the importance of achieving a totally custom build with a shipyard in Italy. “There are many points of views about the best place to build; Holland, Germany, Italy, the USA. When we look at the machinery onboard it’s all international, the same products. I think there are as fine engineers and electricians in Italy as there are
in Holland or in Germany. It is not just all superbly crafted veneers and marble,” said the owner. “I could not be convinced that in Italy we do not have the skilled labour or the talent to do quality electrical, plumbing, piping, and engineering... in my eyes you can’t tell me that Italy is inferior. And maybe it’s because I was born and raised here; don’t get me wrong, but there are boat-building traditions that go a long way back,” he added.
OPPOSITE: ALL THE OUTDOOR FURNITURE WAS CUSTOM DESIGNED BY SPADOLINI AND BUILT FOR THE SPECIFIC DECK LOCATIONS. TOP: THE SHEER LINE AMIDSHIPS CURVES GENTLY TOWARDS THE SEA. BELOW: SPADOLINI DESIGN DETAIL FOR THE LATERAL STAIRWAY.
PLANNING THE SPACE Martinelli was drafted in again and recommended working up the general arrangement drawings and external styling with Tommaso Spadolini of Florence and naval architecture with Horacio Bozzo of Axis Group Yacht Design in Viareggio for a 60m yacht. The owner was specific in his desire to build a boat that would be comfortable for all the generations of his family. In the interior space planning it was important that the crew could run the yacht efficiently with fast and discrete access to guest accommodation and dedicated service areas on the main and all upper decks including coffee-machines, pantries, fridges >>
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and storage for wine, tableware, linen and glasses. All five decks were to be served by a food lift with a Norwegian carbon filter extractor in the galley to eliminate galley odours. He had started to develop the plans for his first yacht with the late Jon Bannenberg, but the design had not gone ahead, partly because Bannenberg had wanted to build in Australia. He liked the timeless elegance of the design influence of Bannenberg like Carinthia and Limitless and this was the starting brief for the external styling for Spadolini.
“We could have written a book on the mast design alone...”
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Once Spadolini started looking at the owner’s brief for the interior, including the importance of the ease of movement around the yacht with adequate room to pass on the stairways with 1.05m width and a central glass passenger lift serving all the the decks
from the foyer, he realised that the original brief for a 60m yacht was not sufficient and presented a 65m plan. Over the nine months of this initial planning period before the contract was placed with the shipyard, the yacht grew to 70m, just about the largest that would fit in the their shed. When the owner was happy with the interior space, Spadolini developed the exterior styling. “We could have written a book on the mast design alone,” said Spadolini. “We went through 27 different iterations and part of the mast was modelled at 1:1. Around Viareggio, people joke that it is more like a piece of sculpture than a yacht mast. The design of the continuous curves of the upper decks was to create the feel of a gentle cascade of water ‘like the Trevi Fountain in Rome’. We built a 1:50 scale model, around two metres >>
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long, that we used to develop the lines,” he added. At all stages, the owner was always thinking about the details of the space and was asking for very small and often subtle changes, for just about every part. “He was from the US and was thinking in inches, and we were in centimetres. This was a big problem,” said Spadolini, laughing.
“There was no compromise on achieving the very best technical specification,” said Bozzo. “The owner was as involved with every detail of the engine room layout and equipment as he was with the guest accommodation.”
“He was a very demanding client, but he was willing to give us a minimum of one week a month, in Florence, or Rome or Viareggio, to work together, which is perfect for the architect because then there is a very short time from asking the question to receiving the answer,” said Spadolini. “I finished a 45m in Spain last July, and I only saw the owner three times in two and a half years and he always said ‘you decide’. There was no stimulus for my work. It is far more satisfying to work with a demanding client.” At the same time, Horacio Bozzo was working on the hull design and the engineering specification. “There was no compromise on achieving the very best technical specification,” said Bozzo. “The owner was as involved with every detail of the engine room layout and equipment as he was with the guest accommodation.” The project involved totally original naval architecture with careful analysis of the weight distribution of the superstructure and tankage to ensure the correct trim. Stability, seakeeping and performance assessment was studied with tank testing at the INSEAN facility in Rome at 1:5 scale and in the sea trials Numptia achieved 1.5 knots more than the contract specification.
An Italian affair
ABOVE: Salvagni designed chairs with Loro Piana fabric. OPPOSITE TOP: Owner’s study. opposite BELOW: Owner’s chaise longue.
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Parallel with the development of the design was the brief to find an Italian shipyard that would offer the opportunity for full customisation with owner participation and the ability to offer top quality at a fair price. Martinelli recommended Rossinavi, a family-owned Viareggio yard with three brothers that was well established in metal fabrication with over 30 years’ experience building sub-
contract hulls for other shipyards like Codecasa and Benetti. Even though the largest sub-contract hull that they had built was 70m back in 2000, they had only started offering complete yachts in 2007, and the largest they had built was the 53.2m M/Y South in 2008. Fortunately, the owner found immediate rapport with commercial director Claudio Rossi. “Mr Rossi is a boat builder, knowledgeable, everything goes through his fingers, nothing escapes him,” said the owner. “He’s very demanding and at the same time I found him a man of his word; if he told me he would do something he would. Not once did I have the concern that he would skimp – not once did I fear, ‘Oh gee they’re going to try to pull something, let’s keep an eye open.’ It was always: ‘We changed it because we think it’s better’. “Maybe it’s my luck or maybe it’s the fact that I’ve come to these shipyards at the right time” added the owner. “Ferretti purchased CRN and I don’t know if CRN is the same as it used to be. You’re not talking to the shipyard owners anymore, you’re talking to the managers and it’s a whole different approach and I don’t know that I could work well with a yard like that personally.” In order to allay some of the concerns about putting trust in a new yard with a project way larger than they had ever handled before, Martinelli identified all the best sub-contractors in the area. “We met with each sub-contractor individually and when we signed our agreement with Rossi we said ‘These are the sub-contractors that we will accept’,” the owner said. “Ten or 15 years ago if you wanted to build totally custom you could go almost anywhere, but the industry has changed. Everybody wants to standardise their procedures, they want to shorten the timeframe and at the same time streamline the process of building a yacht with the explanation that it will be faster with semi-custom or series lines,” observed the owner. “But in reality, in my opinion, it just reduces their costs and allows them to make more money.
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I think they quote time as an excuse but I don’t think that’s always the case, because construction-wise 70m in 38 months for the fully customised Numptia is not a lot of time,” said the owner. “I think they were all surprised when I went to Rossi. I think if I hadn’t met Mr Rossi I probably wouldn’t have done it. The name on the door doesn’t mean as much to me as having met the man, understanding what he stands for, understanding what his purpose in life is. Of course it’s to make money, but it’s also to produce good quality.” The quality of the Rossinavi workmanship is evident throughout Numptia. In particular, the polished custom stainless-steel work of the oval handrails, the stairs, the bollards and throughout the interior.
A flair for design The unusual approach of hiring new Italian talent also extended to the interior design. The owner specifically did not want to work with a well-established design house. “We all know the names of the big guys. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting some of them – they’re all wonderful. Martinelli and I talked about it and of course each one comes with a price tag and each one comes with their own baggage,” said the owner. “These people have had so much success, adding one more yacht to their list isn’t going to change their life. So we felt that we would like to work with a new upcoming designer, who would add value with enthusiasm and go that extra half mile. >> THE SUPERYACHT REPORT | ISSUE 128
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“In this project we tried to melt together the contemporary sensation with the classical evocation.”
TOP: A sinuous stainless-steel-topped bar for pre/post dinner drinks links the main saloon with the formal dining room entered through wide metal wrought sliding doors. BELOW: The huge day bed for the cinema lounge.
“Marco Martinelli suggested Achille Salvagni for the interior. He’s young and works in Rome. I think what really motivated me is when I went to his office and I saw what he had done with almost an antique space. He’d designed it with mezzanine levels. I walked in and I thought, ‘some pretty talented guy’.” Salvagni had only limited yacht experience having only worked on the refit of a 47m and designed the interiors for some semi-production Otams and Canados motoryachts up to 35m. There is no doubt, however, that it is the inspiration of Salvagni’s designs that has produced some of the most admiring comments and the accolades that Numptia will no doubt receive in the future. At the same time contemporary, the interior has a feeling of quiet, calm and timelessness that is very hard to describe. “I feel that my projects should not just be for a client, but also designed around a client,” said Salvagni. “I knew the owner was used to a much more classical style and I did not want to lose this feeling
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he had in this environment, but at the same time he understood that nowadays the luxury style and the sense of wellbeing are not exactly connected with classicism, but connected with something that makes you feel good. “In this project we tried to melt together the contemporary sensation with the classical evocation. So around the boat you will find some pieces of art or furniture that remind you of an earlier age and some evoke what the future could be and together they create a balance of calm and quietness. The goal was to reach an everlasting ageless theme. Big toys are very strictly linked to momentary emotions and their moment can easily pass. I did not want this boat to pass. I very much wanted to design something that would last over time, which was why I tried to merge the eras to create the right balance,” said Salvagni. “All pieces of art and furniture have been expressly designed for this boat with the echoes of the past and the future in terms of wellbeing, in terms >>
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Everywhere the very best materials are used, from the solid marble in the steam bath to the ultra-hard-wearing quartz floors, harder than granite, in the galley that will not mark or stain.
of textiles, materials and vision,” added Salvagni. Every single piece of furniture and artwork, lamp and door handle, bed and basin, table, chair and sofa, even the door hinges, has been custom designed for Numptia. Salvagni’s studio created over 10,000 3D renderings for the project, refining each piece with the owner, sometimes over 100 times before it was finally signed off. These are complemented by the finest custom silk carpets woven in Tibet and Loro Piana cashmere, silk and velvet fabrics for the custom designed chairs, sofas and beds. The overall feeling is calm, relaxing and understated, there is nothing ornate or over embellished. All the wood is solid teak or ebony with no wood veneers. Everywhere the very best materials are used, from the solid marble in the steam bath to the ultra-hard-wearing quartz floors, harder than granite, in the galley that will not mark or stain. An element of industrial finesse is introduced with the 12-seat oval dining table covered in riveted alpaca nickel silver, looking like the polished wing of a spitfire. In his pursuit for the very best quality
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and advanced technology, the owner specified LED lighting throughout, which reduces power consumption and heat at considerable cost. Even though not a great enthusiast for watching TV, the owner contracted Videoworks of Ancona to install a state-of-the-art entertainment system with central Kaleidescape audio/video on demand server and iPad room controls. The very large owner’s suite forward on the main deck is a haven of peace and relaxation with a perfectly dimensioned office leading through to the bedroom divided into a reading area to starboard, central sleeping area and television area with comfortable chaise longues to port. Forward, there is a white bathroom with bronze ceiling panels and a free-standing oval bath carved out of a solid piece of white marble. On the bridge deck the captain has a dedicated chart, radio room and office with solid ebony desk. The bridge itself has distortion-free curved windows and a walk-around helm console and guest sofa to enjoy observing the yacht in action. Above the bridge Numptia has a
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dedicated spa deck with hair dressing salon, massage room, gym, marble Turkish bath, sauna and restaurant bar with both fore and aft sunbathing areas. This is sure to be a popular spot for charter guests. At the top, the combined pool deck and party deck has an infinity pool with powerful stimulating overhead fountain showers and hot tub underwater pressure jets. The forward part is a touch-and-go helipad and sunbathing area which can be converted into a disco with built-in lighting. Like the interior, all the deck furniture was custom designed, with different themes on each deck with teak and stainless steel and built-in hidden under-lighting.
Total commitment Every new build project is different. An owner’s input can vary greatly depending on the available time, energy, passion and experience. In the case of Numptia, a truly committed owner was willing to personally put in the necessary hours and days to achieve a totally unique, totally custom design with an all Italian team. He put his trust and confidence in a
relatively young yard and designer and then forged a relationship that has produced a remarkably accomplished 70m yacht in just 38 months. The whole team pushed itself to achieve the highest quality, often in disregard for the hours involved. The owner gave them a fantastic opportunity to excel, to showcase their talents, and was willing to take the risk and to back them with his time and money. What he expected and received in exchange was 110 per cent commitment, great value and premium quality.
LEFT PAGE: Owner’s suite king size bed. Central passenger lift serving all five decks. Note the symmetry in the design with the fan shape brushed marble flooring mirroring the teak ceiling. ABOVE: Detail of owner’s private dressing room.
“I will always be grateful to the owner because he gave me the chance and trusted me,” said Salvagni. “It took at least four or five times the hours I expected. At a certain point I understood that this was my occasion. I did what I needed to do to be seen in the large-yacht market. I was simply astonished by the seriousness of this man and realised that he was the right person for me to take a chance.” g An interview with Numptia’s owner follows on page 112.
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An interview with Numptia’s owner Having tasted the heights of working with the genius of the late Jon Bannenberg, the owner of Numptia was looking for something very special with his second new build. Jason Holtom talked to him aboard Numptia about shipyards, designers and conventional wisdom and just why he was so determined to create an all-Italian masterpiece and why he was willing to commit so much of his own time to the project. Where was your first cruise on Numptia?
Were you chartering slightly larger boats each time?
Did you go back to any particular boats?
The yacht picked us up in Porto Cervo and we cruised the Sardinian waters and then to Naples, where I was born.
Yes, slightly bigger. I think the first one that I’d been on was maybe a 100-footer (30.48m) and then we tried a 40m and 50m after that.
No, I think at the time we were looking to experience chartering and wanted to try different boats.
And your previous boat was also built in Italy by CRN in Ancona and before that you chartered?
Yes. A friend of mine introduced me to yachting a long time ago. It was the most relaxing vacation that I’ve ever had. I didn’t pack, unpack, run here and run there. I just sat and cruised the Caribbean. I think everything looks much better from the water.
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“I love the opportunity to sit down with a piece of paper and a pencil and start to begin something special.”
So were you looking at the charter brochures and did you say, “Oh, we like this one”?
Of course. You start off by looking at brochures and at the time I was new to the market and didn’t understand much more than what you see in the picture and sometimes the pictures cannot tell the whole story.
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And were you studying the boats technically at the same time?
Exactly. Every time we’ve been onboard I was always thinking: “Wouldn’t it be nice to own a yacht”. One year we were vacationing in Sardinia and I saw this yacht come in to the harbour and I said, “What a wonderful yacht. Tonight we’ll go down to the harbour and take a look at it up close”. So when I was flying back home I bought a yachting magazine and I saw the very same yacht being advertised for sale. When I looked at the boat I knew it wasn’t for me. It was a nice boat, it looked good but it needed a lot of love and care. We kept looking at different yachts. And at the end of the day we found a yacht that my wife and I liked, built by CRN in Ancona. I said “I will buy this yacht but we will need to bring it back to the CRN shipyard and plan on doing some renovation.” When I got to the shipyard the owner made me an offer that I couldn’t refuse he said “I will build you a new one.” Then we started looking for designers and that’s how we met Jon Bannenberg. I’d seen one of his boats in Holland called Cleopatra C [1985 built 57m Amels ex-My Gail III, Ed] – a beautiful rounded stern yacht. So I went to London and met him. I said, “Jon, can you build a traditional classic yacht?” We went to see one of the yachts that he was working on at Devonport in the UK (Talitha G) and I was convinced that we were in good hands so we engaged him. I felt I had reached the top. I really enjoyed the experience of working with him. He wanted to build the yacht in Australia and I wanted to build it in Italy so we did not proceed. George Nicholson, the broker and a close friend with the owner of CRN, agreed to oversee the construction with our project manager, Marco Martinelli who is a long time friend. Paolo Scanu picked up the project from Jon Bannenberg for the naval architecture and external styling and we brought in François Zuretti for the interior. So there was a very nice team of people. >>
Rossinavi – the builder
Rossi was established by three brothers in the 1970s in Viareggio as a metal fabrication facility. In the 1980s they built inland and coastal commercial passenger vessels and started to build sub-contract steel and aluminium hulls and superstructures for other shipyards in the Viareggio area including Codecasa and Benetti. The sub-contract work expanded into supplying piping and engineering. They have supplied 12 motoryachts between 38m and 72m to local yards. In 2007 the brothers established the Rossinavi brand and started to build under their own name. The largest complete project before Numptia was the 53.2m M/Y South launched in 2008. Currently under construction under the Rossinavi brand are two steel yachts; a 45m yard number FR024 and a 46m yard number FR025, both due for delivery in mid 2012. These will be followed in early 2013 by two aluminium yachts, the 48m Ketos FR026 and 47m Prince Shark, yard number FR027. TSR: Why has the yard changed from sub-contractor to new build? Rossinavi: The change happened because of our healthy ambition. We started to become so big that we were no longer as competitive as smaller suppliers. We understood, at a certain point, that we were building ships almost in their entirety and so we didn’t find a reason to not convert our activity. TSR: What size would you like to/are able to build? Rossinavi: Currently, we are focused on construction under the 500 tonnes GRT limit, ideally with yachts of about 45m to 48m with interior volumes that are used ‘to the brim’, up to the last cubic metre. We have the capacity to build up to 75m. TSR: How did the yard become involved with the Numptia project? Rossinavi: The client asked his project manager to find a shipyard that offered full customisation, flexibility and the possibility for the owner to take an active part in the project and we were that shipyard. rossinavi.it
For more on Rossinavi, please see Justin Ratcliffe’s special report on the yard (issue 122, page 79) of TSR.
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So you were quite determined to build in Italy at this stage?
There are many points of view about the best place to build; Holland, Germany, Italy, the USA. When we look at the machinery onboard, it’s all international – the same products. I think there are as fine engineers and electricians in Italy as there are in Holland or in Germany. And maybe it’s because I was born and raised in Italy, that I chose to build there, but there are boat building traditions in Italy that go back a long way. So you had the enjoyable experience of four years building the first Numptia at CRN? [61.3m now renamed New Sunrise, Ed]. Why did you sell her so quickly?
We used her for family cruising the first year and we were thinking of chartering the second year, so Burgess said: “Let’s have the boat at the 2001 Monaco Show.” We went there and a gentleman came onboard and said “Would the owner be interested in selling?” So what was it? Was there a profit in it or was it that you wanted to make a change?
Yes, it was a profitable venture.
“Mr Rossi is a boat builder, knowledgeable, he’s got his hands right into the company, everything goes through his fingers nothing escapes him. He’s very frugal, he’s very careful with his money. He’s very demanding, and at the same time I found him a man of his word; if he told me he would do something he would.”
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You’ve just spent four years building your ‘dream boat’ and then you sell it?
Yes, I am an individual who enjoys the challenge of building and creating. I love the opportunity to sit down with paper and a pencil and start designing something special. So, finally after another 10 years of chartering, you decided to build another boat?
I was involved in business, quite frankly the time wasn’t available, but as soon as I retired I said, “I’m going to do it again”. I had a wonderful experience in Italy. I met some great people;– the technicians, architects and craftsmen. Maybe it’s my luck or maybe it’s the fact that I’ve come to these shipyards at the right time. Ferretti purchased CRN and I don’t know if CRN is the same as it used to be. You’re not talking to the shipyard owners anymore, you’re talking to the managers and it’s a whole different approach and I don’t know that I
could work well with a yard like that personally. So when you started looking to build a new boat what was the process? Did you start with the size first or the designer or the yard?
Marco Martinelli said, “I really think Fratelli Rossi would be the right people to work with.” Mr [Claudio] Rossi is a knowledgeable boat builder, he’s hands-on and everything goes through his fingers nothing escapes him. He’s very frugal and fair. He’s very demanding and I found him to be a man of his word; if he told me he would do something he did. And not once did I have a concern or the fear that he would skimp. It was always “We changed it because we think its better.” And that’s the way it should be done and it was that kind of a relationship that just grew and grew. Martinelli identified all the best subcontractors in the area; electrical, plumbing, HVAC. Having knowledge of construction, if you have the right subcontractors you will build a good product. They will advise you if you are doing is wrong. We met with each sub-contractor individually, and when we signed our agreement with Rossi, we said: “These are the sub-contractors that we will accept.” Did you get the job priced at a Dutch yard or at CRN, or did you just carry on this route completely by yourself?
Ten or 15 years ago if you wanted to build totally custom, you could go almost anywhere, but the industry has changed. Everybody wants to standardise their procedures, they want to shorten the timeframe, and at the same time streamline the process of building a yacht with the explanation that it will be faster with semi-custom or series lines. But in reality, in my opinion it just reduces their costs. Construction of a 70m yacht in 38 months for the fully customised Numptia is not a lot of time. I wanted to build in Italy, I wanted to build with Martinelli, I wanted to build in Viareggio and I wanted fully custom and, at the end of the day, we didn’t have too many choices.
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But did you go and talk to some of these other yards at all?
No. I had met them previously on other occasions. I think if I had not met Mr Rossi I probably wouldn’t have done it. The name on the door doesn’t mean as much to me as having met the man, understand what he stands for, understand what his purpose in business is. Of course it’s to make money, but it’s also to produce great yachts. Were you on a fixed-contract price or did you work out an agreed cost-plusprofit level and how did you price the change orders?
I would say at the end of the day this was a combination of fixed and cost plus. Because there were quite a number of design elements which weren’t clear at the beginning. If we don’t know what the carpet is going to be we can’t fix the price on that. The important thing is to be fair to the shipyard, at the same time protecting your interest.
“I have a pretty good mind for looking at space and looking at dimensions and feeling comfortable or uncomfortable and can say, “It’s too tight, there’s not enough room”. Space planning is perhaps one of my best strengths.” And at the end, did you feel it was a fair deal? Were you both happy with the result?
I think so. I would gladly go back and build with these people again. They’re gentlemen; they are men of their word. And they delivered 110 per cent of what they told me. They always said, “I wish I had more clients like you who knew what they wanted.” Were you managing to make decisions on your side quickly enough for them?
One hundred per cent. I think that’s part of the advantage that we brought to this scenario. That’s why you could build a boat like this in the number of months that we did. I would come to the shipyard for a week or more almost every month.
And we’d go right into meetings and we’d talk about the smallest thing, whether it is a colour or a detail. We would spend from morning ‘til late afternoon, the architects would come in, samples are brought in, things to discuss, renderings are produced, and decisions are made.
Achille Salvagni – The interior designer
And so you didn’t keep changing the design?
There was always time for reevaluating but once you make a final decision you have to let it go and hope you made the right one. I have a pretty good eye for looking at space and dimensions and feeling comfortable or uncomfortable. I can say “It’s too tight. There’s not enough room.” How has your business experience helped in this process?
I have built restaurants in my business life. You have to appeal to the senses and aesthetics, this is a huge part of why we choose a restaurant. I think if you’re creating a 70m yacht you really have an opportunity to create something special and out of the ordinary. Sometimes when designers are working on behalf of a shipyard creating a new model they go through a process called ‘value engineering’. Value engineering is what can we take away to save money, so value engineering is the danger point. Because then you start reducing what the architect meant to do – this is too expensive, we can’t afford to do that or you’ve got to get rid of this curve because it adds so many hours of labour. And that value engineering to me is what reduces the value of what some of these architects are capable of doing. When we started on the exterior styling of the yacht with Spadolini. We said: “OK, what are some of the yachts that we like? What are some of the yachts out there that we appreciate and admire?” A couple of them came up; Limitless and Carinthia.
Achille Salvagni was at university in Rome and completed his masters degree in Stockholm. After working in London with architects Hopkins Architects (formerly Michael Hopkins and Partners), he moved back to Italy and opened his own design office in Rome and has nine staff. His design work is primarily residential commissions. The first marine design in 2004 was for the Canados 116 Mikymar. He has completed interiors on the Canados 76, 86 and Open 90 also the Otam 58 and 65 HT. In 2007, he worked on the refit of the 47m M/Y Out and has completed 15 yacht projects. salvagniarchitetti.net
At what stage did you bring your interior designer in?
Martinelli was very instrumental putting this team together and suggested Salvagni for the interior. He’s young and very creative. He also has an office in Rome. I think what >>
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Superbly polished Rossinavi stainless-steel fabrication of the Spadolini designed rail and stairways.
really motivated me is when I went to his office and I saw what he had done with an antique space. He’d designed it with mezzanine levels. I walked in and I was very impressed. You just went completely on your own feeling with a relatively new designer. You did not talk to the main design houses or think of going back to François Zuretti again?
We all know the names of the big guys. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting some of them– they’re all wonderful, they’re all great. They have been so successful; adding one more yacht to their list isn’t going to change their reputation. So we felt that we would like to work with a new upcoming designer, who would add value with enthusiasm and go that extra half mile. Who signed off the boat as it progressed?
Martinelli did it as the project manager and Sparkman Stephens from New York came in on a quarterly basis as an independent surveyor.
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How does the warranty work?
For the most part, we have a two-year warranty from the shipyard. For the first season we agreed to stay in the Mediterranean to allow easy access for the yard. How do you look at the running costs of owning such a large investment?
These costs are no secret. You know upfront what it will cost to staff a yacht with 18 crew. And if you want highly qualified people, you have to pay them well. The running costs are the running costs. The fuel, the oil, the insurance and, of course, the maintenance. At this point, maintenance is low because we’re under warranty and everything is brand new. But we all know that in four or five years we have a whole list of work that will have to be done. So how did you go through the process of finding a captain after a 10-year break?
Captain John King came through Burgess and they now manage the yacht and the crew. Our focus has been to have a five-star ship with
experienced crew. We interviewed four at the end and we chose one. John had the experience that I wanted in the charter world. And what made you go for the choice for this captain?
I think its chemistry number one between two people. I think it’s very important and I feel I can communicate well with John. Did you get involved in the rest of the crew selection?
No, John did, once John came onboard he worked with Burgess in recruiting the entire crew. We were only involved in the principal positions like the chief steward, the chef and the engineer. As you have been in the restaurant business you could perhaps have found the chef yourself?
No, because a yachting chef is different from a chef on land. I would never hire somebody who’s a chef on land. They’re not used to the confined contd on page 120
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clockwise from top left: Bridge deck cinema lounge with 103” screen. Owner’s bathroom with solid white marble bath. Spiralling stairway between decks in stainless steel made in-house by Rossinavi. Restaurant area forward on the spa deck. Docking helm station.
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clockwise from top left: The design of the radar mast went through 27 iterations. Docking console. Bridge with walk around helm console. guest observation seating & curved glass. Rossinavi bollard. Skydeck with infinity spa pool, bar & disco lighting.
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quarters. They’re used to working their hours and going home at night. This is a particular lifestyle. Once I hired what I thought was a top chef from Siena and I had nothing but problems. Great chef, but he was threatening to quit every other day. Do you feel that charter guests put more pressure on the crew than the owner in their expectations?
Honestly, I don’t know. I think for the crew having the owner onboard must be the most pressure because everything is much more personal when we’re onboard. We expect everything to function 100 per cent. Especially if you have built the yacht yourself. Charter guests might be more preoccupied with having a good time than getting into all the details of the operation of the yacht. I would imagine that a lot of people we attract are people who’ve been onboard these yachts before and they know what’s good service and what the facilities should be like. I think that that’s without doubt a part of the expectations. J
An interview with Numptia’s captain follows on page 123.
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Captain John King interview When looking for a captain, the owner of Numptia was specifically looking for someone who had charter experience and enjoyed looking after guests. With a full complement of 18 crew, Captain John King explained to TSR why he prefers skippering a charter yacht. The owner was very keen to build in Italy?
He believes in Italy, he believes in Italian engineering. He’s very proud of his Italian roots and he wanted to have as much Italian input as he could. And that’s paid off, I think. I’m not an Italian, but this yacht has completely changed my view of what Italian shipyards can do. He has personally driven the build from the very start and he’s been in attendance regularly in the yard. And he was in attendance for the last two months of the build, so his personal stamp is everywhere. OK, we’ve had the interior designers and the exterior designers do the work but it’s his vision, absolutely his vision. He has been involved in every decision. How have the first sea miles worked?
As you would expect we’ve had teething troubles with things that you don’t know until you use them. We’ve got pretty standard 3516 Caterpillars and three Caterpillar C9 generators. All proven technology everywhere and it has been well installed. Rossinavi have been very proactive, their men came with us from Malta back to Port Cervo and two people were waiting on the dock when we arrived at Naples. Burgess put you forward because of your charter experience?
I was captain of Samar [77m Devonport, Ed] before this. She’s now with Burgess but she was with Frasers at the time. And otherwise, I’ve always been a Burgess captain. I was on Indian Empress, a 95m, who’s
chartering, but she is converting this summer to a full SOLAS passenger ship so I think she can take 34 or 36 guests. And I don’t have a passenger ship licence, I have a yacht licence. Indian Empress was over 3,000 tonnes, but Isle of Man was happy for me to take charge because I’d come from the navy where I’d been captain of much larger vessels. Isle of Man didn’t have an issue with the size, as long as she was a still classed as a yacht. Do you prefer working on a charter yacht?
Yes, I do. Keeping private crew motivated and occupied is more difficult. It’s much better to get charter crew, particularly the younger crew, because they all want sea time because they all want my job. Sitting in a port somewhere polishing is not going to get them anywhere – the quality people need to be active, they want to get their tickets and move up in the world.
“Enthusiasm is infectious, you know. If we are enthusiastic, the charter guests become enthusiastic very quickly and we are particularly at this moment very blessed to be in this industry.”
What form was the interview with the owner?
He was in Marco Martinelli’s office in Viareggio, so I was flown down to Viareggio and I spent about two hours with him and we had lunch. He was interested in the ability to organise a team and the general ability to make people feel at ease, at home, welcomed. He relayed some charter experiences where the boat was beautiful but every time he asked for something there was a sort of a wince from the crew, and it was all a bit difficult. And he couldn’t wait to get off it. He said, “It’s all wrong that I’d paid
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a fortune to go on this beautiful boat for a week, and then I was made to feel uncomfortable.” The attitude of the crew does come from the captain, absolutely. And sometimes you forget and sometimes say something unguarded and I find that it’s affected the crew. So as a captain you should never underestimate that the crew subconsciously completely follow your lead. Enthusiasm is infectious, you know. If we are enthusiastic, the charter guests become enthusiastic very quickly and we are particularly at this moment very blessed to be in this industry. So how did you go about selecting the rest of the crew?
All my crew decisions go through Burgess. They helped me find a lot of them; seven crew have come because I asked them to come – they followed me from other boats. The owner specifically wanted to interview the chefs and the chief steward. So we put the candidates forward to him and he personally chose them. The owner said he was quite keen to have a dedicated spa person.
Yes we’re a bit heavy on the interior side for a 70m as we have one girl who’s dedicated to the spa deck which will get used continuously. She will be busy as a massage and beauty therapist. She won’t have time to participate in the
rest of the stewardessing rotation when we’re on charter because for so many charter guests the spa deck is the luxury they’re here for. You went to Malta to change flag from the Caymans to the Isle of Man?
Yes so we’re now imported into the EU. We’re now EU flagged, Isle of Man flagged. The Italian authorities have been unhappy with Cayman Island vessels chartering in Europe. We are told that technically they are wrong but that doesn’t help you if you get arrested and you’re stuck in Naples for three months during the summer. So we’d only just got the certificates from doing our Cayman survey because we’re brand new and then we go down to Malta and we do all our surveys again. They delegate a lot to Lloyd’s so you don’t have to do absolutely everything again but it’s quite a long, convoluted and expensive process nonetheless. The owner did not want bureaucracy to in anyway inhibit our ability to charter. Your first charter is from Naples for one week. What are the plans?
We will cruise locally. So we go from here to Positano, then Capri, Ischia, Ponza, Porto Cervo, Bonifacio – nice, a bit of a milk run, but yes fine. So I’m looking forward to it actually. The guests like going ashore here in Italy. Positano’s very nice for shopping and then there is a great restaurant called Quattro Passi. On the backside of Capri
there is a lovely anchorage for a swim. Then in the evening we come round to the front side of Capri and then they go up the cable car to Capri Town which is high up and they have dinner up there. It’s very much a combination of about half the nights we’re at anchor and half the nights we are in harbour. But you run the fin stabilisers at anchor?
We do, yes. They’re a bit over-powerful with all four. They almost make it a bit jerky, so we’re going to try to get the software changed and just run two, the aft pair only. Do you always fill up with freshwater for the pool on the top deck?
We can do either. We tend to use fresh because the guests like freshwater. Sometimes we will use sea water. The water we make is soft and lathers very well. You can’t make your own water close to harbours because it’s too dirty. And so usually within two miles of the coast we don’t run the watermaker. We were in a harbour in Sardinia for four days because there was a Mistral blowing and at the end of the four days our tanks were full of shore water and when we filled the pool it was slightly yellow. You don’t notice in a glass but when you fill the pool it shows. So that was a bit off-putting. We flushed out two tanks and then refilled them with water out to sea and then of course it became clear again. g
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SPECIFICATIONS
Communications: VSAT, Inmarsat FleetBroadband, GSM
Length: 70.0m (229ft 8”)
Entertainment: Videoworks
Beam: 13.2m (43ft 4”)
Guests: 12 (1 master, 4 double, 1 twin)
Draught: 3.2m (10ft 6”) Displacement: Full load (with extra fuel) 1,333T Gross tonnage: 1,642GT Construction: Steel hull, marine grade aluminum superstructure Year: Built 2011 Builder: Rossinavi, Italy
Crew: 18 Classification: MCA (LY2) compliant, Lloyd’s 100 AI SSC Yacht (p) Mono G6 LMC UMS, RNA Green Plus TENDERS/WATERSPORTS 1 x Colombo Super Indios 24SL (7.2m) (8 guests) 1 x Castoldi Jet (7.1m) (12 guests)
Engines: Caterpillar 2 x 3516B rated 2,525kW/each @ 1,800rpm
1 x NDM rescue tender
Generators: Main 3 x 200kW Caterpillar C9
2 x Sea-Doo Explorer 2 Seabobs
2 x Yamaha VX Cruiser jet skis
Emergency: 1 Caterpillar C4.4 82 ekW Cruising speed: 16 knots (max speed 18.5 knots)
Owner’s Project Manager: Marco Martinelli
Range: 7,500 miles @ 12 knots
Construction Surveyor: Frederic De Clercq, Sparkman & Stephens ,NY
Stabilisers: Zero speed NAIAD 4 x 4.17sqm Air conditioning: Condaria
Naval Architecture: Horacio Bozzo, Axis Group Yacht Design Exterior Styling: Tommaso Spadolini Interior Design: Achille Salvagni
Images: Carlo Borlenghi & Massimo Listri 0511_01_YT_Advertorial_210x147_01_2011_Layout 1 17/05/2011 12:54 Page 1 To comment on this article, email
[email protected] with subject: Numptia
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Sailing is a passion, and any opportunity to participate is rarely passed up, even though time is rarely on my side. When Perini Navi’s CEO, Giancarlo Ragnetti, sends a personal invitation to sail at the 2011 Perini Navi Cup in Porto Cervo, it’s impossible to say no. Martin H Redmayne reports.
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This has to be one of the most successful brands in the business, and it shows its strength at the Cup.
rystal blue water, azure skies, Sardinian breezes, a dark-hulled fleet of 17 majestic yachts, a few hundred or so equally passionate ‘yachties’, and one of the most exclusive and luxurious yacht clubs on the planet – the perfect equation for a few days of fun and enjoyment. After looking at my agenda, I blocked off the end of August and beginning of September to make sure I was a part of this private gathering. The beauty of the Perini Cup is the people and the players who attend; having seen the variety of cups, buckets and regattas over the years, this one is high up on the list of favourites, owing to the fact that the Perinistas (the team that makes things happen) make everything look effortless. Imagine a gathering of 17 owners, 17+ captains, 17 entourages of friends and
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business contacts of the 17 owners, a dozen or so potential owners, 17 teams of hired race crew, 17 teams of fulltime crew, not to mention a gang of demanding journalists and sponsors, all wanting attention and time with participants in order to get the best stories or exposure. Not knowing how the sponsors got on, but as member of the journalists’ pack, there were several stories floating around the event – and not just the event itself. A regatta/fleet race is neither new nor interesting to the typical reader of a superyacht magazine; it is, rather, the visual feast it offers that is worth publishing – in theory, to inspire and excite with the world of potential in the Perini brand. After all, this has to be one of the most successful brands in the business, and it shows its strength at the Cup. >>
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The spirit of the brand flows through everyone who gets close to any one of the 51 yachts built by this prolific yard and that is always evident by the relationship the Perini management enjoys with the clients and the crew. While racing is the focus of the Perini Cup, we must all be honest with ourselves that these are not the lightweight thoroughbreds that were due to participate at the Rolex Maxis the day after this cup had finished. Perinis are evolving and performing well in today’s regatta market, and with the right handicapping system, they often do well. However, the Perini performance is weather-dependent, and with very light airs, it feels like the yacht can be cruising to a standstill. In fact, on day two, when the everchangeable fickle breeze off Sardinia fluked and flicked the vast sails like laundry, we ended up crossing the line
at less than a few knots of boat speed. It was interesting to see the variety of characters at play throughout this gentle race, with the various race teams making judgement calls, almost based on dinghy or higherperformance fleets; tacking or gybing in single-digit gusts is painful at best and can take an age. Perhaps the race committee might have considered shorter courses. That aside, spirits remained high and the camaraderie was still positive, with VHF announcements jokingly calling for water at the handful of marks, while the fleet was several hundred metres apart. With sunshine and cold drinks, coupled with good conversation and incredible cuisine, this is racing at its finest, in quality terms. I know the rails hardly submerge themselves and the deck >> team invariably rely on pushing
The spirit of the brand flows through everyone who gets close to any one of the 51 yachts built by this prolific yard and that is always evident by the relationship the Perini management enjoys with the clients and the crew.
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buttons from the cockpit, but when the breeze climbs to double digits, and the fleet comes closer together, you feel a level of excitement that matches normal yacht racing. At one stage during the race there was a wave of interest from the owner of the yacht I sailed on (name withheld, but you can assume it was a Perini owner). The race ‘hotted’ up to the point that he was down below on the salon deck, working on his laptop and while looking up from the financial screens, could see a fleet of 15 yachts behind him. In fact, he stood up to count them. Once he had worked out the size of the trailing fleet, he almost ran up the teak steps to the flybridge to ask his captain how they were doing. When he realised that they were doing rather well, he decided to stay up top to keep an eye on their success in the fleet. However, after 15 minutes of looking interested, he passed out on the sun pad behind the helm station with his wife for an hour-long snooze, only to wake up when the boom swung to port during a tack, shading the sun from their faces and his wife bemoaned the fact that the UV rays were blocked by the manoeuvre.
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When the breeze climbs to double digits, and the fleet comes closer together, you feel a level of excitement that matches normal yacht racing.
This is typical of the variety of the enthusiasms that exist within superyacht regattas: some are absolutely hands on and want to crush their competitors with the heartpounding exhilaration of 11-knot wind speeds that struggle to push the fleet around the course, while others are overheard to say, “Why are we doing this race again?” Without being derogatory, these yachts are never built to race, but cruise the
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globe and explore what the world has to offer: one of the fleet, S/Y Perseus, had just returned from a circumnavigation and made a breakneck passage from Alaska to Porto Cervo, to arrive just before the start of the race. The owner was so proud of the journey, he explained to his friends and guests, that he was the proud owner of a piece of blue-white iceberg in his deep freeze, fresh from the Arctic circle (see below). Perfect for a very exclusive vodka luge, I thought.
The Perini success is to be admired and applauded, the brand is stronger than ever and anyone in the new-build sector should look closely at the way they run their operations and nurture their client relationships. While conditions were never ideal for the Perini Cup, with light airs and pressurised storm clouds building coupled with desert rain leaving streaky, golden abrasive blobs all over the topsides, the spirit of the event never dropped below ‘fun’ on the scale. Even after crossing the finishing line at less than two knots, and queuing for an hour to tie up to the dock at the Yacht Club, yacht teams and guests still found time to fire water bombs or turn up the volume on their music systems to start dancing, polishing and ‘shimmying’ to the sounds of the Beach Boys,
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amongst other tracks. This is what makes the Perini Cup fun and an event to be part of. As a journalist, however, there is more to observe and listen to than just sitting patiently watching the crew call the shots and jockey for position. If every person there that talked about new yachts or building something bigger, better or faster actually follows through with what they said, then Perini Navi’s cup may, indeed, ‘runneth over’.
If every person there that talked about new yachts or building something bigger, better or faster actually follows through with what they said, then Perini Navi’s cup may, indeed, ‘runneth over’.
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The fleet of 51 Perinis will potentially pass the 60-plus mark in the next few years, and having listened to the variety of conversations, 60m-plus will be the favoured new size too – including, we hope, a new 65m Falcon rig, super-efficient project, with plenty of green credentials. Judging by the winning streak that the Maltese Falcon has been on with regattas over the years, it is about time that someone else challenged the ‘big bird’ and built a smaller, faster Falcon. Even though the weather was unkind to the Perinistas and the final day’s racing was called off, the event programme, the high-quality hospitality and the social spirit guaranteed that those fortunate enough to have been part of the event will remain part of the family. While racing is not the current purpose of the Perini fleet, it is apparent that things are changing, and when one
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hears that contracts are being drawn up with speed clauses inserted to the effect that ‘this has to be the fastest Perini ever built’, one can see that they have formed a bond with their owners to stay within the family and not hunt out lighter-weight performance builders in the Baltic region and southern hemisphere. The Perini success is to be admired and applauded, the brand is stronger than ever and anyone in the new-build sector should look closely at the way they run their operations and nurture their client relationships; it really makes good business sense, and even better products for the future. Here’s to more Perini Navi Cups. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if one sprung up on the horizon in US or Caribbean waters, judging by the plans of the Aga Khan and his yacht club franchise, and the number of US clients Perini attracts. If I’m invited, I’ll be there. J Images: Perini Navi & Justin Ratcliffe To comment on this article, email
[email protected] with subject: Perini Cup
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The 20-year solution
For the best part of the past two years the J-Class JK4, better known as Endeavour, has been out of the public eye, undergoing a major refit at Yachting Developments in New Zealand. Twenty-one years after her restoration at Royal Huisman the iconic yacht was in need of a major refit to upgrade her systems and ensure her smooth running over the coming 20 years. Ellie Brade reports.
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Owning a yacht like Endeavour is also like owning a tangible piece of living yacht history. Imagine, then, the pressure on the refit team to get this project right.
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ny 18-month refit is a demanding task, but when the refit is on a classic yacht that is nearly 80 years old, the challenges for the refit team are even greater. Working with Yachting Developments on the project was an extremely experienced international team, led by Jon Barrett, who has been in an owner’s project management role on the yacht for 25 years now, and Simon Lacey, captain of Endeavour. Design work was undertaken by Dykstra & Partners, who worked on the 1989 refit, and who played a big role in the design of the new sail plan, deck layout and structural engineering. Interior design was by John Munford Design, also a veteran of the 1989 refit, together with Adam Lay. Endeavour needs little introduction, but by way of a short history, she was built in England by Camper & Nicholsons, having been commissioned by Sir T.O.M. Sopwith to challenge for the America’s Cup in 1934. She enjoyed an illustrious racing career, despite never actually
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winning the Cup, up until the onset of the second world war, and was laid up in 1938. She subsequently passed through many hands over the next half century. Throughout this time she was left in varying states of disrepair and in the 1970s even sank in the Medina on the Isle of Wight. Endeavour’s redemption came in 1984 when she was bought by American Elizabeth Meyer, who undertook the gargantuan task of restoring Endeavour, in a five-year project carried out by Royal Huisman. At the time of Meyer’s purchase Endeavour was little more than a wreck, with no keel, rudder, ballast or interior. Her relaunch in 1989 after this huge undertaking of work by the yard team saw her sailing again for the first time in over 50 years and is seen by many as the inspiration for the revival of interest in classic yachts. Her very existence today is due to the remarkable commitment made by Meyer, whose efforts were lauded in May 2011 when she received the Legacy Award at the World Superyacht Awards.
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Since 1989 Endeavour has logged over 214,000nm and is a well-known figure on the sailing-yacht circuit. Indeed, growing up, we had a J Steven Dews painting of Endeavour racing Velsheda off the Needles on the wall. Although my family wall is by no means a yardstick of international yacht notoriety, she is a yacht I have always known about and, like me, many, many people around the world know and love her. The current owner himself grew up admiring Endeavour, one of the reported reasons behind his desire to purchase her. Owning a yacht like Endeavour is also like owning a tangible piece of living yacht history. Imagine, then, the pressure on the refit team to get this project right. After being sold by Meyer in 2000, Endeavour, was then sold on again in 2006 to her current owner who, according to Lacey, will “never, ever, ever sell”. Over the first four years of ownership the owner spent time getting to know and enjoying the yacht. There was always the knowledge that a refit would have to be undertaken eventually,
and Lacey, who joined the yacht in 2008, began to prepare a provisional list of work that same year. “That list just kept on growing,” said Lacey. “The main factors that necessitated such a major refit were the 20-year-old technology through the deck, the large amount of use the yacht had undergone over the previous 20 years and the number of leaks through the deck. Together these combined to make a lot of work needing to be done.”
As it was such a specialised refit, the five yards that were approached to quote on the refit were all experts in classic and J-Class yachts.
With the decision to commit to a refit made, it was set in stone that the owner wanted the refit completed and the yacht back in Europe in time for the 2012 J-Class regattas alongside the Olympics. This timeframe left the team a workable amount of time to complete the project in, even accounting for a possible extension of the time the yacht was in the yard. Six months prior to the start of the refit, the management team endeavoured to put together a detailed full spec document of the refit work with costs and timings to make sure there >> would be no hidden surprises or
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cost escalations once the refit was underway. The only real unknown was the level of corrosion to the steel, which couldn’t be calculated until Endeavour was out of the water [in the end, the corrosion impacted the refit schedule very little and the two-month extension of the refit work, from 16 to 18 months, was mostly due to the need to carry out steel structural stiffening to accommodate the increased loads and new load paths. Ed]. With the contract finalised with Yachting Developments (YD), Endeavour was lifted from the water and arrived at the yard in February 2010.
The intention of this refit was to see Endeavour through at least 20 years more active use, without another major refit needing to be undertaken before then. Thus, every piece of the work on the list was undertaken with this in mind. On the yard selection process, “A refit of this size meant that there was a limited number of yards that were able to undertake the project to choose from,” said Lacey. As it was such a specialised refit, the five yards that were approached to quote on the refit were all experts in classic and J-Class yachts. “In the end we went with Yachting Developments. Ian [Cook, MD of Yachting Developments] is so passionate about classic yachts: this shone through and won the owner’s heart.” Cook himself owns the 18.3m classic yacht Ranger of Auckland, launched in 1938, which he restored after purchasing her. Touring the yacht with the refit team, the phrase “20-year solution” came up many times. Twenty-one years on from her 1989 relaunch, the intention of this refit was to see Endeavour through at least 20 years more active use, without another major refit needing to be undertaken before then. Thus, every piece of the work on the list was undertaken with this in mind. If a piece of equipment would
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deck structure necessitated had to be carried out with some of the existing interior fittings in place, which was a big challenge for the team. The forestay chainplates and foundation were relocated, due to the new and more powerful rigging.
All of the steelwork that the changed deck structure necessitated had to be carried out with the existing interior fittings in place, which was a big challenge for the team.
only last five years, it was flagged and something with more longevity considered instead. The list of work done across the yacht is extensive. More than 80,000 manhours have gone into the project, and 40 tonnes of material came off the boat throughout the refit. Although a different system from their own, Yachting Developments adopted the yacht’s existing coding system throughout the refit, which helped to keep track of everything and meant that some of the original drawings were still applicable. Once out of the water the hull was refaired: there was remarkably little steel on the hull plating to replace and the team looked closely at where the leaks were and eliminated the holes by welding, rather than bolting, in fittings. The headstay was made longer, with the headstay load increasing from 14 tonnes maximum weight load (MWL) to 23 tonnes MWL, changing the whole of the deck structure. Previously, Endeavour was rigged with upper and lower runners, which required a minimum of four crew to operate during a tack or gybe using manual winches. The new system uses a combined modern runner and checkstay set-up, tensioned by a hydraulic winch, to support the increased headstay loads, meaning it may now be possible for just one person to operate the runners. All of the steelwork that the changed
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A Southern Spars high modulus carbon fibre mast, weighing under three tonnes, has been installed with North Sails 3DL sails. This replaced the old aluminium rig, which was stayed with nitronic rod rigging and a wire headstay that weighed in excess of five tonnes. She will also have cruising sails in addition to her racing set. The height of the new rig was increased to bring it in line with the maximum allowed under the J-Class Association rules. This added a further two metres to the rig height overall but increased the headsail hoists by approximately three metres. The new mast is stayed with EC6 continuous carbon rigging. “We have maintained the history of the boat but also enhanced her performance as well,” said Lacey. “All the other Js have been modernised with carbon rigging, so we have brought her up to date with her peers.” The new mast and deck layout configurations mean that she will now only need seven crew, instead of nine, with simplified sailing being the order. There are now 14 winches, down from 28 before. All winches are hydraulic, by Harken, with some customised deck fittings by Yachting Developments. The halyard winches feature special encoders, which monitor drum speed, providing a boost of pressure in high speed for greater pulling capacity (see side bar on page 155). The Harken deck gear is titanium, which saved some weight. The owner took a real involvement in selecting the deck gear, attending METS 2010, meeting with Peter Harken and going to the Harken factory himself. A custom block design was developed especially for Endeavour: the owner chose an early Harken design, which was then modified slightly. Leaks through the deck of the yacht had caused multiple issues over the years. Where salt water had got into the
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steel, corrosion had set in and and the team wanted to prevent any water getting into the yacht in the future, minimising the elements susceptible to corrosion wherever possible. “You have to treat Endeavour as a submarine,” said Lacey. “She dives through the water when underway so it has to be assumed that everything will get wet when she is in use.” Not helping the situation, her freeboard is just 1.2m, so much smaller than most yachts of her size. Specifically, the ventilation system had historically been a major cause of leaks, with a lot of investment made before the refit trying to address the problems caused. Lacey was keen to get to the bottom of the problems once and for all, and the system has been completely re-engineered to
If classic yacht enthusiasts are alarmed that Endeavour’s charm and history may have been lost in the course of such a major refit, the opposite is the case. remove all chance of water getting into the hull by this route. It had previously been very difficult to keep water out of vents, and one of the solutions that was developed to avoid this was to use the mast, essentially as a submarine tower, for fresh air intake and outtake in the crew area, it being the one structure on the deck that actually goes up high. For this system, the air flows out at the first spreader and is hauled in through the halyard slots. The amount of air that can go up the mast is limited, meaning that there will be some restrictions on the amount of air supply when the yacht is on deep-sea delivery. Throughout the guest area, the fresh-air make-up and extraction comes through new deck dorades incorporated in the teak superstructure. The engine room ventilation is also through louvred ventilation ducts in the doghouse exterior and deck combing. The complete teak and plywood deck was taken out and replaced. Whilst her sister J Velsheda has a teak deck laid on
aluminium plate, Endeavour’s new deck features transverse steel beams, with two layers of plywood and then teak on top. The plywood has been sealed with epoxy and e glass, making it extremely waterproof. The old deck structure had aluminium upstands on to the steel deck, which also caused huge corrosion but now, with the plywood/ epoxy deck, the glass fibre extrusion upstands can be laminated on to the plywood layer, keeping the water out. Endeavour’s owner took a keen interest in the whole aesthetic look of the yacht, requesting that the aerodynamics be as simple and clean as possible. The yacht now has a much cleaner look and in an attempt to return her to original look the dorades and cowling have been removed from the forward deck. At the owner’s request, concealed hatches were fitted, which helped to declutter the decks; the use of carbon hatches also means the number of elements able to corrode and let water in has again been reduced. If classic yacht enthusiasts are alarmed that Endeavour’s charm and history may have been lost in the course of such a major refit, the opposite is the case. “During the refit great care has been taken to preserve the historical integrity of the vessel,” said Cook. Although changes have been made, the entire process was very sympathetic to her origins, something that was as important to Cook and the Yachting Developments team as it was to the owner. “When planning the refit, the owner told us: ‘Don’t remove every last dent, I don’t want the boat to lose her character’,” said Lacey. For example, the owner’s cabin in the interior, which is in the style of an Edwardian gentleman’s club, was left unchanged from the 1989 Munford original. Although the style and trim were maintained, 2,000 hours of joinery work went into refurbishing and restoring the owner’s cabin alone. The only major change to the owner’s cabin design was the installation of a shower, as in the original plans, in place of the bath that was previously in the owner’s heads. To ensure continuity, Munford was once again contracted to work on the crew
Endeavour’s Winch Encoders Following her refit Endeavour will feature a new technology: winch encoders that, when the yacht is in racing mode, monitor drum speed and accordingly boost the load pressure to obtain maximum speed and pulling force in higher gears. The team working on Endeavour had conceived the idea of such a system as a useful tool. Fortuitously, Harken had been working on plans for a similar system for some time. The installation of the system onboard Endeavour is the first time it has been put in place onboard a superyacht. A manual control to achieve the same ends had been considered, but it was concluded that this would rely too much on the operator being an expert. Should the encoder break or become faulty, control will automatically revert to the standard winch control system. How does the encoder work? When race mode is engaged, an electro-mechanical device, called a rotary encoder, or shaft encoder, reads and monitors the speed of the winch. Once the encoder establishes that the RPM of the winch are well within the speed of first gear, it allows an increase of oil flow to keep the winch running faster at higher loads. When the encoder registers that the winch has changed into a lower gear, and is therefore running significantly slower, the pressure is then automatically reduced to prevent the winch gears from overloading at the higher torques. Why use an encoder? In high speed, when using the winch to raise the spinnaker, the objective is, of course, to get the sail up as fast as possible. Normal hydraulic pressure for the load the winch is rated for in its lowest gear is not sufficient to raise the sails to the top of the mast fast enough. By knowing specifically which gear the winch is in (via the encoder) it is possible to make sure the winch only has pressure applied that is appropriate to the gear it is in. This ensures the winch is performing to the maximum, and appropriately to the gear it is in, rather than always being limited to the loads of the lowest gear. With thanks to Peter Harken
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area redesign, together with Adam Lay, to ensure the entire interior worked together. Liking the 1930s’ look, the owner also requested that an aft butterfly hatch be added to the main deck, and a replica of the 1934 helm pedestal installed, replacing the three more modern pedestals that were there previously. A major piece of work was the refitting of the crew area, which the owner hadn’t liked, and forward of Frame 31 was completely gutted in order to make the area more comfortable for the full time crew. Previously, the bowthruster had run through the space, with no crew mess and just a table forward. Now everything has been placed below the floor, including the auxiliary systems. Yachting Developments used a 3D model to visualise where everything should fit in the underfloor space, much like fitting together a jigsaw puzzle. The owner had requested a separate laundry area and twin cabins for the crew, as previously there were just eight cots forward. The new twin cabins are convertible, with the centre bulkhead able to be removed to create one large space. Ten layouts of the galley/crew area were designed; the yard went to build on version eight and then along the way changed to versions nine, then 10, which incorporated a slightly changed galley. The current layout is not too different from the original, but with more space and counters. Now during racing there is the option to have three spinnakers, one stored in the crew mess, one stored in the crew cabins (with bulkhead out) and one below the flush hatch above the crew area. “It is a big bonus to be able to store the spinnaker below deck when racing,” said Lacey, who is clearly looking forward to getting Endeavour into action on the racing scene. There is now also enough space to repack a spinnaker in the crew area, making the whole racing process much easier. The complete deckhead was replaced to be more
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We think about theM all the tiMe, So You Don’t haVe to. Poorly planned and managed yard periods, accidents and incidents on board, crew disharmony and replacement, unplanned downtime from badly maintained machinery can all add to running costs.
The engine room has been stripped back and everything reinstalled, with the owner’s engineer working with the build team throughout the refit.
Svitzer provide management and shore support services for large, busy superyachts.
accessible, fresh and new. It now can be easily removed without damaging the paintwork. The large winch buckets take up a lot of the deckhead space, which is all steel still, but utilising glass fibre to make complex ducting to fit around the new steelwork. “This was a bonus of working with Yachting Developments, who were very good at creating composite housings in awkward shapes,” said Lacey. Many parts that were previously rotting have now been replaced with composite to prevent this recurring. The engine room has been completely stripped back and everything reinstalled, with the owner’s engineer Kat Bruce working with the build team throughout the refit. Every system onboard the yacht, bar the propeller, was replaced. A completely new rudder was also built, and improvements were also made to to the propeller aperture. The ventilation system again provided challenges and ducting was added to improve airflow. The amount of absolute hydraulic power has been increased: originally there was a DC system in place, now there is an AC powered pump for small hydraulic operations but three Power Take Off (PTO) Pumps mounted onto the main engine and genset diesel engines, which can all be used in race mode. A Scania engine has replaced the CAT that was installed previously, with power-to-weight ratio a large driving factor in this decision. The traction system of the reduction gearbox is already designed to have hydraulic power take offs, so the model fits very well with the requirements for hydraulic power. A branch system, rather than ring main system, will power zones of the yacht, rather than the whole yacht, also reducing noise. The team worked with Marshall Day, a NZ based acoustic consultancy, and created better sound shields which were installed around the generators as part of an initiative to reduce noise onboard. A PLCbased Vessel Control and Monitoring System (VCAM) from Kiwi company Cervina was also installed. Cervina and YD also designed the entire new electrical
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system, a major factor of the whole refit, which had to incorporate some wiring which was still integral to the guest area and remained intact. The black- and grey-water systems have been changed, utilising a polyethylene composite tank tank with stainless-steel top. Previously, the black-water system was based on holding tanks that needed dockside pump outs on a regular basis. Now, a sewage treatment plant, compliant with MARPOL requirements, has been added to allow for longer independent cruising in coastal areas where permitted. One final new feature on the yacht, which has been promised as the biggest surprise of the refit, will be seen at the
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top of Endeavour’s mast. No more can be revealed for now, but suffice to say fans of Endeavour should look to the tip of her mast when they see her next. Endeavour’s relaunch took place on 8 October. With the conclusion of the project near, Cook described working on Endeavour as: “an honour. She is something very special, everyone involved has put their heart and soul into the refit, I think the care and passion are very evident in the end result.” Barrett, too, is pleased with the outcome of the project: “I am proud to see Endeavour back in first-class shape again. She was put into beautiful shape 22 years ago, time took its toll, and now we got to do it again. It’s an amazing
thing, she looks better than ever.” The yacht is now undergoing two months of sea trials, before spending a month cruising around New Zealand. She will then board the Dockwise to Florida in February before making her way to the UK in time for the Olympic regattas where, in her full glory, she will be racing against her sister Js once again. The legacy continues. Images: Yoichi Yabe/Endeavour and Yachting Developments. To comment on this article, email
[email protected] with subject: Endeavour – the 20-year solution
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INTERVIEW | TOBY WALKER
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Getting Realistic The new managing director of Dubois Yachts sat down with Don Hoyt Gorman to discuss how he made the move from Camper & Nicholsons International, his plans for growing sales, charter and management services, the question of ethics in the industry, and his wish for a return to Great British yacht-building.
Profile: Toby Walker Background: Born in Surrey, brought up in Worcestershire. Graduated with a law degree from Southampton University. Speaks fluent French. Yachting pedigree: Learned to sail on the south coast of England, sailed socially at university. Started as a broker at Cavendish White, went to Camper & Nicholsons, where he rose to sales director, and then this year to Dubois Yachts as managing director.
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Toby Walker likes talking face to face. It’s certainly true when he’s dealing with a client – he once flew from London to Los Angeles for a two-hour meeting to explain MCA regulations to the potential owner of a British-flagged yacht, then flew home the same day. It was just as true when he visited the offices of The Superyacht Report in London a few weeks ago for this interview. How did you decide to make the move to Dubois?
In January this year, I was working to involve Ed Dubois’s child cancer fund with the charity set up by the late Nick Baker, who I’d worked with and learned from during my days at CNI brokerage offices in London. Ed and I met over lunch and he reminded me of how, around the same time I was looking to join CNI a decade earlier, he’d offered me a job at his new brokerage business. He said he was looking again, and asked if I was interested. It felt like when I was going to work with Nick again – working alongside someone I truly admired. By the end of lunch we’d agreed a deal and we both left very excited. The timing coincided with some fundamental changes at CNI, so it was the right time for me to go.
co-founder of Dubois Yachts, wanted the two sides to operate more closely. Obviously, the skill sets we have with Ed and Malcolm as naval architects are very different skill sets from brokerage, and neither can do the other’s job. But we’ve made the office open plan so that information is shared.
When we get a brokerage enquiry from a client wanting to know specific details, I can go back to all the design work, look at the correspondence and sit with the designers and get back to the client and say, “We weighed up the pros and cons of this System A versus this System B and we chose this because in this particular build it was better.” It’s a two-way street: They can ask me, “What will 50m yachts sell for?” Ed and Malcolm don’t have the time to have a grasp on everything that’s selling and chartering and what it’s going for and what is needed in that. So I’ve brought that in as well.
“New owners and charterers need sound professional advice so that the experience from day one is enjoyable. There’s nothing worse than having someone being put off boats forever What’s your approach to brokerage? What works and what doesn’t? just because they’ve had bad advice from the start.” When you’re trying to advise one of the world’s most successful businessmen in
Moving from CNI to Dubois means a change in terms of the number of vessels you work with. How has your focus changed?
At CNI, especially in a good market, there would be anything up to 10 sales a month of different products. With Dubois, it’s one set of yachts designed by one company: out of 40 yachts and probably five more going to hit the water in the next couple of years, there are only maybe eight or nine of those on the market for sale at the moment. However good the design is, the actual sales and purchase market is still very tentative so we’re probably only seeing two or three sales a year. Dubois Yachts is basically two companies: a design and naval architecture firm, and a yacht brokerage business. Is this arrangement evolving with your involvement?
We have physically knocked down the wall between the two companies in the converted barn we’re in. Ed and Malcolm McKeon, naval architect and
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CURRENT DUBOIS BROKERAGE According to SuperyachtIntelligence.com data, there are 64 vessels designed by Dubois in the global fleet, with eight of those currently in build. In the last 18 months – which were slow across the breadth of the industry – Dubois Yachts was involved in two of the four Dubois-designs that sold: Destination Fox Harb’r and Nelson. Of the two other Dubois that sold, Vent D’est (formerly Koo) was listed by Burgess and sold by Camper & Nicholsons International, and the Sea Quell sale was brokered by Northrop and Johnson. For further info, go to www.superyachtintelligence.com
whatever field they’re in you’ve got to advise them on the market. They need a frank and honest appraisal of value. Owners need to be realistic: no matter the pedigree, a yacht is a depreciating asset. At best, maintaining the value of a yacht requires a lot of input from an owner and they need to be made aware of realistic running costs. I’ve heard of brokers trying to force a sale by telling potential owners that they can run their yacht for E1 million a year and charter it for E1.5 million a year. That’s not sound advice. I’ve also seen business plans from owners coming into the industry where they’ve allocated 40 weeks of charter a year for their yacht. But the market won’t supply it and the business model won’t work. How many weeks do you think the current charter market can supply?
It’s geared around certain criteria: pedigree and quality of yacht being foremost, age, crew and realistic pricing. If those four criteria are matched with successful marketing – the yacht is handled properly and promoted professionally – then the charter market is still very strong. A lot of people love taking their two-week vacation on a big, quality yacht, so you will get charter bookings if you meet those criteria. Six weeks in a summer season is a realistic business plan. If you go over to the Caribbean for the winter you should look to get maybe three weeks there as well. But I wouldn’t put any management plan together – however good the pedigree of a yacht – that exceeds more than 10 weeks of chartering a year. I think that would be unrealistic. According to Superyacht Intelligence data, there haven’t been many Duboisbrokered sales in 2010 & 2011.
Well, yes, there have been very few sales in the market in general, though of those, three have been Duboisdesigned yachts. I want Dubois
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Brokerage to be the first port of call for the owner of a Dubois yacht to sell. In a tough market, any buyer is going to want to know absolutely every detail historically, including the design process of a yacht he’s buying. In terms of selling a yacht, I want Dubois Yachts to be selling Dubois designs. I need to make sure that all the other leading brokers in the world are willing and happy and incentivised to work with me to put deals together.
“Owners need to be realistic: no matter the pedigree, a yacht is a depreciating asset. At best, maintaining the value of a yacht requires a lot of input from an owner and they need to be made aware of realistic running costs.” Will you be brokering non-Dubois yachts?
Yes. We have, for example, an owner of a big Dubois yacht looking to get into something different for day-to-day use, and he wants a brokerage deal, not a new design by Ed and Malcolm. We’ll be finding options for him. If the clients are happy with the sales team and recognise that the Dubois name means professionalism and quality, as the company grows, I hope that we’ll be able to represent other well-designed, well-built quality yacht brands. Other than your colleagues at Dubois, who do you admire right now in the industry? Who’s doing a good job?
Anyone who has persevered through the last three years is doing a good job, and there are three of four large brokerage companies with strong leaders and first class brokers who I admire.
I think there are four or five leading shipyards in the world that are producing exceptional yachts at the moment: in the big sailing yacht market these include Alloy and Fitzroy, Huisman and Vitters, and Yachting Developments in New Zealand amongst others. Pendennis have notched themselves up in the last couple of years and it’s great to see some British builders competing with the leading yards. How do you see American yards?
American yards are yet to produce a Dubois sailing yacht. Let’s hope that changes. It would do everyone good if a yard – wherever it is – could come up and stake a genuine claim to being better than the current market leaders, but it isn’t there in the US at the moment. Is there anything about the brokerage industry that you feel needs to change?
You can always wish for more professionalism and etiquette. A bad broker is someone who turns up having met a rich client, introduces them to the yard, gets his hand-out and runs away. That area of remuneration in brokerage has always been something that I think should be addressed. What a lot of people don’t see is the time and effort and expense that a good broker puts in to earning a commission from a sale. To a lot of outsiders the levels of commission seem very high, but you speak to owners who pay the commissions and they know it’s justified. They wouldn’t pay them if they didn’t realise that there’d been a lot of work and expense and time and diligence that goes into selling a yacht. There’s been discussion of a broker’s code of ethics. What do you think about that?
I think as a guideline it would be very good. MYBA set up an Ethics Committee a few years back to try to police unprofessional behaviour within its membership. But it’s not enforceable. In an ideal world we’re all going to be professional and courteous and polite but I don’t think we live in an ideal world. Competition is good, you know: it keeps one focused. So we have to have competitive business practices and, as a result, we have some brokers who push the boundaries.
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A code of ethics wouldn’t prevent competitive practices, though, would it?
No, but it wouldn’t be enforceable, so it’s only a guideline. You’ve got to set your own standards in business and maintain them. People I admire have turned down business because it’s either unethical or unrealistic. Have you turned down business because you think it’s unethical or unrealistic?
Yes, but you see, it’s not turning down business because we’re only paid on successful sales and that sale was never going to happen at that level. And there are also one or two unscrupulous owners in the world who I would rather not deal with and frankly won’t. A client once said to me: “Sometimes it costs you to have principles and you just have to swallow that.” If you’re going to maintain these principles like a code of ethics then it’s going to cost you. Which role in the industry do you think is most vital to the owner’s enjoyment of yachting?
All aspects of the industry need to function together to maintain an owner’s enjoyment, but in reality it can boil down to the stewardess who brings that morning coffee with a smile when he’s sitting on the aft deck of his boat. For an owner, that’s what important. It’s those quality moments in life – not the business that goes on behind it – that make him happy; the people who do that best are often his crew. Will Dubois make a move into yacht management?
Yes, but we know our limitations. A broker is not a manager. I want to do it in-house but we need to get the right yacht manager who is experienced. Designers can’t be yacht managers and brokers can’t be yacht managers. Yacht managers are unique and special and a massively important service. Will you be expanding your charter services?
We’ll look at emerging markets. New owners and charterers need sound professional advice so that the experience from day one is enjoyable. There’s nothing worse than having someone being put off boats forever just because they’ve had bad advice from the start. So we’ll look at having the right local representative.
“You’ve got to set your own standards in business and maintain them. People I admire have turned down business because it’s either unethical or unrealistic.” If you weren’t a broker, what would you be doing?
I have a deep fascination with ocean exploration. It’s the most exciting thing to read about, to watch documentaries about and to study; but I have a job that I love with a product I love and great people in the industry and I’ve made a lot of friends. What about working with a British shipyard?
I’d love to work with a British shipyard that builds classic yachts and that was viable. But I think it would be a tough business – that’s not a reason not to do it – but, yes, that would come close. If I could work with a team of good British workers and go back to some traditional core values that this country had quite a long time ago, and be able to say: “I helped build that boat,” without it being broker-speak, but to physically be [part of] the yard that built that boat – yes, that would tick a box as well. But I’m as close to that now as I’m probably ever going to get and I’m happy with that.
With the strength of the Dubois design brand supported by a highly experienced brokerage team, Toby is in the enviable position of being able to focus efforts on consolidating Dubois Yachts’ position as the leading brokerage house for performance super-sailing yachts – though, of course, they’ll sell motoryachts as well. With plans to market the Dubois fleet to the brokerage industry as well as to individual clients, Dubois Yachts should become the first port of call for the owner of a Dubois yacht to sell. We’ll keep an eye on Toby’s g plans moving into 2012. Images: Luke Sprague To comment on this article, email
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Using predictive analysis techniques may reduce equipment failure risks without ‘going overboard’ on preventative maintenance, writes Eliot Kingsley – IBM Global Business Services, SPSS business solutions manager.
A
cross a broad range of industries, including utilities, aerospace, automotive, manufacturing, defence, travel and transport, oil and gas and facilities management, businesses are challenged to mitigate the risk of equipment failure to avoid multiple undesirable effects. In these industries, plant, maintenance and reliability managers fight a constant battle in balancing preventative maintenance measures against the risk of equipment failures – and the resultant unscheduled and costly remedial actions. In the superyacht world, most of the onboard equipment is designed to be resilient to failures, but equipment failures can and do occur. So what can be done to mitigate these failures? Simply undertaking preventative maintenance on the equipment a lot more frequently is not necessarily going to do the trick, and would add significantly to maintenance costs. The answer lies in powerful, statistically based predictive modelling techniques that have been used for years in other environments – typically for
predicting retail, telecommunications and banking customer behaviours, but increasingly for predicting a variety of different types of risks. Predictive analytics is the application of statistical algorithms to derive forward-looking actionable insights from large volumes of historical data held in multiple sources. Predictive Asset Management (PAM) is the application of predictive analytics to asset management operations. It aims to derive ‘actionable insights’ that promote asset management operational efficiency, cost reduction, safety improvements and environmental sustainability. In the marine environment, government departments owning and operating warships have been using predictive analytics modelling techniques in this context for quite some time. Whilst a warship is out at sea, large volumes of data about its performance are analysed using models based on historical patterns, so that when the ship comes in to dock, the engineers know exactly what
the priority maintenance activities must be in order to keep the ship running without problems for its next sortie away from port. This is shifting the paradigm from time-based or event-based maintenance operations to a more ‘dynamic maintenance’ scheduling paradigm, whereby the priority and frequency of maintenance on each item are determined by predictive analytics.
SO WHAT IS ‘PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS’? Think of a car and the views out of the windows (see graphic on next page). The rear view represents a view of all the data about what ‘has’ happened across all sorts of measures, for example data on historical performance, maintenance events, failure incidents and what happened in the run-up to them, as well as data about maintenance personnel, parts used, meteorological, cost, and even unstructured data held in text form in maintenance logs, emails and reports. The view out of the side windows represents what ‘is’ happening right now – in other words, performance
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indicators from sensors. Predictive analytics takes all of this past and nearreal-time data, and then uses powerful automated statistical techniques to produce models, which can be used to take a view out of the front windscreen to help to forecast what risks lie ahead before those risks become a reality. A number of different types of analysis may be appropriate depending on the ‘target’ of the analysis. An importance diagram can help to identify the top five most important factors in, say, avoiding an air-conditioning failure. Decision trees are also very powerful analytical outputs in this context, predicting complex combinations of circumstances and factors that can lead to increased risk. Segmentation and anomaly techniques can be used to find groupings of, for instance, systems that share common characteristics and, likewise, find ones that are in some way anomalous, which may lead to some actionable insight. Models are created by unearthing the patterns in half of a historic sample of data, and then testing it on the other half (where the outcomes are known), to see how accurate the model is. This approach is iterated and refined until the most accurate model is prepared. The model is then ready to be applied to new data that it has never seen before and the result is a predicted outcome at a certain degree of probability and reliability. As more data about circumstances and outcomes is made available, the model can be automatically re-run to refine the predictions based on refined insights derived from the wider pool of data. This kind of analytical approach can be applied at a number of levels. For instance, in the case of superyachts, at a ‘macro’ level, PAM could be applied across a class of vessels that share common infrastructures (such as engines, auxiliary electro-mechanical equipment and electronics systems), to determine underlying patterns and risks associated with that class of vessels that share these similar infrastructures. At a ‘micro’ level, it could be applied to a specific single vessel, provided enough historical data was available from either that specific yacht or others very similar to it.
The kinds of things that owners, management companies, yards and captains might be interested in achieving in this context would be the ability to: • Accurately predict which characteristics tend to lead to an increased frequency of failures; • Unearth patterns in maintenance operations over time that could point to opportunities to reduce the risk of failure, or conversely, to reduce expense by undertaking costly maintenance less frequently; • Identify the characteristics that tend to increase ownership cost and downtime over the life of a system; • Predict what parts are likely to fail in the near future; • Identify ‘at risk’ parts that have not yet failed, so that they can be replaced just-in-time to avoid unscheduled downtime due to failure;
• Adjust scheduled maintenance and optimise it on a dynamic basis to maximise equipment availability and avoid equipment failure; • Deploy maintenance resources in an optimal fashion; • Provide analytical insights that can be used to improve equipment design and maintainability; • Derive more accurate forecasts of potential warranty liabilities; • Mine thousands of text-based logs that describe the maintenance performed on systems to determine what important observations are being logged by the maintenance team such that expertise trapped in the heads of experienced personnel can be brought out in to the open and used by all. Where else has this approach been applied and what results have been achieved? A well-known helicopter manufacturer reduced direct
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BUSINESS SOLUTIONS | PREDICTIVE ASSET MANAGEMENT
maintenance costs by 25 per cent, proactively increased customer loyalty by providing the lowest flight-hour cost and highest aircraft availability and was able to intelligently price extended-warranty contracts, based on predicted costs and repairs by aircraft type. A motorcycle manufacturer has successfully identified issues that can affect reliability when bikes are used for the first time after having been stored over the winter months and taken those insights to incorporate into design improvements. A number of operators in the water industry have successfully predicted where they needed to concentrate their maintenance efforts to avoid pipe blockages. In terms of how this predictive asset management/predictive maintenance approach might apply in the superyacht arena, there are a number of possibilities: • Component manufacturers could apply predictive analytics to their respective component contributions ABOVE: ANALYTICAL RESULTS HIGHLIGHTING INDIRECT LABOUR AND THIRD PARTY PARTS to the yacht, for example the AS THE PRIMARY INDICATORS OF FAILURE propulsion units. This would benefit RISK IN AN AIR-CONDITIONING SYSTEM. the component manufacturer and their customers (the yacht builders), but might be of limited benefit in terms of being able to unearth issues with combinations of components and conditions on yachts; • Yacht builders could individually invest in predictive technology, apply it to each of their yachts (assuming the availability of engineering log or management system data from the
yacht operators/owners), and then offer ‘dynamic maintenance’ advice as a service to the operators of those vessels. Whilst this might help an individual yacht manufacturer to differentiate themselves from their competition and avoid the pain of dealing with warranty issues, the limited number of vessels for a single manufacturer might make the pool of available historical data less statistically viable than a larger sample would offer;
At a ‘macro’ level, PAM could be applied across a class of vessels that share common infrastructures (such as engines, auxiliary electro-mechanical equipment and electronics systems), to determine underlying patterns and risks associated with that class of vessels. • This leads then to another possibility which would be a consortium-led approach, whereby either a group of manufacturers or, more likely, a group of operators (given the competition between manufacturers) would club together and form a consortium, offering this predictive analytics capability as a service to each of the subscribed members of the consortium. This would have the benefit of providing a larger pool of data and the ability to pick out patterns across
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different types and makes of vessel (for example, failure patterns emerging in the combination of a particular type of engine with a particular type of ancillary equipment); • The consortium approach could be applied in other ways. For instance, rather than a consortium of operators, it could be a consortium of owners or captains who funded and ran the capability on behalf of the subscribers. Organisations such as Professional Yachtsmen’s Association (PYA) and Groupement des équipages professionnels du yachting (GEPY) could raise the idea and lead the discussion about this type of approach; • Finally, there could be another approach, whereby an independent party, such as a consultancy or provider of analytics services, could offer the predictive asset management capability to any number of parties, whether they be manufacturers,
An independent party... could offer the predictive asset management capability to any number of parties, whether they be manufacturers, shipyards, operators, captains or owners. shipyards, operators, captains or owners. Source data of the subscribers would be kept anonymous; however, the vessel specific dynamic maintenance advice would be highly focused on each particular vessel, deriving insights from a wider pool of data but applying them in a very specific manner. Predictive analytics is now such a necessary capability with an ever more complex and increasingly risky world, one could imagine a scenario
whereby this kind of capability could be offered across a broader spectrum of needs than just PAM. Such further risk-related areas might include the rather broad topic of security in general, in which the avoidance of risk from whatever source is obviously of paramount importance. The same predictive analytics techniques for unearthing subtle patterns in data could be applied in this area too, including the use of text analytics where relevant and useful information is held in text based documentation. PAM might just provide a useful starting point for any new collaborative or consortium-led approach to advanced analytics in the superyacht community...one step at a time. g To comment on this article, email
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Finance from a yacht builder’s perspective During a recent gathering of bankers, lawyers, insurance specialists and other individuals who are active in similar parts of the industry, current yacht financing (im)possibilities were discussed. The talks can be narrowed down to three questions Wim C Koersvelt examines in this article for TSR: What is the impact of new financial circumstances on new yacht-buying behaviour? Are builders looking at potential buyers in a different way? And what alternative financing possibilities may develop? What is the impact of the new financial circumstances on new-yacht-buying behaviour? In my own experience, I have witnessed how the disappearance of credit facilities has not only effectively blocked orders for new yachts but also forced buyers with projects already underway into very difficult and in some cases untenable positions. When the financial crisis hit, potential buyers pulled out of ongoing discussions en masse and at least one lender defaulted on its obligations under financing agreements for yachts already under construction. At that time, I was still directly involved with ICON Yachts, so I had a first-row seat. I, of course, discussed the market developments with other builders, so my comments are general and not specific for a single builder. Some people, with whom I had been working on the development of general arrangements and specifications for a long time and with whom we had built trustworthy relationships, were quite open. It was not only the disappearance of credit facilities for yachts, but even more so, the broader financial and economical
difficulties and uncertainties that put buying expensive toys on a backburner.
Are builders looking at prospective buyers in a different way from, say, three years ago?
Problems with ongoing projects were two-fold and originated, to a certain extent, from the lenders. On the one hand, we saw banks trying to better cover their positions and limit their exposure through: • Lowering the amounts and the portions that they were willing to finance on a specific contract; • Requiring additional collateral to compensate for value drops of financial paper and/or real estate that their clients had brought in to secure the loans.
I think that the answer is an obvious ‘yes’; unless, of course, a builder is desperate and takes anything and anybody, no matter what the risk.
On the other hand, there was at least one bank defaulting on its loans. Clients were then forced to continue to pay the interest due on their loans while they were in default on the contract with the builder of their new yacht. You can imagine the difficult situations that had to be sorted out. These experiences and memories by yacht owners, yacht buyers and yacht builders and indeed by all professionals who proliferate around them are very fresh and sometimes still open wounds. Will all this influence purchase behaviour? I think yes, and negatively so.
One effect of the drop in demand for new yachts will be that a number of builders will leave the market. At the same time, there are some new entrants, who see an opportunity to come in with a new business model and lean operations, which could make them very competitive. These remaining builders and the new entrants will have some degree of commercial and financial strength and will require security from buyers that they are capable to complete the contract. For a builder, a yacht-building contract is a long-term commitment of resources. When a contract implodes, this commitment becomes a burden that the builder may not be able to handle. With fresh memories of the implosion, builders will look for security. A contract with a singlepurpose shell company in a tax haven will no longer be acceptable. At the same time, the buyer, the THE SUPERYACHT REPORT | ISSUE 128
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banker, the insurer and the ancillary professionals will all look for some sort of security themselves. I am involved in a new 65m-70m project and have requested a legally binding guarantee from the client that he will stay the course. If I do not get this, I will not stay involved with the project, and I am quite sure that bankers and buyers also require suitable guarantees to limit their risks as much as possible. I expect that yacht construction contracts will be different and will include a variety of ‘counterguarantees’. One immediate effect will be that the ‘speculative-cowboy-buyers’, who tried to cash in on the ‘boom-perioddemand’, will be out of the market. With cheap credit and almost 100 per cent financing no longer available, their business model of buying sometimes multiple yachts and selling them at substantial profits is over. The ‘yacht users’ will be out of the market, but the yachtsmen and yachtswomen for whom yachting is a lifestyle will continue to build new yachts. This traditional clientèle will very likely not look for financing. For them, yachting is not a commercial venture. Coming back to the question, yes, serious builders are likely to be more critical and look for security to ensure that the client can complete a new
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construction project by insisting on solid guarantees that the buyer will not run out of funds during construction.
WHAT ALTERNATIVE FINANCING POSSIBILITIES MAY DEVELOP? The third question deals with new possible ways of financing. This is the softest ground for me, but I will share some observations.
Serious builders are likely to be more critical and look for security to ensure that the client can complete a new construction project by insisting on solid guarantees that the buyer will not run out of funds during construction. On 22 November 2005, the Dutch government published new laws that created a Program of Government Financial Guarantees, whereby the Dutch state would guarantee 80 per cent of a ship-construction loan that could be a maximum of 80 per cent of the construction price, provided that the lender is a Dutch financial institution (that is, a bank under the supervision of the Dutch National Bank) and the shipyard is in the Netherlands. Funds were allocated
to permit giving guarantees for a total order volume of €1 billion. Surprisingly, the three leading banks that were/are active in this market refused to participate, because they felt that certain risks were placed too heavily on them. When the ‘normal’ financing of commercial shipbuilding contracts dried up, this discussion became more urgent and the Dutch Association of Shipbuilders, the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and three leading banks worked together, and at the same time against each other, to come up with alternative financing routes. Allegedly, the problems are solved, but then the bottom fell out of the market and, with that, the demand for loans. In an answer to the financial crisis, the Dutch government created new credit guarantee schemes that apply to a much broader group of industries. They are generally known as GO-2 Facilities. These programs are successful and at least one ship builder has concluded a government-backed contract for a substantial new dredging vessel, thanks to this facility. As far as I can determine, it is still possible to obtain these governmentbacked financial guarantees on export orders of ships, and large luxury yachts fall within that category. (In the Netherlands, under certain conditions, the Dutch State Finance Export
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Stimulation Loans scheme facilitates financing of 70 to 80 per cent of the contract sum.) Speaking with people who participated in the negotiations between the government, the banks and the trade organisations, I have the impression that somebody must apply so the machinery can start. This could be one new way of financing the construction of large new yachts. What happens after delivery remains to be seen, of course, but I expect that financing should be easier, because it will be more straightforward to assess the value of the completed yacht because it can be inspected/ surveyed.
I can imagine that single-yacht commercial operations may well become too costly, cumbersome and potentially embarrassing.
objective. I would expect lenders and insurers to take the lead and retain industry professionals who will develop a comprehensive set of standards against which any yacht can be measured. In tandem, a group of licensed professional valuators should be trained and sworn in. This will bring stability and maturity to the industry. J Image: Corbis/Justin Ratcliffe
A lot has been said about this in the past few months, but financing will only be possible on the basis of well-founded and objective valuations. The benchmarks of the brokerage community are not
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The doubtful commercial character of some yachts may have a breaking effect on financing possibilities. I hear people who are much more familiar with the legal and financial affairs of commercial yachts often referring to the various arrangements as VAT-avoidance schemes. European governments apparently have their own doubts and have been increasing their inspections. I can imagine that single-yacht commercial operations may well become too costly, cumbersome and potentially embarrassing. As a consequence, I expect that charter operations will become organised along the lines of the commercial cruise ship operators. A ‘yacht charter cruise operator’ who operates multiple yachts in a fleet could own yachts and current yacht owners could bring in their yachts and get shares in the company in return. They could then enter into a charter agreement, so they still get time onboard. There would be no doubt about the commercial character of the ‘yacht charter cruise operator’, so costly VAT schemes can go overboard. Financing these yacht operations would be very similar to financing any other business. So, I see two new financing paths: one is a government-backed construction financing and the second is financing the fleet or the operations of what I call ‘yacht charter cruise operations’.
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05/10/2011 15:18
Scrapping uniform waste Robert Barron from Omakaze, manufacturer of semicustom, bespoke superyacht crew uniforms, examines the findings of several years’ on-site research which suggests that crew uniforms, compared with other operating costs, are the largest form of waste from a financial and timespent standpoint on any given superyacht.
‘W
aste’ may be defined in either direct or indirect terms, and includes any or all of the following elements: • Time value of money; • Research; • Cost of ownership; • Communication; • Supply chain disruptions; • Appearance/exclusivity; • Comfort/longevity/maintenance.
Time value of money A great percentage of crew and owners’ representatives appear to not take into account the time value of money when purchasing crew wear and accessories. They believe that the effort taken to analyse crew wear and associated items is not critical enough to warrant their time or attempts to understand or implement business processes to ensure their fiduciary responsibilities are achieved. They fail to understand the ‘decay factor’ in the time value of money equation.
The question remains how to use time/resources efficiently to analyse historical purchase patterns versus immediate needs. A 300ft (91m) plus yacht could save up to 40 per cent of its annual crew wear budget or, defined in other terms, 20,000+ gallons of free fuel. Analysis A sum of E150,000 for annual crew wear/accessories/guest items = 35 per cent savings = E52,000. If fuel costs E3.00 per gallon, then E52,000 of implied savings could purchase up to 20,000 gallons of fuel.
A crew’s time spent researching crew wear and accessories takes up to 20 per cent of their annual work schedule.
Traditionally, buyers will purchase an assortment of goods to support a yacht for 12 to 18 months. Yet yachts only require goods for seasonal cycles due to high turnover and/or schedule changes.
The key to reducing waste as related to crew wear/accessories operating budgets is to implement an analysis/feedback business process to maintain the best balance between ready access to essentials and savings of funds for other uses.
Fleet examples One large yacht purchased $300,000 (E220,000) of crew wear and accessories, and three years later much of the original stock has not been exhausted. Another large yacht is rumoured to have purchased $1,000,000 (E733,000) of crew wear and accessories. That yacht will not exhaust those goods for years.
Owners’ representatives need to identify third parties that provide an unbiased consulting analysis of historical purchase patterns and to define and implement a simple analysis/feedback process. All parties need to consider the time value of money to best support the owner’s use of funds, and in turn minimising waste of time and money. THE SUPERYACHT REPORT | ISSUE 128
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RESEARCH Omakaze’s fleet analysis has identified research as a form of direct and indirect waste. The company has quantified a crew’s time spent researching crew wear and accessories takes up to 20 per cent of their annual work schedule. The inconsistency of the crew wear suppliers and their stock requires chief stewardesses or stewards or head of
interior or chief financial officers to research alternative sources of crew wear, purchase of samples, interaction with crew for consensus, as well as input from the captain and shoreside management. Using a time/motion measure we come to an interesting conclusion: Chief stewardesses’ average salary on a 280ft (85m) or larger yacht is $60,000 (€43,990). Therefore, 20 per cent or
$12,000 (€8,792) of that salary is wasted looking for alternatives to support outof-stock situations. If the cumulative effect of research and discussion is 10 per cent of a majority of the interior/service staff and their supervisors whose cumulative salaries are in excess of $300,000 (€219,730), then the measure approaches $30,000 (€21,965).
TRUE COST OF OWNERSHIP (TCO) True Cost of Ownership (TCO) is an interesting measure Omakaze has designed to apply to the superyacht market. This model seems to elude most decision makers as too elaborate or time consuming. One of its advisory services is to analyse crew wear purchases and budgets to better understand each yacht’s TCO for each garment and accessory in the assortment. TCO comprises several factors. When taken as a sum of its parts, this measure illustrates what a garment or accessory decision will actually cost over a specific time frame. TCO includes the following elements: • Cost to purchase a garment; • Time spent to research a garment; • Estimated lifespan of a garment; • Effect that fit and comfort have on a crew;
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• Maintenance costs; • Storage/shipping costs. Typically, a crewmember or owner’s representative takes into account only the cost differential of an item. For example, a pair of shorts might actually cost only E35.00 yet ends up costing E80.00 over a 12-month period of time when taking into account the elements of TCO. A garment is composed of several parts – fabric, buttons and zippers, stitching, fit and finish. Less expensive garments are just that – less expensive parts with a shorter wear cycle. The lifespan of garment A at E35.00 might be six to eight months. Lifespan of garment B at E75.00 might be 14 months. The key is to work with the supplier and understand the estimated wear cycles of an item and adjust the budget accordingly. Crews are constantly bemoaning the fact that their uniforms do not fit or are very uncomfortable to wear over long work-cycles. They also complain that uniforms do not portray current trends and do not take into account the style of the interior or exterior of the yacht. Over the years there have been many published research papers suggesting that the amount of employee productivity is tied directly to their working environment. Fit, finish and fabric type are important environmental points to consider. For example, if a fabric does not breathe in a humid or hot climate, the sweat and stains become uncomfortable for both the crew to wear and owners and guests to look at. If crew were to have comfortable uniforms designed for their individual jobs they would surely perform at higher levels for longer periods of time. The overall productivity and tone on the yacht would exceed other yachts, in turn enabling owners to have a more enjoyable experience and attract more charter income. Maintenance costs are those costs that contribute to the care of crew wear and accessories. Garment A at E35.00 might require hot water and long dry cycles. Garment B at E75.00 might require cold water and limited or no
drying cycles. Garment B costs the yacht less to operate than garment A – less staff time, less equipment/ energy use over a longer period of time, thereby reducing wasted time and money.
If crew were to have comfortable uniforms designed for their individual jobs they would surely perform at higher levels for longer periods of time. Storage and shipping fees can add up during a 12-month period. When a yacht has an immediate stocking need they spend large sums of money to express-ship a garment or garments from long distances, incurring rush freight fees and associated duties. When items are discarded due to a lack of stock these items are stored at a monthly expense. Many yachts’ unneeded goods are stored on the vessel and the yacht pays additional fuel charges to carry these items. It is not unusual for a large yacht to store up to a tonne of garments and accessories and travel 10,000 to 15,000 miles per year.
The key to TCO is to understand all the elements of a crew wear purchase decision. Garment A at E35.00 could end up costing E100 by the time it is discarded. The TCO metric illustrates that a E100,000 annual budget can end up an additional 25 per cent or more when TCO is not taken into account.
Communication Communication between yacht and suppliers is complex and time consuming. The usual communication method is email. At times phones are also used, typically sat phones, an expensive form of communication. It can take up to 10 emails to accomplish a single task. When the crew wear and accessory assortment exceed 20 items, the wasted time and money factors soar. Yachts tend to have multiple uniform suppliers, so each additional vendor multiplies the complexity placed upon the crew and shoreside managers. If yachts could utilise fewer suppliers and either party used more modern forms of communication – bulletin boards, message boards, portals, group calendars – the complexity would be reduced, turnover would be less disruptive and the owner’s funds would be better utilised.
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uniform Waste
The superyacht industry needs to engage best demonstrated practices from this and other industries to better support its fiduciary responsibilities and the owner’s image.
Appearance/exclusivity
and is a form of indirect waste at its best. The superyacht industry needs to engage best demonstrated practices from this and other industries to better support its fiduciary responsibilities and the owner’s image. Attention must be paid to the crew uniform and accessories to ensure crew operates at peak efficiencies at all times. Modern forms of communication can contribute to greater efficiencies and reduction of waste.
In most cases, all parties buy from the same shops, resulting in a lack of differentiation between parties. It seems like an oxymoron that an owner will spend hours creating a personal representation of themselves either in the yacht’s interior and or exterior only to have their crew looking just like someone else’s crew.
During this article we have examined a yacht with a E100,000+ crew wear budget. When direct and indirect waste is added, the E100,000 budget can increase by 40 to 50 per cent. Such wastage needs to be dealt with to ensure that owners are happy with their superyacht investment. g
to re-order at the end of a supplier’s season – the stock does not exist. They will either wait several weeks or a month or more before the new stock arrives, or they will request new operating funds to
The opportunity for the designer, owners and qualified suppliers to create an exclusive yet coordinated theme is typically not considered. Crews often use the same supplier they used on the last vessel. This cycle does not change
Supply chain disruptions
The majority of crew wear suppliers fall into two camps – retail centric and boutique. The retail centric suppliers cater to mass markets and have to operate on 90- to 120-day roll-out schedules. They perceive superyachts as a secondary market. This approach leaves yachts in a lurch during the season or the year when they need
purchase these unbudgeted items. The boutiques build garments using middlemen. They do not have the resources to create their own supply chains. In turn, they cannot control their stock levels or the continuity of a style and its original fabric or fabric colour. A uniform item that is one shade different causes scheduling problems for the crew and irritation for the owners.
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Painting with light IMAGE: PELORUS BY CHRIS SUFFELEERS/LÜRSSEN
The majority of, if not all, sub-contractors and consultants within the industry will insist on being involved in a project as early as possible. When it comes to light fitting and design, the situation is no different. With regular updates in technology and regulations, being on top of current trends and products is key to achieving a successful outcome. However, what is the secret behind creating a great signature? What needs to be considered during the design process and who should be involved? Lighting specialist Aqualuce has worked on 30 boats over the past 25 years, with 76m M/Y Pegaso being its most recent project. Managing director of Aqualuce John Roberts sheds some light on the topic.
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Image: pegaso by vere ishim
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he first step in designing and executing a lighting signature is to establish the conceptual design. For new builds, it’s a case of looking at the CAD plans, model and visuals presented by the yard, designer or client’s representative. For built yachts, it’s a case of getting an onboard survey and the brief. It is important with refit projects to get as much information as possible from the crew and especially from the ship’s engineers. To establish a conceptual design, it is important to study the function and individualities of each deck, the superstructure as a whole and its design lines, and the key features within the build. The main mast and mast details, grills, fins, satcoms, platforms, steps, side decks, helicopter landing pads, crew areas, dining, bar, seating, walkways, sauna, swimming pool, Jacuzzi, aft bathing platform, beach club, passerelle, signage, garage (submarine, launches, toys) and, lastly but just as important, the underwater lighting.
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All of these areas must become part of the night vision, as they give us the identity of the yacht in order to create a memorable and special signature. This is the essence of an external lighting signature. It is vital to appoint a lighting designer at an early stage. The company chosen should have a large team in order to ensure that work can be processed quickly and efficiently. The scope of work needs to be defined and issued to the yard. This way the owner’s representative can fix the budgets. With this comes all the engineering and detailing for the yacht along with the cutting implications, the special housings and their waterproofing. This needs to be considered at an early stage in case any painting is required, and it can then be included in the construction programme. The desired look for the lighting should be delivered by those setting the brief for the overall project, regardless of
whether the project is a new build or a refit. This could involve the captain, owner’s representative and the yacht designer. Often the final decision for the lighting concept is made by the lighting designer on behalf of the owner and the design team. The period for conceptual evaluation usually takes between four and six weeks, which normally results in the production of two visual interpretations of the vision and a deck-by-deck concept lighting design with full CAD plans. The working design is then broken down into two stages. The first part is the circuit allocation, the control design, lighting equipment types, lamp details, loadings, keys and so on. This includes a full set of working CAD lighting drawings for each deck. The second part is the specifications, ancillary equipment, control system, schematics and costing, which on average is a two- to three-month process overall. The engineering design stage looks into all the details
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of the proposed lighting design and usually takes around one month and can be run concurrently with work at the yard.
Image: m/y al salamah by nilu izadi
It is important to point out that there is a difference when it comes to designing a signature for a motoryacht compared with a sailing yacht, and the scale has a huge bearing. A sailboat is a far more delicate object and requires a completely different approach, as it does not have much of a profile when compared to a motoryacht. There is also a smaller deck profile, as sailing
It is important that the mast be properly lit, as this is generally the first element of a yacht that you see. yachts generally only have one deck with a cockpit. The challenge is to reflect the beauty of its design lines at night. This is true of either category of yacht and the trick is to be objective about what you see and how you see it. It’s like painting with light. When looking at current trends and technology available on the market, LEDs are by far the most seen and used. The question is, do they make sense to use? Do they solve every lighting solution? Well, we have had two bad experiences with LED products. They didn’t lead up to the manufacturers’ claims or expectations. New technology has to be carefully implemented, and I thank a particular captain for bearing with us when we had to change a complete installation of linear LED lighting due to its LT_AVconcepts_SuperYacht_Qtr_Hrzntl.eps 1 10/4/2011 4:00:34 PM repeated failure within the system.
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It can be a very expensive mistake, so take care when specifying a product. See if the product is available for extensive testing and confirm that it has been used previously in a similar capacity. When looking to the future, there is plenty of scope within the market to produce a series of new external lighting signatures. The designs can now be better integrated into the superstructure and the opportunities available are vastly improved thanks to the increasing variety of lamp options and LED products. Linear lighting can take on a better role, producing less heat in smaller packages. Control
Often the final decision for the lighting concept is made by the lighting designer on behalf of the owner and the design team. systems on the market offer a variety of presentation options, which allow for colour changing, variations in deck vision and subtle dimming over a long fade time. Within a marina there are two areas for consideration. Underwater lights are generally diffused and there is an
abundance of ambient lighting. Other ships, dock lighting, building light and flood lights all add to a diffused effect. If these are at a reduced level, then a yacht has a chance to show its full glory. It is important that the mast be properly lit, as this is generally the first element of a yacht that you see. Should it have any colour? Should certain details be enhanced? How is this part of the yacht’s identity interpreted? What elements should be seen at night and should it change automatically as part of the lighting programme? These are the sorts of options that a designer has to consider and decide upon in a way that best reflects what the owner wants. J
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FOCUS | LIGHTING TECHNOLOGY
LEADER IN EVERY DIMENSION Taking into account the inefficiency of the traditional incandescent light bulb, and with an EU ban for the production of 100-, 75- and now the 60-watt bulb, LEDs are a viable alternative for future lighting investments across the board. In the Greentech report on LED technology, released in May 2011 by Investment House UBS, analysts Tony Andersson and Sundeep Gantori stated that LED technology will eventually replace all other lighting technologies. So when will this take place and are LEDs the best option for exterior lighting? Andrew Johansson reports. Considering the amount of time an owner may spend on deck, dining and entertaining, lighting on the exterior becomes just as important as the interior. Both areas need to be completed to the highest standard using reliable and effective products. Designer Andrew Langton stressed in SuperyachtDesign, Q8, the importance of exterior lighting and how their studio focuses on two different aspects – the first being deck lighting and the second the perception of the yacht by others. “This is one of the most challenging aspects of the light designer’s remit, as you cannot simply put uplights around the yacht to light the hull and superstructure as you can with a building,” explained Langton. “An added factor is that the marine environment can be quite tough on the exterior fixtures and fittings.” Not only do designers have to create unique lighting settings, but the products chosen to deliver the desired affect must also be able to provide the flexibility a designer or shipyard would require and expect. Able to offer a variety of colours and dimming options, LEDs offer such flexibility. Combining clever software and the latest diode technology, an owner can have the option of altering the colour of the light. The ability to effectively dim the brightness of the diode not only provides the user with more entertainment options, but also makes it marina-friendly for late night arrivals or departures. “I think the dimming aspect of LED lighting is something that a lot of people are starting to get into, primarily designers and shipyards, and this is where we are having a lot of success,” said the marketing director at OceanLED, Lee Savage. “LEDs have advanced massively in the last year, as they have become more efficient. One of the products we have, which we are relaunching in the general marine market, has the same number of LEDs and is driven at the same current
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but it is 130 per cent brighter, simply because LEDs have become that much better.” Combine the capability of LEDs with the latest security software and a seductive lighting design, and a superyacht has a tool to impress onlookers and can instantly deter intruders when required. As well as discussing the benefits and efficiency of LEDs, the Greentech report reveals that the cost of the technology is declining at a rate of between 15 and 25 per cent annually. “As the year progresses, there is increased risk that the Chinese demand bubble could burst – negatively impacting stocks,” the report reveals. “Long term, however, demand from general lighting alone could make the LED market increase five-fold.” After looking at the economic and legislative considerations, this decrease in cost along with advancements in the technology and its manufacture would suggest that LED lighting is a sound investment. Image: fairlIght squadron 42 by mike jones
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Lighting in the overall design process is often overlooked, and distinctive, attentiongrabbing exterior lighting signatures are arguably few and far between. A lack of carefully considered lighting can undo all the hard work of an exterior designer after night falls. “Very little stands out at night time and yachts become undefined masses when viewed from the shore,” explained lighting specialist Beatrice Witzgall of I3D Inc. However, with younger owners and bolder exterior designs entering the market, more intriguing and experimental lighting signatures are around the corner. We approached three very different design studios to express their views on the topic.
image: m/y al salamah by nilu izadi
How much time do you spend designing the exterior lighting signature & do you ever consult a lighting specialist? Occasionally we consult with a specialist lighting designer; however, we have pre-conceived ideas regarding lighting and they generally end up having to do what they are briefed to do rather than create a concept. For instance, we like to illuminate the external side decks at a low level from the internal bulkhead. This provides a great effect of floor washing using the outside bulwark as a reflector. The main criterion here is to illuminate the side decks while avoiding lighting overspill into the interior, which happens if you install overhead lighting on the side decks. Having set the lighting mood in the interior, there is nothing more upsetting than having the side-deck lights shine through the windows. Terence Disdale
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For larger projects (65m-plus), it is quite likely that the owner would consider employing a lighting specialist. The advantages are that these guys are in touch with the latest lighting technology in the market and are aware of what can be integrated into the systems used onboard. If they have a proven track record and style, which is suitable to the project, they can certainly make a difference. This said, if the owner is set on traditional formulas, then a lighting designer has no room to contribute anything above what the yacht designer can achieve. If we were doing the lighting, then we would usually calculate for a week, which would include choosing a light system, light fittings and fixtures, a lighting plan (showing the location of the light sources), a switch plan (showing
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Terence Disdale, Terence Disdale Design Ltd (Image: Simon John Owen)
Dimitris Hadjidimos Partner, Claydon Reeves
light circuits which are the basis of setting different scenes) and a presentation for the client. After that there would be an ongoing project management period collaborating with the yard to achieve the final outcome. Finally, we would need to go onboard and set all the light scenes/moods, which would light each area in different ways depending on the use and time of the day. The same would be applied to
Tim Heywood, Tim Heywood Designs (Image: Justin Ratcliffe)
the external appearance of the yacht. Dimitris Hadjidimos
I have been designing special light fittings for my yacht projects for over 30 years and I do invest a considerable amount of time on the exterior lighting. Tim Heywood
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HOW WOULD THIS TIME WORK OUT AS A PERCENTAGE OF THE OVERALL TIME TAKEN TO DESIGN THE EXTERIOR OF A YACHT? It is difficult to ascertain how much time a good lighting scheme takes to develop. Usually it’s integrated as part of the ceiling panel design or the fixed deck furniture features.
of the time based on the whole project.
Terence Disdale
The exterior lighting design is approximately three to four per cent of the design time, which on a four-year project soon mounts up!
Due to the complexity of an external design incorporating all the details around the yacht, which is a vast undertaking, the lighting element would take approximately two per cent
IS THERE A SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A SAILING YACHT & A MOTORYACHT WHEN DESIGNING THIS ASPECT? Sailing yachts are more problematic, as there is not usually a great deal of superstructure to illuminate or to recess the up-lights or deck lights into.
Dimitris Hadjidimos
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There are far more opportunities on motoryachts to be more creative with the lighting, from underwater lights to the illumination of the mast. A large motoryacht’s bulbous bow allows me to floodlight the bow, which I first installed on Pelorus. Tim Heywood
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Yes, there is. Most motoryachts have more decks than the equivalent length of sailing yachts, which means a motoryacht offers a lot more external overhead areas, staircases and passages which all can be used for illumination. The rigging on a sailing yacht affects two things: one is that there are a lot more moving parts in use on deck and consequently the operational areas used by the crew to run the boat are much larger. This has to be considered carefully when adding lighting to a sailboat. The second point is that all these moving parts physically do not allow the application of the same type and amount of lighting of that of a motoryacht.
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focus | lighting technology
How important are lighting signatures to owners? All owners like to illuminate their vessel in a welcoming manner. Terence Disdale
A lot of this depends on the level of experience and how involved the owner is. We found that a lot of owners just look at a yacht as a whole item, which they either like or not. The fact that a lot of this is achieved through lighting is more something that is left to us as designers. Owners who choose to get more involved in the ways of achieving the
final appearance often find this very rewarding, as once the yacht is launched, they feel a sense of personal achievement having been part of the final outcome. Dimitris Hadjidimos
They are becoming more and more important, especially on younger clients’ yachts where they will consider more adventurous lighting installations. Tim Heywood
What is the future for exterior lighting design & what will yachts in a marina look like in the next few years? External lighting and particularly underwater lighting is an obvious deterrent to unwanted visitors such as pirates. LED is the future of external lighting due to the long lifespan of the fittings and its lack of vulnerability to local temperature changes.
up over time, so clients get the chance to grow with the development. A gentle approach to new technologies tends to result in a longer lifespan.
Terence Disdale
Yachts are becoming more distinctive at night with interesting lighting effects from bow to stern. But I do feel it is very important to keep the lighting tasteful and subtle and not end up looking like a cheap disco!
With the latest development in LED lighting, it is a very exciting time for exterior lighting and I am convinced that this will become even better in years to come. The technical possibilities are already here to achieve breathtaking effects and I believe that this will filter steadily into the yachting industry. As with the car industry, trends tend to build
Dimitris Hadjidimos
Tim Heywood To comment on this article, email issue128@superyachtreport. com with subject: Painting with light
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Why ignorance is no longer bliss I
n the good old days, when the flow of new orders was a steady one and yards were full to capacity, we flourished in an environment steeped in privacy and secrecy, with the majority of the world ignorant of our industry and what we were producing, and this suited us perfectly. We all got on with our jobs while most of the world was blissfully unaware of this little universe we were creating and thriving within.
Then the recession struck and that steady flow of orders has been reduced to a capricious drip that we all struggle to catch. So we’ve suddenly had to reassess our industry’s position as a private and exclusive club, as this incarnation is now failing to sustain us. Indeed, the
We need to convince the government to start taking us seriously as an industry, a viable economic generator and superb distributor of the wealth of the top tier of UHNWIs. very nature of the incredible assets we produce is conducive to a degree of exclusivity; only a few can afford to own one, and of course, the owners at the end of our food chain also appreciate the privacy that we are able to give them. However, I truly believe that educating, enlightening and explaining our industry to the ‘powers that be’ is the key to climbing out of the recession. I’ve always said that late 2011 and early 2012 will be the most difficult time for our industry, and I’m afraid I have to stand by this. I also think that
this is also the time when the most work has to be done. This is the time to engage with new people, educate the world as to the fundamental benefits that the superyacht industry gives to the global economy, and to win back confidence in the market. Going forward, the way in which we need to address these issues is twofold. Firstly, we need to educate the government and the international media of the cold, hard financial facts surrounding our industry. Yes, superyachts may be the ‘play things’ of the rich and privileged, but they are also a viable and intelligent distribution of the incredible wealth that these small number of individuals have. What better way to spread the wealth than through industry? We need to convince the government to start taking us seriously as an industry, a viable economic generator and superb distributor of the wealth of the top tier of UHNWIs.
We must counter the lack of understanding that governments, international media and the general public have of the superyacht industry.
We need to educate the international media, the broadsheets, etc to see us not as an elitist industry that should be ridiculed and belittled, but as a fantastic, vibrant and technically innovative industry that is providing the very pinnacle of products to our clients. The media play a vital role in helping the general public to understand that owning a superyacht is not a crime, and actually, those lucky enough to do so provide livelihoods for a vast number of people. Through our Economic Impact Study we will be able to present this kind of data to the right people, in the right way. We’ve had such a fantastic response, with the participation >> in the survey far exceeding our THE SUPERYACHT REPORT | ISSUE 128
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expectations, so much so we’ve had to push its publication back to the Global Superyacht Forum in November. I’ve had so many personal emails from members of the industry giving their support and I know that this is just the beginning as the associations take up the mantel to continue and build on this with us.
The industry needs to make people feel confident that buying a superyacht is a worthwhile investment and one that they will enjoy undertaking and seeing through to the end. The second of the necessary steps I have identified is a need to engage with the clients far more intelligently. The industry needs to make people feel confident that buying a superyacht is a worthwhile investment and one that they will enjoy undertaking and seeing through to the end. When analysing the target market for the superyacht industry, if you break it down to the main geographical hubs of UHNWIs, and aim to engage 10 individuals from each of these per year through converting them to new business, that gives us 150 clients whose new blood will reinvigorate and resuscitate the market. Identifying these people and engaging with them is the key to kick-starting the industry back on the right track for growth, and will actually provide the kind of longterm stability that the industry has never experienced. Having relied heavily on repeat clients to bolster new build sales, and those clients being lifelong sailors and lovers of the sea, the industry has been resting on its laurels and has never actively marketed itself and its products to the wider audience.
As I mentioned in the last issue, the majority of the activity that we’re hearing whispers of at the moment is focused around existing owners looking to take advantage of the industry’s current position and get a good deal. Not to belittle this activity at all, but to be realistic, this isn’t the kind of business that is going to benefit us long term; it’s a bandage, not a cure. You will have all seen The Superyacht Owner pilot edition by now. This magazine is a step in the right direction. With the purpose of educating and advising owners about our industry in a language that they understand and in a format that they will respect, this will act as an ambassador for our industry, as a bridge between our two worlds, and I can honestly see this as being one of the most important media outlets I’ve ever been involved in. So as I write this piece, having just spent a blissful few days onboard Perini’s finest, I look forward to the next couple of months with trepidation and excitement. Yes, it’s going to be hard, but it’s also going to be our finest hour as, with the autumn boat shows upon us and the Global Superyacht Forum finishing off the year, I really feel that we are climbing our way out of the recession, and that we are shedding light on our industry in the eyes of the rest of the world. As far as I can see, if we are successful in giving them one tenth of our industry’s enthusiasm and passion they will start to respect and admire us as much as we deserve! g MHR To comment on this article, email
[email protected] with subject: Stern words
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