A highly personal affair

Bart M. Bouwhuis, Marnix J. Hoekstra Photo: Vripack

A highly personal affair

Bart M. Bouwhuis, Marnix J. Hoekstra Photo: Vripack

Craft

A highly personal affair

Wave goodbye to cookie cutter designs; in the superyacht industry – you put your own personal stamp on the finished product.

By Dominique Afacan | 11 August 2021

In the world of superyachts – originality is king. Tailoring boats to specific tastes and ensuring a yacht is aligned with an owner’s unique personality and preferences is a hugely important part of the process – from design to interiors, to build and beyond. 

The owner of Excellence, Herb Chambers, had it about right when he told Superyacht Life, “I could look at boats all day long, because they’re all different. Even when I took delivery of my latest yacht, I walked the marina during the Monaco Yacht Show looking at every other boat out there. I wanted a boat that if you were a mile away from it, you would recognise it as being Excellence.”

A highly personal affair

Excellence

A highly personal affair

Excellence

For Marnix Hoekstra – partner at Dutch design studio Vripack, understanding the owner’s preferences is absolutely key to success. “The biggest compliment we get is when the client feels that they designed the vessel and we were merely holding the pencil. Yacht building is an incredibly interesting field, because it’s the most bespoke experience you could allow yourself to enter. It goes way beyond any villa or custom plane you could create.”

Once upon-a-time that custom aspect might have felt relatively limited – perhaps a layout would change here or an interior colour scheme would be altered there, but as yachts get ever more advanced, the sky is the limit and demands are rarely turned down, no matter how far-fetched they might seem. 

“A client’s demand is never answered with a ‘no’,” confirmed Vesna Bloetz, marketing and communications manager at German shipyard Nobiskrug. “If the requests demand innovative engineering, we will gladly welcome all ideas, push the envelope of what is feasible, and seek new technologies to find the solution.” And the proof is in the pudding. Take their recently launched Artefact – or Nobiskrug’s iconic Sailing Yacht A, one of the most eye-catching on the water. Taking six years to build, the yacht uses a 15-metre long window for the underwater observation lounge – the largest piece of glass ever manufactured for use on board. 

A highly personal affair

Escape herb garden

A highly personal affair

Escape herb garden

Of course, not all owner requests result in mammoth glass sheets. “We have owners who are from engineering backgrounds – they might love to talk about engine power and energy saving solutions,” says Hoekstra. “Then there are owners who are into furniture design and art and lighting and are interested in how we can use beautiful but responsible materials in the interiors.” Client requests and bespoke detailing comes in all shapes and sizes, it seems.

Take Feadship’s Escape concept, which features an on board greenhouse, for owners who want to grow their own herbs and vegetables – plus a full-height tree in the sky lounge. “All of our yachts are one-offs,” said Ruud Bakker, lead designer on the project. “Everything is a prototype, so we had to work out how it might be achievable.” 

Other requests might include anything from pilates studios, on-board basketball courts, and running tracks to hammams and helipads.

Back at Virpack, a whisky tank in the bottom of the yacht was one of the more unusual requests. “The client was a distiller and wanted to bring along serious amounts of his produce,” explains Voekstra, who is keen to add that often these seemingly outlandish requests lead to innovative solutions and keep the industry moving forward at pace.  

A highly personal affair

Black pearl

A highly personal affair

Black pearl

A prime example is the recent demand for more environmentally-friendly solutions. “We are developing a 70m fossil free yacht right now for example,” says Voekstra. “It might seem an unusual request but given the times we live in, it is a very expected request. The result of it is a very unusual technical set up.” There are countless other examples which also see owners driving innovative sustainable solutions, including Black Pearl, from the late Oleg Burlakov, a visionary owner, and Bravo Eugenia which features a quiet electric mode and consumes around 30% less fuel than other motor yachts of the same size. 

“The beauty of our profession is that if you listen well to clients, their preferences differ a lot,” sums up Hoekstra. They have their own personalities and experience and history and passion and love – that enables us to enter into a field of design which combines all of those things.” Variety is the spice of life, it seems – and in the yachting world, it’s practically a necessity. 

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