Yachts International Fall 2022

It’s been a tough summer: war, drought, raging fires, flaring fuel prices, lingering Covid, extreme heat, political unrest, flagging economies and the still-gagging global supply chain. Some days it’s hard to get a clear view of the horizon. But the world is not all dark clouds and lightning bolts. I spent a week in June visiting shipyards and designers on Italy’s Adriatic and Mediterranean coasts, and the view was patently upbeat, with order books bursting at the seams and clients breaking down the doors. What the heck is going on? Historically, a trip like that usually nets some grumbling, even in the best of times, but this was different. The CEOs, marketing managers, sales managers and designers I met with were downright buoyant about the current state of affairs and feeling pretty…

The 203-foot (62-meter) steel and aluminum motoryacht RIO was the first launch of the year for CRN, one of the few shipyards that still launches yachts the traditional way from a slipway. The occasion on Italy’s Adriatic coast was accompanied by fireworks and confetti in primary colors that almost exactly matched some of the vibrant artwork on board. The yacht is CRN’s second collaboration with Dutch designer Frank Laupman of Omega Architects after Yalla in 2014. RIO’s clean and chiseled lines are hallmarks of the Omega style, as are the near-vertical bow and aluminum arches in the stern that connect the main and upper decks. The flowing, horizontal lines come together to lend the yacht a graceful, balanced look on the water, despite her four decks and interior volume of 1,218…

EMOCEAN LOA 125ft. 2in. (38.15m) BEAM 29ft. (8.85m) DRAFT 8ft. 4in. (2.53m) CONSTRUCTION steel and aluminum GROSS TONNAGE 432 SPEED (max./cruise) 13.5/11 knots RANGE 5,000nm @10 knots NAVAL ARCHITECTURE Hydro Tec EXTERIOR DESIGN Hydro Tec INTERIOR DESIGN BurdissoCapponi Yachts&Design BUILDER Rosetti Superyachts When we think of explorer yachts, we tend to think of rugged vessels with rather clunky lines and big deck cranes for launching heavy-duty tenders. Rosetti Superyachts calls the 125-foot (38-meter) Emocean an explorer, and so she is. She was, after all, designed by Sergio Cutolo of Hydro Tec, a naval architect known for his explorer projects. But she doesn’t look anything like an explorer, so what’s going on? “From the outside, it’s true: She’s not your typical explorer,” says Andrea Giora, sales and marketing director at Rosetti Superyachts. “But she’s built of steel and aluminum, has a range of 5,000 nautical miles at 10 knots, has big storage volumes, machinery spaces that are…

With CuraGen, Jonathan Rothberg was on the leading edge of genome science making drugs for cancer. In 1999, the company went public, and stock went to $256 a share. By the next year, CuraGen had a market cap of $5 billion. Most yacht owners buy a boat to escape the trappings of work. Jonathan Rothberg did the opposite. The geneticist spent so much time conducting research aboard his family yacht that he wound up buying a shadow vessel and converted it into a floating laboratory. It might seem odd, then, to describe the entrepreneur as a devoted family man, but that’s the truth. “Every one of my companies was started because of somebody I love,” Rothberg says, sweeping a thick mop of brown hair back from his face. “They’re not random start-ups.” With 100…

The next time you see what appears to be ceramic framing around artwork or a TV aboard a superyacht, consider that it might actually be thousands of crushed shells, all cleaned and naturally dyed before being molded into the sculptural shape. custom wall coverings may trace their substrate origins to fruit or vegetable peels, and intricate marquetry on columns could be bamboo salvaged from construction sites. It’s all the work of Nature Squared, a pioneer in transforming responsibly sourced, sustainable, natural materials into handcrafted, luxurious designs and surfaces on a custom basis. For the past 22 years, the company has been collaborating with brands like Montblanc and Rolls-Royce and, increasingly with superyacht designers. To date, Nature Squared has turned more than 100 species of materials—including fish scales, bark, seashells and feathers—into upwards…

The greening of the superyacht industry once seemed as elusive as the legendary green flash at sunset. Not so anymore. When building a superyacht today, eco-conscious decisions are gaining momentum. We have witnessed the rise in alternative propulsion systems for a while, but now we are seeing eco-design and ecoconstruction assessments with interior appointments. Here are the ways that three designers—Tiphaine Treins, a French lighting designer whose Temeloy Lighting studio is based in London; Mark Berryman, a British architect and designer who is the principal of Lymington-based Mark Berryman Design; and Laura Pomponi, an Italian designer who is the principal of Luxury Projects based in Ancona, Italy—are embracing and, in some cases, helping to lead these trends. Tiphaine Treins / TEMELOY LIGHTING Tiphaine Treins founded Temeloy Lighting in 2009. Her work includes residences,…