Yachts International Summer 2019

Editor-in-Chief You may have heard rumors that print media is on its last legs. In some quarters, maybe, but not in these parts. In case you’ve wondered where Yachts International has been the past few months, we’ve had our heads down retooling the old girl into the dazzling quarterly magazine you’re holding in your hands. The magazine publishing business has been evolving as fast as you can say digital, and yes, there’s plenty of wreckage out there. Some great titles have faltered and failed in recent years. Others have moved online. Luxury enthusiast magazines like this one, however—that focus on categories relevant to readers’ recreational passions—continue to thrive. Even so, as you may have traded your mom jeans for skinnies and your deck shoes for runners, the times and shifting…

’Good design is all about common sense and geometry.’—Espen Øino Measuring 348 feet (106.1 meters) in length, Amadea, built at Lürssen’s Rendsburg yard in Germany, is a showcase of complex design elements and customizations. “Amadea perfectly suits our motto: Everything is about the detail,” says Julia Stewart, director of Imperial, the Monaco-based owner’s representative. Amadea is one of the dozen or so yachts in the world designed and built to comply with the Passenger Yacht Code. She has seven guest decks and accommodations for 16 guests in eight staterooms. They include a master on the owner’s deck with a drawing room, office and beauty salon. Five guest staterooms are on the main deck, and two are on the bridge deck. There also are quarters for 36 crew. The yacht’s exterior…

‘With yachts of this size and volume, you’re basically building a ship,’ says Gianpaolo Lapenna, Palumbo’s project and product manager. ‘Ships need to be built quickly and efficiently, which is where we were able to draw on our 50-plus years of experience in the commercial sector.’ Back in 2008, a commercial shipyard in Naples, Italy, decided to diversify into yachting. It set up the Columbus brand and delivered its first 177-foot (54-meter) superyacht three years later. Today, the Palumbo Group operates a string of shipyards throughout the Mediterranean and four yacht brands: ISA, Columbus, Mondomarine and Extra. Its latest and largest launch, the 262-foot (79.9-meter) Columbus Classic Dragon, is a 2,300-gross-ton reflection of how far the family-run business has come. “This is a special day that marks an important milestone…

Steve Quigley, the managing director of One2three Naval Architects in Australia, says the recently delivered 276-foot (84-meter) trimaran White Rabbit G is so smooth in a significant seaway that she virtually eliminates any chance of seasickness. Pitch, roll and lift are dampened far more effectively than on today’s stabilized monohulls. “Trimarans can be tapered to whatever stability you want,” Quigley says. He began drawing such hull forms nearly 20 years ago, first for the 180-foot (55-meter) fast passenger ferry Dolphin Ulsan. The owner of White Rabbits A and B, both Feadship monohulls, also discovered multihulls early. He had moved on to a 118-foot (36-meter) catamaran that he used for sportfishing and scuba diving, and by 2005, had taken delivery of his first trimaran, the 197-foot (60-meter) White Rabbit E, based…

When you take a high-performance yacht for a sea trial, you get a sense of the shipyard’s confidence by the behavior of the captain when he hands over the controls. Some need a bit of persuading to give it up. Others hover, ready, you suspect, to grab the wheel or the throttles. Some mention, apologetically, a minor technical issue that might be a good reason not to wring the boat out too much. Pershing’s captains just hand over the wheel and leave you to it. Either the company doctor doses them with beta-blockers before every trial, or they have total confidence in the boat. In my experience, that confidence has never been misplaced. The shipyard’s attitude toward performance has always been uncompromising. But is that enough? Perhaps not, if the…

Bravo Eugenia, the 357-foot (109-meter) Oceanco, has a name steeped in significance for the Jones family. Jerry Jones, who owns the National Football League’s Dallas Cowboys, says the name is a tribute to his wife, Gene (Eugenia), who was the driving force behind the yacht’s creation. “Creating our Bravo Eugenia was a project born out of true love for our family,” he says. “Building and designing her became a family affair on every level of the project. Gene oversaw the project and guided us through every step of the process, while our entire family, including our children and grandchildren, visited Oceanco on many occasions, contributing to the yacht’s development and helping to shape our dream. With Gene’s supervision, we were personally involved with every aspect of the build, all the…