Yachts International Summer 2021

kwooton@aimmedia.com The 100-foot motoryacht my friends had chartered in Southeast Alaska was anchored in a cove with no other signs of human life. To say the solitude and the mind-warping views of high mountains rising from Chatham Strait were overwhelming is an understatement. I was on deck with my camera listening for a very human sound: that of a floatplane carrying a guide we’d hired in Juneau a couple of days before to put us on a few salmon, make our fly rods bend and keep the yacht’s chef happy. As if on cue, a red and blue de Havilland Beaver, with its noisy radial engine, rounded the point, did a flyover and dropped into the cove. The crew delivered the guide to the boat, and we began our briefing…

Turkey has a centuries-old boatbuilding and seafaring culture. The country’s major city, Istanbul, straddles Asia and Europe, and touches the shores of the Sea of Marmara, the Golden Horn and the Bosporus. Water transportation has always been an essential part of commerce and trade. What is new is an evolving boatbuilding ethos, one that has now produced the 263-foot (80-meter) Tatiana. Built by Bilgin Yachts, she is the largest, most environmentally friendly private yacht ever launched in Turkey. While old-world Turkish craftsmanship has long been valued, Tatiana shows that yacht design, construction know-how and technology have evolved light years from the early days of fishing caïques. Today, Turkey is firmly established as one of the top-tier superyacht building nations in the world. Tatiana is built in accordance with IMO Tier…

Sales of explorer yachts have boomed in the past few years, largely thanks to younger, more adventurous owners wanting to cruise beyond the Mediterranean or Caribbean. This trend is only likely to increase in a post-pandemic world, but many explorer designs favor styling over substance and are no more built for long-range passagemaking than your average SUV is made for serious off-roading. A notable exception is the construction at Cantiere delle Marche in Ancona on Italy’s Adriatic coast. Just over a decade ago, the brand launched its hardy Darwin Class of steel-hulled explorers and has since carved out a niche in the market for oceangoing vessels under 500 gross tons. “We wanted to be identified from the beginning with a real pocket explorer that epitomized our shipyard, and the Darwin…

It is no coincidence that Italian brand Maiora chose to name its latest 115-foot (35-meter) fiberglass model after the Exumas, the string of islands in the Bahamas famous for their sapphire-blue waters and aquatic pigs. These cays are favorites of American yachtsmen, and the owner of the first Maiora 35 Exuma, Lady Nina, is a repeat customer from the United States. Maiora was a pioneer of fiberglass construction in the 1970s. Today, the brand is part of Fipa Group and in force with a new product range. Lady Nina is what Maiora calls a “special project” insofar as the yacht is customized to the owner’s family-oriented needs, and draws on the experience of sister company AB Yachts in the field of water-jet propulsion. Water jets offer various advantages over conventional…

Three creative people. Three nationalities. Three distinctive backgrounds. They combine to lead one integrated design studio: Harrison Eidsgaard, a respected, London-based firm that works with an international clientele to design yachts that the world’s top yards build. The principals, Peder and Ewa Eidsgaard and Ben Harrison, still have a youthful, start-up verve that produces a nouveau edge. Each has a different story about arriving at this point in their careers and becoming such a complementary, cohesive unit. “I come from a long line of architects,” says Ben, who is British. “Both my grandfathers were architects, as was my father, my uncle and my cousin. I seemed fated to train as an architect.” Boating was also in his blood. Ben spent the summers of his youth on the River Dart in…

Champagne and sparkling wine have always been celebratory libations. They work equally well for weddings, birthdays, holidays, sunsets and, of course, yacht christenings. But as with so many things, not all bubbly beverages are created equal. Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label, Dom Pérignon or Louis Roederer’s Cristal are easy bets, but there are many more options of equal and excellent quality. Grapes for Champagne must originate from the region of the same name in France, and secondary fermentation must occur in the bottle, which is different from how wine is made. With winemaking, a grape cluster is picked and placed in a bucket or shallow tub. Other clusters are picked and placed in the same container. As the weight of the grapes on top crushes the bottom clusters, the skin breaks…