Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2018 i Yachting

TRUTH BE TOLD, Mark Robinson got the idea in his living room. It was a big room with furniture in the middle, but outlets in the walls. He didn’t want to trip over lamp cords. ¶ He looked and looked but couldn’t find a cordless lamp that was anything beyond a novelty design. A year and about $1.5 million in seed money later, the company Alexander Joseph came online this past September, offering luxury cordless lamps — all built in a way that Robinson knows, from his years of racing and cruising, will work aboard yachts. ¶ “Our lamps are incredibly heavy,” he says. “The reason for that, and the low center of gravity, is to prevent them from falling over on boats.” ¶ The lamps can be bolted through…

31'9" LENGTH OVERALL 10'6" MAXIMUM BEAM LIMOUSINE TENDERS occupy rarefied air. They’re not often docked in a local canal; instead, they’re likely resting in the belly of a mega-yacht. As such, they require panache and customization, both of which the Xtender 9.7m Limousine offers. With a hull by Vripack, a retractable Bimini top and folding windscreens, the boat is designed to get guests ashore in comfort. The interior cabin, which seats six, can be completely closed off from weather. On nice days, the bow seating has unobstructed views. Whom It’s For: This limousine tender is for the mega-yacht owner who appreciates masculine lines, 40-knot speeds and the ability to let guests board from port or starboard with equal ease. Picture This: It’s New Year’s Eve, and you’re moored off St. Barths.…

THE DESIGN PHILOSOPHY behind the Riviera 72 Sports Motor Yacht is simple, if a touch unorthodox for the Australian boatbuilder. The company wanted to produce a motoryacht that could compete on luxury with its perennially sexy European competitors while still retaining Riviera’s rugged DNA. The result, as I found out during a sojourn to Sydney, Australia, is an interesting and versatile build that spans genres with aplomb, and that should appeal to yachtsmen of many stripes. ¶ My favorite part about this yacht (and, to be totally honest, one of my favorite features on any yacht I’ve seen recently) is the 72’s cockpit. It extends 4 feet beyond the cockpit on Riviera’s 68 Sports Motor Yacht. The 72 cockpit’s total of 286 square feet makes it feel massive for a…

SELLERIE NAUTIQUE AÉREC’S KanvasLight is a canvas product used to build Bimini covers, spray hoods and sun covers, offering shade during the day and soft, diffused light at night. Luminous optical fibers are integrated into the canvas. The fabric doesn’t generate light itself; instead, the light comes from a hidden electrical and optical system that is encapsulated in a waterproof case. ¶ “The technical challenge was sewing without breaking the [optical] fibers,” says Laurence Plaqué, commercial manager for Sellerie Nautique Aérec. “This fiber weave is interesting because it’s an inert material that works without electric power and remains insensitive to humidity.” ¶ The light-emitting composite is expected to be a boon for interior and exterior designers because it can accommodate unique curves and contours aboard new builds and refit projects…

MICHAEL KÖHLER WAS ANNOYED. He was cruising the world on a catamaran, seeing all kinds of technological leaps, yet struggled with a lack of power. ¶ “People have cellphones, iPads, cameras, whatever, but the energy-harvesting system on boats did not change at all in the past 20 years,” he says. “It forces people to go to the marinas every second day or run the generators.” ¶ So, he started noodling. For four years. He wanted to stay on the hook for weeks, running the air conditioning and all the systems. ¶ Finally, the ideas about which solar panels, electric motors, inverters and the like to use — and more importantly, he says, how to configure them — became the basis for the brand Silent-Yachts. The company offers 55-, 64- and…

POWER CATAMARANS HAVE been gaining popularity, bringing the rest of us in line with the thinking of France-based Fountaine Pajot, which has been in the power-cat game since in 1998. Its latest model is the Motor Yacht 44, the new flagship in a three-model motoryacht series. ¶ The MY44, a creation of Italian architect Pierangelo Andreani and French designer Daniel Andrieu, has a main deck that’s open from the aft-deck seating all the way forward to the starboard helm station. The sense of spaciousness is significant, for several reasons. First, four glass panels aft can all slide to port, creating an indoor-outdoor space with the aft deck and salon. In the salon, 32-inch-high windows extend for 12 feet down the sides of the yacht, with three sections per side, bringing…

SPEED IS THE FIRST THOUGHT MANY PEOPLE have when talking about a Pershing. And the builder’s 56 had that in spades — we saw 48 knots on our test day 11 years ago. But this yacht was also penned for the performance enthusiast with a growing family, and was offered with a two- or three-stateroom layout. From an aesthetic standpoint, the superstructure glass flowed with the raked hardtop, creating a sense of movement in a pleasing profile. At press time, we found two Pershing 56s on the market, a 2007 model for $530,104 and a 2009 asking $864,300. In addition to being fast, the Pershing 56 was outfitted for entertaining with a cockpit wet bar, grill and dining table. FROM THE ARCHIVE “With twin diesels from MAN, each one producing…

01. HE CAN MOVE UP, DOWN AND AROUND The Grant robot clock (about $22,700) can lie horizontally, crouch as if in anticipation or sit up straight. And those three rubber tank treads roll. 02. HE CAN GO FOR DAYS Eight days, to be exact. That’s how long Grant’s power reserve reportedly lasts. The “grenade launcher” in his right hand is also his winding key. 03. HE COMES IN COLORS Nickel, black and blue are available, with each limited to 50 pieces. In all colors, his name and military styling are an homage to Ulysses S. Grant.…

THE TABLE, CHAIRS AND LIGHTS in the photograph above all used to be plastic garbage floating in Amsterdam canals. Volunteers with Plastic Whale recycled it after fishing it out of the water — while cruising aboard boats made from recycled plastic that once was canal trash too. Talk about an evolution of construction in the Netherlands, one of Europe’s most celebrated boatbuilding nations. ¶ Plastic Whale started in 2011 and now includes 10 recycled plastic boats. The more plastic the company collects, the more boats that can be built to collect even more trash. Plastic Whale owner Marius Smit says the company collects 25,000 plastic bottles a year, along with tons of other plastic waste. Anybody can pay about $30 for one of eight spaces on a boat and then…

THEY WERE more than 400 feet long and christened without names on their bows, so enemy forces in the Atlantic and Pacific wouldn’t know what cargo they carried. During World War II, some 16,000 craftsmen in Brunswick, Georgia, turned out 99 of the Liberty Ships, at one point launching four a month to feed the war’s insatiable demand. ¶ Today, a 23-foot Liberty Ship replica stands at Mary Ross Waterfront Park, where the city docks welcome shrimp boats that supply local eateries. Yachtsmen who dock at nearby Brunswick Landing Marina — a former U.S. Navy hurricane hole — not only can check out the scene, but also can get a 10 percent discount at many Brunswick shops downtown. ¶ The only span between open water and the marina is the…

BRIGHT, CONFUSING LIGHTS punctuated the southwestern skyline as Serafin, a Liberty 458, exited the Panama Canal en route to Tahiti. Her crew’s attention was riveted to all four horizons. ¶ “There were hundreds of ships ahead — it looked like a city,” says Jeff Robbins, co-founder of Vesper Marine, who, along with his wife, Deirdre Schleigh, was on board in May 2007 with Serafin’s owner. ¶ Fortunately, Robbins had spent the previous two years cruising New Zealand aboard his Nordic 40, Vesper, and developing a stand-alone, black-box device that could receive Class A signals from the automatic information system transponders that commercial ships carry. Those AIS signals display each ship’s range, bearing and crossing information. Robbins’ box, likely the world’s first recreational-level AIS device, employed algorithms to help sift through…