Yachting March 2015

A long the two-lane highway from Costa Rica’s San Jose airport toward the country’s Pacific side, the mesmerizing shades of green changed as rapidly as my car’s tires rolled over the narrow, winding road. It was about a two-hour ride down from the airport’s 3,900-foot elevation to sea level, and after a six-hour flight, my stomach reminded me it was snack time. Fruit peddlers stacked along the roadside every few miles caught my eye. They were all selling oblong-shaped, tasty-looking objects called jocotes. Picking up a bag of the fruit for what amounted to a handful of change, I wasted no time in sampling them. Mine were red-tone and ripe, making for a palate-pleasing and refreshing vitamin-C-filled treat. (I was told later that jocotes are also served unripe and green,…

We know Patrick Knowles best for his award-winning interior design aboard everything from the 161-foot Trinity Blind Date to the 164-foot Feadship Inevitable to the 167-foot Palmer Johnson Helios 2. Less well known is that he also owns the Turner Bay luxury home design store in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where anyone — not just superyacht owners — can stop in and buy fantastic wall decor, lights, linens and more. Supplying that store keeps Knowles in the know about all the finest, well, fineries from around the world, and even still, he couldn’t find a dinner service combination to satisfy one particular client. “The client wanted something very specific for the decor, classic American art deco,” Knowles says. “The owner also wanted something unique, very different, and really, when you get…

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Horizon Yachts, a leading builder in the Asia-Pacific region, introduced two models at the Miami Yacht & Brokerage Show. They add to the builder’s nearly 30-year history of constructing yachts from 52 to 150 feet length overall. The first new offering is the Horizon P110, a trideck with a 23-foot-6-inch beam allowing for a quartet of guest staterooms. Design features include a country kitchen galley and an enclosed sky lounge with full helm (in addition to the fly bridge helm). Zero-speed stabilizers, bow and stern thrusters, and twin 1,900-horsepower CAT C32 engines are part of the standard equipment package. The second new model from Horizon Yachts is the E84. She also has four staterooms, plus an open fly bridge and aft deck for entertaining family and friends. Twin 1,600-horsepower CAT…

Stand-up paddle boards, kayaks, tender rides, hikes on the beach: All the fun stuf that comes with a day of yachting becomes a whole lot easier on the feet with a great pair of water-friendly shoes. The 1 | SON-R Flex ($75) by Sperry is designed not only for active days on the beach, but also to be easily packable in a weekend bag. 2 | Teva’s Hurricane Toe Pro ($65) has a Shoc Pad in the heel for comfort, and the sole is Durabrasion Rubber for solid traction on many surfaces. The 3 | Voyager Sandal ($140) by Sperry has a WaterBlock membrane meant to be breathable and waterproof, plus ASV technology to reduce heel shock by 30 percent. 4 | Sperry’s Point Breeze Skimmer ($90) is a boat-shoe…

Our intrepid 475 Panacea is the primary tender to Penny Mae, a 138-foot motoryacht built by Richmond Yachts,” said Capt. Mike O’Neill. Little Penny, as it is called, has quad 350-horsepower Yamaha outboards and is fitted with a full suite of the latest Simrad NSO evo2 electronics, an Esthec deck and a number of custom features. It has everything the owner wanted in a center-console with overnight accommodations for two. You may think a 47-foot centerconsole is an idea approaching overkill, but the fact is that it lives up to its name — Panacea — with 60 mph (51 knot) top-end speeds, 0.73 mpg ef ciency at 32 mph (28 knots), comfortable seating fore and aft, all of the requisite stowage for serious fi shing and a single-level deck. Little…