Yachting September 2020

SHARPER LINES, SOFTER RIDE As you’d well know, the faster you go the harder the water becomes. And yet, at our top speed of 38 knots, the ride is unusually soft and stable. That’s probably best explained by looking astern. You’ll see that the PB70 leaves very little wake behind her and this is clear evidence of how effortlessly she’s moving through the water. The warped, semi-displacement hull was designed by ocean racing champion Mark Richards and naval architect Andy Dovell and shares its DNA with one of the world’s most high-performance yachts – Wild Oats XI. Its unique form allows the boat to slice cleanly through the waves and avoid the roller coaster effect of climbing up and over them. But the benefits of this design go further than…

I LOOKED UP FROM THE BOAT AS A TUNA SWAM BY in the swell above my head. The fish shimmered as the spreader lights from our 65-footer projected onto the wave in the middle of a pitch-black October night 100 miles from nowhere. “Well, that’s interesting,” I thought. “Never seen that before.” ¶ The swells were measurable—and increasing. Another favorable weather forecast blown to smithereens. As our vessel rose to the top of the swell, the tuna disappeared into the trough. ¶ These were the days before a multifunction display could show real-time weather, before a smartphone could show that it’s about to rain on the other side of the street. We got an off shore forecast a day or two ahead of a trip and went with it. That…

THIS JUST IN Princess Yachts has launched its first X Class yacht: the X95. The X95 has a wave-piercing hull design from naval architect Bernard Olesinski. The builder says it increases overall efficiency 15 percent when compared to a traditional monohull form. Powered with twin 1,900 hp MAN V-12 diesels, the yacht had a top-end speed of 23-plus knots during initial sea trials off Plymouth, England, according to the builder. Princess worked with Italian design firm Pininfarina on the vessel’s styling. The X95 can be set up with four or five staterooms, with a full-beam amidships master belowdecks or with a full-beam main-deck master. Princess says the yacht’s main deck and flybridge stretch almost the entire length of the yacht. The increase in real estate creates what Princess calls a…

WHEN IT COMES TO SETTING standards of excellence, Benetti Yachts has decades’ worth of practice. The Italian shipyard, founded in 1873, got its start building sailing ships and eventually delivered more than 100 of them. The switch to motoryachts followed with the times, and by 1980, Benetti had produced Nabila—a 281-footer that launched as one of the largest yachts afloat. More recent launches have stretched well past 300 feet length overall. ¶ Now comes the B.Yond 37M, the first model in Benetti’s line of steel-hull expedition yachts. At a time when yachtsmen are keenly interested in finding the quietest corners of the world, Benetti is expanding its range to help them get there.¶ The layout is unusual, with the bottom deck reserved entirely for crew, laundry, stowage and the like.…

COVID-19 HAS CAUSED some of the biggest changes to the crewed yacht-charter industry in decades. Like everything travel-related, the charter business has adapted to the pandemic’s realities. That means new types of contracts, new safety procedures for guests and crew, and more. ¶ By mid-July, after a few months of the pandemic’s initial problems, major charter companies worldwide were reporting bookings starting to resume. The summer season was, by all accounts, slow, but it offered a chance to test out new policies and ideas ahead of the winter season in the Caribbean. ¶ Many charter yachts can now be booked with contracts that outline contingencies and refunds should a COVID-19-related illness or government shutdown occur. There are new sanitation protocols aboard many yachts, as well as plans for handling an…

THE AZIMUT ATLANTIS 45 shares the same next-generation design cues as the line’s flagship, the 51. Both are snub-nosed open cruisers with hardtops, and both have that smart, new Azimut look. Check out the latest S Collection flagship, the Azimut Grande S10, and you’ll see much of the same sheer and stem, despite the fact that the S10 is twice the length and more than five times the displacement of the 45. ¶ The only power option for the Atlantis 45 is a pair of Volvo Penta D6-440 diesels well-matched to IPS600 pod drives. Azimut quotes a full-load maximum speed of 33 knots and a fast cruise of 28 knots for this model. ¶ We were registering a little better. According to the yacht’s Garmin instrumentation, the 45 topped out…