Painted Lady

The sharp cumbersome lines of this boat may have won beauty contests in the late 1980′s but, like rock starts of yesterday, her looks have faded. An outdated figure, however, is not enough to make a boat pure ugly. No, for that honor you’ll need to add some paint. We are not sure which drugs the owner of this yacht was taking when he commissioned this hull “art” but he had to have been smoking something, or listening to Duran Duran.  Or both.

Signature Series

John Hancock made history with his bold and audacious signature on the Declaration of Independence. The signature series Foster yacht shares his audacious manner, but lacks the equivalent elegance.    It’s like a giant Volkswagen Beetle, comfortably roaming the ocean.

Runner Up – Dark Knight

Not ugly in the classical sense of the word, the Dark Knight might win a Halloween costume contest for its ability to scare young children. If Batman was looking for a new yacht this might be it, but for the rest of us who aren’t superheroes and don’t have a huge cave to park their yacht in, it’s just a little bit strange looking.  I mean, does it even have a bar???

This week an armada of boats lay siege on Fort Lauderdale for the year’s largest boat show and, like models during fashion week, countless mega-yachts arrive daily with hopes of seducing a billionaire to sleep in her cabin. But, for one exceptional beauty, this is not the goal.

With a sharp chiseled bow softened by elegant curves the Sea Axe is a genuine head turner. Her looks are unique and stunning but, unlike most other yachts of her type, they also serve a function enabling her to cut through chop and blaze down the face of a following sea at high speed. Even more intriguing is her lineage. The latest in a line of workboats designed by Damen Shipyards, her unique shape is based off the Fast Crew Supplier, a workboat developed  to service oil rigs in the rough waters of the North Sea. This fact, combined with her natural beauty, is what most intrigues the world’s wealthier individuals.

The Sea Axe FYS (Fast Yacht Support), as she is named, is not designed to be the primary yacht of billionaires. Instead she is designed as an elegant work horse capable of both turning heads and carrying the toys of her wealthy owners. The Sea Axe’s generous deck space provides plenty of room for a launch boat, jet skis, automobiles and a helicopter, and she is fast… capable of speeds up to 28 knots with a range of 5,000 nautical miles (at 18-knots).

Yacht design visionary and naval architect, Tom Weaver, from Weaver Price Design shares his comments:

This is the solution to the designers dilemma of engineering the support tenders and toys to fit into a regular super yacht. Under normal circumstances, designers of mega yacht tenders are faced with restrictions in height, weight and the space they occupy leading to compromises in the vehicles the guests use as transport and for play.  Now toys are unlimited, they can arrive ahead of the main ship be deployed and ready, the Sea Axe can also carry supplies of fuel etc.  A variety of “toys” are required in different parts of the world, here they can be corralled and deployed at will.

The Sea Axe’s forward sections are developed from racing sailing yachts, particularly catamarans with their narrow hull beam, where the vertical bow, fine entry and minimum reserve buoyancy is intended to go through waves rather than over them. This is efficient and reduces pitching whilst maintaining speed, and there is enough lifting strake/chine forward to deflect water when running in normal conditions.  The wide aft decks and what appears to be minimum deadrise aft create a very stable working platform to launch and deploy “toys”. The forward helm station of the supply vessel creates the large working deck and gives excellent visibility from the helm station.  This is a very functional yacht with workboat roots and a style not out of place in Monte Carlo.

In the Christopher Guest-directed comedy, Best in Show, one character is continuously approached by men she once slept with.  The details of her pre-marital love affairs, combined with her wardrobe of scant lycra pull-ups, leads her neurotic husband to compare her to “a cocktail waitress on an oil rig.”

One day the lucky owner of Sea Axe may be similarly dismissive but, this week in Fort Lauderdale, this working class girl of Aberdeen is truly the best in show.

The first and foremost source of energy is from the Sun which powers Solar Cells (covering the entire surface of the vessel) while at the same time illuminating 2 Hydroponic farms.

The second source is energy from the Wind which powers an auxiliary automated SkySail that drives the Ocean Empire to 18+knots while charging her GM ESS2 batteries through power sailing KER.

The third source is energy from Waves captured through Motion Damping Regeneration (MDR). A new form of ATMD (Adjustable Tuned Mass Damper) developed in collaboration with Maurer Sohnes Gmbh

The MDR system is basically an ATMD utilized in skyscrapers such as Taipei 101 to reduce their swaying motion. In this application 16 tons of batteries are the Mass while linear generators produce up to 50 kws of electricity as they dampen the motion of the vessel.

Richard Sauter head of design commented “The Ocean Empire life support Superyacht liberates the Superyacht community from its strict dependence on unsustainable resources by harnessing the renewable collective power ever present in the Earths Biosphere”.

The Ocean Empire LSV is a state of the art Superyacht catamaran. As such her Green Tech innovations are able to optimize what is easily the most dynamic form of ocean going platform. Her Daimler Turbo Compound BueTec engine is the most advanced EPA Diesel ever built. Her Sunpower Solar Cells are the most efficient to date as are her Voith Surface Drives.

Employing existing OEM products and costing little more than her conventional Superyacht counterparts. Ocean Empire’s Solar Hybrid design offers every available Superyacht luxury within her full range of operation which extends from a 50% reduction in fuel consumption and CO2 emissions to Ultra Green Carbon Neutral and Zero Carbon cruising.

As a Charter, a Plugged in Ocean Empire LSV is capable of feeding 360+Mwh’s of electricity to the grid. Enough energy to make up to 12,000 nautical miles of Chartered Carbon Neutral voyages every year

Why Did Hermès Design A Megayacht? While I certainly can not answer that question I can give you details on the yacht Hermès designed which is appropriately name “Why”. Gizmag tells us:

Prior to the launching of the outrageous Wally Island megayacht two years ago, Monte Carlo-based Wally Yachts was probably best known for its millennium-award-winning Wallypower 118, but with the launch of Wally Hermes Yachts (WHY), a joint venture with French high fashion house Hermes, it will almost certainly be known for its first WHY Yacht – it’s a multi-story 58 metre-long, 38 metre-wide floating personal holiday resort with almost an acre of floorspace, an ultra-stable Norwegian Ramform hull, and an energy efficiency so high and carbon footprint so low that it can be sailed to the location of your heart’s desire. It aint fast, but it can cruise at 12 knots in a Force 4 gale and has enough range to cross the Atlantic four times without refueling.

WHY is a joint-venture created in June 2008 between Paris-based luxury goods designer Hermès and similarly-positioned yacht constructor Wally Yachts, to develop a new type of motor yacht redefining the art of living on the sea. The venture was conceived as an equal partnership whereby each company becomes fully involved in all aspects of the concept and design of each project. Read More…

Video of the yacht design:

Click here to view the embedded video.

More details on this unique yacht can be found on the website Why Yachts.