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These are the Yacht Interior Designers to Know

Designing a superyacht is a personal experience and involves making an overwhelming amount of choices.

By Sophie Killip

For those seasoned individuals who have experience chartering yachts , visiting friends’ yachts, sailing the high seas, or maybe even purchasing their first pre-designed yacht, the next thrill might come from building their own vessel. Although designing your own superyacht is a truly personal experience, it also involves making an overwhelming amount of choices. This is why the first step to building a new superyacht should always be to choose a designer to work with – and there are several yacht interior designers you can choose from.

Whether it’s considering how the internal spaces of your yacht will work, what furniture or materials are used, or even working out the external design for your new vessel, collaborating with a designer will make the process of creating your dream superyacht as stress-free and easy as possible. To help, Elite Traveler has created a list of yacht interior (and exterior, in some cases) designers that should be on your radar – and if you’re also on the lookout for a new yacht builder, why not discover our list of the best luxury yacht builders in the world ?

[See more: How to Design an Amazing Superyacht Interior]

Winch Design

Our list of the best yacht interior designers kicks off with  Winch Design. Originally founded by Andrew Winch and his wife Jane in 1986, at the time it was known as Andrew Winch Designs. It was rebranded as Winch Designs in 2015 but has been one of the UK’s leading superyacht and private jet design studios for over thirty years. Winch Design’s yacht studio is now led by Jim Dixon and the team has created a multitude of extraordinary projects, all of which are highly bespoke and tailored to each client’s specific requests.

One of Winch Design’s most recent yacht projects was the 260 ft M/Y Excellence , which shipbuilder Abeking & Rasmussen say was its “most challenging project to date”. Its owner worked closely with the design studio to create a yacht with interiors inspired by the “Floridian East Cost Deco” style and that felt both personal to him and welcoming to any guest on board. “ Excellence was a very exciting project to be involved with and [she] tested the team to their creative limits,” says senior partner, Ignacio Oliva-Vele.

[See more: L’Escale: Inside Winch Design’s First Resort Project]

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Terence disdale design.

Based in the UK, Terence Disdale Design is one of the yachting industry’s most respected design studios. The team works on both the interior and exterior design of some of the world’s most incredible yachts, with previous projects including M/Y Eclipse , one of the biggest superyachts in the world. The studio was founded by Terence Disdale, who – despite having no formal training – is one of the most sought-after designers in the industry.

Disdale set up his eponymous studio in 1972 after working for famous designer Jon Bannenberg (Bannenberg’s studio was also where Andrew Winch and Tim Heywood learned their craft). Across his extraordinary 40-year career Disdale and his studio have designed over 100 yachts, including more than 50 superyachts. His wide-ranging design style often follows the mantra of ‘beach house, not penthouse’, with concepts often finding inspiration from the ocean.

Sorgiovanni Designs

Australian yacht designer Sam Sorgiovanni’s career began after he studied Industrial Design and found his first position working for shipbuilder Oceanfast. It was thanks to the experience he gained at this renowned shipbuilder that Sorgiovanni decided to set up his own studio, launching Sorgiovanni Designs in 1997 in Fremantle, Western Australia. The studio has also recently opened an office in Monaco in order to expand its design services to Europe.

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Sorgiovanni believes it’s important to “keep one eye on the past” when designing projects, “in order to avoid making the same mistakes” as before. Previous yacht designs that he has worked on include the 390 ft Amana in collaboration with Oceanco, and the exteriors of the 270 ft Secret. When Sorgiovanni is not working on a particular project, he is also traveling the world to consult on yacht designs for clients, working with a variety of suppliers and shipbuilders.

Zaniz Studio

Next up on our list of the best yacht interior designers is Zaniz Studio. The company was founded in New York City by English-American designer Zaniz Jakubowski – who up until recently, had rarely been able to discuss her astounding portfolio of projects due to the NDAs that came with the commissions. The studio has an international reputation for creating iconic and innovative projects, which always have strong attention to detail. As well as designing for both private and commercial yachts, Zaniz Studio works across other industries, including creating theatre sets and residential and commercial interiors.

One of Zaniz Studio’s latest projects – and one it was able to share – was the 350 ft superyacht Luminosity , which went on the market last year for over $266 million. The studio was responsible for both the interior and exterior of Luminosity, which was built by Italian shipyard Benetti. What is most interesting is that the team abandoned the typical format of designing the exterior first, followed by the interior; instead, the superyacht has been designed from the inside out.

[See more: The 10 Biggest Superyachts in the World]

Nuvolari Lenard

Well known for its timeless design style, Nuvolari Lenard is one of the largest – and most active – luxury yacht design studios in the world, founded in 1992 by naval architect and mechanical engineer Carlo Nuvolari and stylist Dan Lenard. The studio is based in Italy’s island city, Venice, and draws heavy influence from the city for its classic yacht designs, combining strong architectural lines with a deep passion and understanding for the sea. One of its latest projects was the 465 ft Nord (previously called Project Opus).

Not only is Nuvolari Lenard based in Venice, but it also has a renowned Design Center on the outskirts of the city that hosts architects and designers working on a range of tasks. Inside the Design Center is a scale yacht model workshop that gives designers the opportunity to visualize their concepts and research shapes before confirming a final design. The interior design section of the studio’s Design Center also features a showroom where clients and designers can discuss fabrics and materials.

[See more: Nuvolari Lenard Reveals Latest Yacht Concept Design]

Patrick Knowles Designs

With decades of experience in the marine industry under his belt, Patrick Knowles is one of America’s top yacht designers. His studio, Patrick Knowles Designs , specializes in custom megayacht and superyacht interiors, as well as designing for private aircraft. The team at Patrick Knowles Design prides themselves on their creativity and a strong commitment to making sure projects are finished on time, while also exceeding expectations.

One of Patrick Knowles Designs’ award-winning projects was a Key West-inspired 206 ft ISA displacement superyacht. The owners requested an interior that felt like a five-star tropical resort; through a design that incorporated vibrant murals of plants and aquatic life, lush fabrics and furnishings, and the use of environmentally friendly, natural materials including bamboo, palm wood and coconut shells, Patrick Knowles delivered. The onboard showcase piece is a 30-foot-tall light fixture constructed from Murano glass that sits within the spiral staircase, joining all three levels.

Tillberg Design of Sweden

Our list of the most exclusive yacht interior designers would not be complete without mentioning Tillberg Design of Sweden. Founded in 1964 in Höganäs, the practice has been designing timeless Scandinavian-inspired interiors on board some of the world’s most luxurious vessels for over five decades.

Known for its meticulous craftsmanship, use of quality materials and expert lighting, when it comes to creating beautiful spaces you’re in safe hands with Tillberg Design of Sweden. Perhaps most impressive is the studio’s latest project designing the interiors onboard the gigantic 728-foot superyacht Somnio .

The recently released renderings reveal stunning dream-like rooms expertly blending indoor and outdoor spaces. Future owners that are lucky enough to live on the world’s first residential yacht liner will be given the opportunity to work with the prestigious design firm over three months to create their dream apartment.

Sophie Killip

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10 of the Best Yacht Designers: A Complete Overview of the Artistry and Precision on the Seas

The beauty of the sea meets art and design in yachts. For centuries, designers have been creating sophisticated boats finely crafted to sail with grace while delighting those who view them from above. Whether interested in investing in a custom-made yacht or simply admiring the latest creations on the market, these 10 yacht designers offer some of the world’s best designs available today. With years of experience and an eye for detail, they bring technical know-how alongside a touch of elegance to captivate even the most discerning maritime admirers. Offering precision craftsmanship that rivals many traditional French luxury designer brands combined with contemporary ingenuity, there is something remarkable about each designer recognized here as one of “the best” when it comes to modern yacht excellence.

What is Yacht Design and Who are the Top Yacht Designers?

Yacht design is the creative process of designing the look, style and construction of a vessel that will be used for recreational purposes. Professional yacht designers are experienced professionals who are knowledgeable in naval architecture, engineering, interior design and art. They understand the needs of their clients and work to create vessels that meet these needs as well as providing aesthetic appeal and luxurious features. The top yacht designers have an impressive array of credentials and experience in the field, giving them the expertise to create some truly unique designs. Their creations range from small day cruisers to large superyachts, often custom-made for their clients’ exact specifications. These designers use their knowledge and skill to make sure that each boat is comfortable, safe and stylish—an impressive feat considering how much variety there is in yacht designs.

Andrew Winch – A Celebrated Yacht Designer Crafting Magnificent Customs Vessels

Andrew Winch is one of the most legendary superyacht designers in the industry. For more than 30 years, his designs have helped to redefine the luxury yacht market and have set many new standards for comfort and style. His portfolio features some of the most stunning and iconic vessels on the water today, ranging from small pleasure boats to megayachts that are a hundred meters or longer. His emphasis on creating a unique atmosphere onboard, with both attention to detail and remarkable use of space, has made him one of the most sought-after designers in the business. Andrew Winch’s designs have earned him numerous awards and recognition, including being named as one of The Sunday Times’ Top 100 Designers, as well as receiving an honorary doctorate from Southampton Solent University for his outstanding contribution to yacht design.

Bill Tripp: An Award-Winning Sailing Yacht Designer

Bill Tripp is an award-winning sailing yacht designer who has designed some of the most iconic vessels in history. He is renowned for his innovative and modern designs, which have been featured in countless magazines and documentaries. Among his most famous designs are the sailboats ‘Valiant 40’, ‘Swan 50’ and ‘ Swan 48′ . Each design represents a unique combination of practicality and beauty, showcasing Bill’s passion for pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved in yacht design. His work has been honored with many awards, including the prestigious Cruising World Magazine Boat of The Year accolade for his Valiant 40 vessel in 1979.

Vitters – Sharlou, previously named sarissa designed by Bill Tripp

The yacht Sharlou , previously named Sarissa, is a spectacular sailing vessel designed by renowned yacht designer Bill Tripp. Built in 2011 by the Dutch shipyard Vitters, this superyacht boasts an impressive 87-meter length and luxurious amenities such as a cinema room and jacuzzi. The interior of the boat was designed to be light and airy with plenty of natural light and sleek furnishings. On deck, there are two large decks for entertaining along with a swimming pool and sunbathing area. Another highlight on board is the glass viewing platform located at the aft of the main deck which offers stunning views of the open ocean. Sharlou is definitely one of the most impressive boats out there and perfect for those looking for a luxurious sailing experience.

Giovanni Zuccon: One of the Ferretti’s Favorite Yacht Designers

Giovanni Zuccon is an award-winning yacht designer who has designed some of the most prestigious yachts for the Ferretti group . Zuccon has a passion for creating beautiful and innovative designs and his prolific portfolio includes his impressive 71m motor yacht, “ Vertigo ”. This superyacht has won numerous awards including “Most Innovative Yacht Design” at the Cannes Boat Show in 2018 and is widely regarded as one of the most luxurious yachts ever built. In addition to “Vertigo”, Zuccon has also designed many other stunning yachts such as “Sunrise”, “Cloud Nine” and “Eden” amongst others. All of these remarkable vessels have garnered praise from industry professionals and illustrate Giovanni Zuccon’s creative genius.

Remi Tessier: The French Excellence for Yacht Refits

Remi Tessier is an acclaimed French luxury yacht refitting specialist, who has been praised for his work in the industry for decades. He provides full-service refits and customizations, from complete vessel overhauls to specific design touches. His work includes adding new systems and technology, remodeling interiors, and customizing exterior details. He works closely with experienced craftsmen and artisans to ensure that every detail is crafted with the highest standards of excellence. With Remi Tessier’s expertise and commitment to quality, he has created some of the most exquisite yachts and vessels in the world.

Read also: YACHT INSURANCE: THE DEFINITIVE OWNER’S GUIDE

Ed Dubois: A Yacht Designer That Won’t Be Forgotten

Ed Dubois was a renowned yacht designer who was renowned for his stunning designs. He spent over 40 years designing sailing yachts, motorboats, and luxury modern vessels from his base in Lymington, England. His designs have become iconic, inspiring the creation of some of the most beautiful boats ever built. Dubois drew upon a range of influences to create vessels that were innovative yet timeless. His designs are instantly recognizable due to their distinctive hull shapes and sleek lines that combine comfort with performance. As well as creating yachts for private clients, Ed Dubois also designed several high-profile racing yachts including two successful Whitbread Round the World Race entries and several America’s Cup challengers. His passion for design has seen many of his creations become sought-after collectors items, with some achieving classic status. It is clear that Ed Dubois will not be forgotten anytime soon – he has left an indelible mark on the world of yacht design.

Philippe Briand: Another French Great Yacht Designer

Philippe Briand is one of the most influential French yacht designers in history. He has designed some of the most iconic and luxurious yachts of our time, including the Racing 80 , a sleek and fast racing yacht; the Majesty yachts, which are incredibly stylish modern vessels; and the innovative Outremer catamarans . Philippe Briand is also credited with designing some of the world’s first large luxury sailing yachts, such as Amevi and L’Etendard. His designs have been highly praised for their beautiful lines, innovative features, and performance-oriented design. As a result, Philippe Briand’s designs are highly sought after by those looking for quality craftsmanship and style in their yacht.

Terence Disdale: A Popular Designer Among the Longest Mega Yachts

Terence Disdale has established himself as one of the most well-known and respected names in the yacht design industry. With more than two decades of experience, his experience and expertise have proven invaluable to the many clients who have sought out his services. His portfolio includes some of the world’s longest and most luxurious mega yachts, including those designed for royalty, celebrities and heads of state.

Disdale’s designs combine a beautiful blend of classic styling with modern amenities. Striking lines, sophisticated details and exquisite materials are all signature elements that can be seen in each yacht he creates. He is particularly known for his unique interior designs, which often include custom furniture, unique fabrics and sumptuous materials. In addition to creating stunning interiors, Disdale also pays close attention to the exterior design of his vessels – ensuring that they are both highly functional and aesthetically pleasing.

The success of Terence Disdale can be attributed to a combination of talent, hard work and an eye for detail. He takes great care to understand his clients’ needs before beginning any project – ensuring that each vessel is tailored to their individual tastes and preferences. His team works closely with shipyards around the world – from Italy to Australia – in order to ensure that every project is completed on time and within budget. The end result is often nothing short of breathtaking – luxurious yet functional vessels that stand apart from their peers.

Read also: CAN OWNING A YACHT TO CHARTER (REALLY) BE PROFITABLE?

Espen Øino: an iconic Norwegian yacht designer based in Monaco

Espen Øino is a Norwegian yacht designer who has been making a name for himself in the luxury yachting world. His portfolio of projects includes some of the most impressive floating structures ever put to sea, ranging from superyacht concepts to custom builds for super wealthy clients. His designs are characterized by their sleek lines and advanced technology, often including hybrid power systems, state-of-the-art safety systems and innovative on-board amenities. He is also known for his use of shape and space to create an atmosphere that perfectly fits the demands of the owner. As one of Norway’s leading yacht designers, Espen Øino has become synonymous with modern design and cutting-edge engineering, which makes him a popular choice among those looking for a truly exclusive boat experience.

Jacques Pierrejean: a designer with some outstanding yachts to its name

Jacques Pierrejean is a renowned yacht designer who has created some of the most beautiful and impressive vessels ever seen. His designs have won numerous awards, including the coveted “ Best Yacht Design ” at the Monaco Boat Show in 2015. With an extensive portfolio that includes superyachts, luxury sailing yachts and commercial vessels, he is one of the top designers in his field. His designs are characterized by their sleek lines, luxurious interiors and innovative technology – all combining to create stunning works of art on water. Jacques Pierrejean’s attention to detail ensures that each vessel he creates meets its owner’s exact specifications while also providing an elegant aesthetic appeal. From classic motorboats to modern megayachts, his creations are truly remarkable examples of craftsmanship and design excellence.

Read also: IS BUYING A BOAT A BAD IDEA?

Peder Eidsgaard: a famous yacht and private aircraft designer 

Peder Eidsgaard is one of the world’s leading yacht and private aircraft designers, renowned for his signature style that blends form with function. With over two decades of experience in the industry, Peder has become a household name among luxury boat and plane owners. His portfolio includes some of the most iconic vessels ever created, from superyachts to custom-built planes – all characterized by their beautiful lines and cutting-edge technology. Whether it’s building yachts for royalty or creating bespoke interiors for private jets, Peder Eidsgaard is an icon in the field of luxury design.

Overall, it can be concluded that the top yacht designers in the world come from different countries and backgrounds. Each designer has crafted some of the finest superyachts and sailing yachts ever designed, making them true legends of the craft. Yacht designs are as diverse as their designers, but all have a common touch of excellence in their design – each one is unique and special in its own way. To get to know more about these legendary yacht designers and learn more about their remarkable designs, visit our website here where you will find interesting articles on some of the most prestigious yacht designers around the world.

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Design Unlimited is a versatile yacht design studio with an established reputation for excellence in both interior design and exterior styling.  The multi-award winning team, led by founder Mark Tucker, excels in new challenges and welcomes the opportunity to work alongside owners looking to realise their own distinctive visions.  Our diverse portfolio and creative style enables us to meet client briefs with confidence and efficiency.  Our extensive experience and practical approach can be relied upon and trusted.  Cooperation and versatility lie at the core of everything that the studio creates with the ultimate aim of total client satisfaction.

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Home   /   Editorial   /   LUXURY YACHT INTERIORS 2023

Yacht Interior Design Trends of 2023

Yacht Interior Design: A Journey into Opulent Luxury

Stepping aboard a yacht is an invitation to immerse oneself in extravagant elegance. Yacht interior designers have mastered the art of crafting extraordinary spaces that redefine lavishness. With meticulously selected furnishings and intricate detailing, every aspect is designed to radiate sophistication and grandeur.

Dissolving the Divisions Between Indoor and Outdoor Spaces

Yacht interior design trends this year focus on the seamless integration of indoor and outdoor spaces. Glass doors that slide away, retractable walls, and expansive windows dissolve the barriers between the yacht's interior and the breathtaking vistas outside. Guests can revel in the beauty of the ocean while enjoying the comforts and luxuries of the interior, creating an immersive experience that transcends traditional boundaries.

? M/Y ARTEFACT, 80m - Reymond Langton Design design

Eco-consciousness

Preserving the Environment through Considered Design

The importance of sustainability is at the forefront of yacht interior design. Designers are integrating earth-friendly materials and sustainable practices to create environmentally conscious spaces. The use of responsibly sourced hardwoods, recycled materials, and organic fabrics like linen and hemp reflect a commitment to environmental preservation. The addition of living green walls and indoor plants not only adds a touch of nature but also enhances onboard wellbeing.

Modern Minimalism

A Harmonious Blend of Simplicity and Functionality

Modern minimalism has found its place in yacht interiors, beautifully blending simplicity and practicality. Clean lines, clutter-free spaces, and a neutral colour palette cultivate an atmosphere of tranquillity. Smart storage solutions and advanced technology ensure a serene environment, focusing attention on the captivating ocean views and the play of natural light within the yacht's interior.

? M/Y BAD MUTHA, 27m - Wally Why 200

Innovative Tech

Elevating the Onboard Experience

Advancements in technology continue to shape yacht interiors, enhancing both the comfort and entertainment experiences on board. From smart lighting systems and automated controls to immersive audio-visual setups, yacht owners can now enjoy a seamless blend of luxury and cutting-edge technology. Integration of touch-screen interfaces, voice-controlled systems, and IoT connectivity allows passengers to control various aspects of the yacht's environment with ease.

The world of yacht interior design is constantly evolving, reflecting the changing preferences and aspirations of yacht enthusiasts. This year's trends celebrate the seamless integration of indoor and outdoor spaces, the use of sustainable materials, contemporary minimalism, personalised artistic statements, and state-of-the-art technology. As yacht designers push boundaries and unleash their creativity, the interiors of these floating sanctuaries continue to redefine luxury, providing an unmatched experience on the high seas.

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Superyacht Interiors: The Top Luxury Designs

Everyone knows that a yacht or superyacht is nothing without a luxury interior. Indeed, there’s now a whole range of interior designers who either specialize in or regularly create yacht interiors. So, how do you find the best projects? Here at Insplosion, we want to help. That’s why we’ve gathered a list of our top luxury superyacht interiors !

Yacht fans may also like: Sabrina Monte-Carlo: Famous Interior Designers of Monaco

Brigadoon | studio indigo.

Including the Brigadoon in this list is pretty mandatory. After all, this luxury yacht by Studio Indigo is an actual winner of the World Superyacht Awards 2019! Thus, this project is all about the grand but understated mid-century luxury decor. The flowers, the wood, and navy-colored details combine to make this into a pretty classic luxury boat interior. Indeed, it’s the beautiful and neutral harmony that truly takes this project to the next level.

Besides, it’s quite a practical design. As you can see, the bedrooms and closets are amazingly organized. It’s all about luxury, yes, but also about comfort and practicality. The high seas are no place for clutter, which can cause accidents in bad weather.

But, in contrast with the brown color palette, you have this lovely deck area. With its slightly japandi style influences, this is the perfect place to relax in at the end of a long day.

Aurora Borealis | Winch Design

The Aurora Borealis does justice to its namesake. Indeed, it is as white and bright of an interior as the aurora itself. However, there are all sorts of little decor elements which are reminiscent of the sea. Just notice the shell-shaped ashtray and sea-horse patterns on some of the pillows! Finally, the mid-century lighting really adds a nice touch to the ambiance.

But there’s much more to admire. How do you like the lovely art deco bar? The lines themselves almost remind you of corals and shells. And the airy, light decor is just as present in the dining and living areas. While just as luxurious, this interior is much different from the Brigadoon’s.

Finally, we’ll leave you with this gorgeous view of the yacht’s deck at night. Once again, the seatings and patterns are chosen to be evocative of the ocean. It’s as gorgeous of a yacht design as you could ask for.

Superyacht Forever | St. Corona Interiors

If you’re looking for something equally light, but much more sober, look no further than Superyacht Forever . This creation by St. Corona Interiors also follows a white color scheme, but the decor elements aren’t quite as feminine. There’s not as much art deco influence here. The lines are much cleaner and simpler, almost minimalist compared to the glamour of the previous project.

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The bar and living room area follow more or less the same route. Indeed, they favor light color schemes and clean, shapely lines. It’s all about practical luxury, functional without being quite minimalist.

Finally, we have the bedroom. While not opulent in the slightest, this room has the same sort of stylish beauty as the rest of the interior. Once again: you don’t want clutter on the high seas!

Logica | Martin Kemp Design

At last, we reach the Logica .  This project for a luxury yacht by Marin Kemp Design is everything our interior decor dreams are made of. Like the Aurora, it takes a much more art deco approach to superyacht interiors. The little metal details are just what we like to call luxury hardware!

The bedroom and living space designs follow very similar color schemes and strategies. Since you can’t have any clutter, it’s all about denoting luxury through the tiniest details.

Finally, you have the bathroom project, which is as light and gorgeous as the rest of the design. It’s a luxury bathroom through and through.

So, which of these superyacht interiors did you prefer?

Editor’s choice:.

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Monaco Yacht Show: 7 Yacht Interiors That Will Steal the Show

By Nicole Trilivas

Running from September 28 through October 1, the Monaco Yacht Show is the highlight of the global boat show circuit. This year’s edition promises to deliver plenty of buzzy debuts, headline-making yacht news, and high-design highlights. There are several new additions to this year’s event in Port Hercules including a sustainability hub and a gadget- and gizmo-filled adventure area , packed with new water toys and flashy supercars —it is Monaco , after all.

For denizens of design, the Yacht Design & Innovation Hub is returning for a second year, with presentations, galleries, and exhibits by yacht architects and designers. But, of course, the big boats steal the show. With yacht interiors that range from the classically nautical to the budget-blowing bonkers, these are the superyachts to have on your radar at this year’s Monaco Yacht Show.

An oversized chandelier defines the space in the informal dining room aboard Ahpo . 

Lürssen, Ahpo

All eyes will be on the whopping 377-feet Ahpo , by Lürssen, when it debuts this year at the Monaco Yacht Show as the largest yacht in the port. Venice-based exterior and interior designer Nuvolari Lenard added plenty of personality and luxury to the vessel with oversized crystal light features, a hammam made of mosaics in the massive wellness area, and a grand staircase at the center of the yacht, crafted to resemble an olive tree.

Blue accents channel the traditional nautical aesthetic. 

Feadship, Rock.It

The 198-foot Rock.It is not short on style: Gleaming wood panels with creamy white leather inlays feature throughout; glowing white onyx contrasts with rich black Portoro marble; and the well-dressed owner’s cabin rivals the top suite of an old-world European hotel with a warm wood study and bathroom with a claw-footed tub. The refined design can be attributed to the Netherlands with Dutch shipyard Feadship behind the build and Dutch design studio Sinot Yacht Architecture & Design taking on the interiors.

Modern and laid-back, Come Together is effortlessly cool. 

Amels, Come Together

Built in the Netherlands by Amels with interiors by London-based Winch Design, the 197-foot Come Together has soft and laid-back beach-y vibes with a dose of Southern California cool. Elements like bleached oaks, woven linen fabrics, cabinetry with natural coconut shell, and hair-on-hide leathers all unite to bring the natural world aboard this chic ship.

Crisp and clean, the interiors of Be Cool are to-the-point in a refreshing way. 

Swan 98, Be Cool  

There’s a fleet of around a dozen large sailing yachts on display at this year’s yacht show in the dedicated Sailing Yacht Area. One of the most notable new launches of the bunch is Swan 98 Be Cool  by Finnish shipyard Nautor’s Swan. The clean and crisp interior hull design by Genovese architect Misa Poggi embraces graceful nautical style and Scandinavian practicality with navy linen and cotton fabrics, dark oak, and handsome tobacco-hued leather.

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Kokomo ’s interiors will speak to the minimalist. 

Sunreef, Kokomo

Packed with cutting-edge green tech and ultralight solar panels, Sunreef’s newest catamaran  Eco 80 will be making waves at this year’s show. However, it’s the interiors of the 80-foot Kokomo (done in-house by Sunreef) that will impress the design lovers. Outfitted in cool and calm shades of white with rattan finishes and eucalyptus veneers, Kokomo is both on-trend and a complete classic.

The glass-bottom pool is a highlight of the yacht. 

Abeking & Rasmussen, B2

One of the largest vessels currently on the market, the 281-foot B2 by German yard Abeking & Rasmussen, will be showing off an ultra-chic over-$4-million interior refit just completed in July at this year’s show. Sprawling out over five decks, Winch Design has curated a serene floating sanctuary of indoor-outdoor living, the highlight of which is the main deck’s glass-bottom pool, stationed above the light-filled beach club lounge with fold-down balconies that extend the living space right to the water’s edge.

With dark wood, tubular steel accents, and black furnishings, the interiors of State of Grace could be described as a nautical take on the Bauhaus aesthetic. 

Perini Navi, State of Grace

State of Grace by Italy’s Perini Navi is a gorgeous high-performance sailing sloop. It’s picture-perfect with polished teak decks, an ocean-blue hull, and billowing white sails. Inside is a study in midcentury-modern elegance with a split-level saloon and a spacious and full-beam owner’s suite with a hammam shower.

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Luxury Superyacht Interior Design Ideas

Home decoration doesn’t have to be restrained to dry land abodes. For those who count a luxury boat as a second home, or have their sights set on being able to say so someday, superyacht interior inspiration becomes a hot topic. There are design principles that remain relevant whatever the shape, size and style of the property, such as harnessing natural light, but beyond that, superyacht interior design requires its own, shipshape decorating agenda.

Incorporating the structural elements

Boat interior design typically faces a few physical barriers that affect the aesthetic. Often, some of the necessary structural facets of the build are exposed, such as steel supporting girders in the centre of a room, or technical obligations like marked security exits and emergency lighting that need to be visible, but will detract from the room’s style.

The key is to turn these challenges into opportunities. In the case of the supporting columns, they can be transformed into elegant pillars with additional, dummy columns added to make a statement with strong symmetry.

Channelling natural light

Just as with houses on the shore, a luxury yacht interior is always going to be benefit from natural light pouring in. Many contemporary yachts are purposefully being designed to echo what you see in contemporary buildings – ceiling to floor sheets of glass. Or as close to that as they can.

Not only does this direct a greater degree of natural light into the yacht’s living spaces, but it challenges the traditional window design you’d see at sea, making them appear less stereotypically nautical.

Maximise the amount of light by using high-gloss, polished surfaces that will reflect the sun’s rays as well as oversized mirrors if the wall space allows. If the yacht’s windows are more traditional in their dimensions, avoid heavy window treatments like fully-lined, voluminous curtains that, even when pulled back, will block some of the natural light from entering.

Working with oddly shaped rooms

Many vessels have a matrix of unusually shaped rooms that can make living quarters feel cramped. One way to work around this to use glass instead so that there’s still the required support in place, but the walls become transparent, opening up the environment.

This takes a lot of planning with the shipyard and means creating a channel that holds the glass within the boat’s structure – it should be installed even before the flooring so that the wall flows smoothly through the floor. But if this degree of build isn’t passable or if you’re only concerned with decoration rather than the boat’s architecture, remember to stick to just a few colours and materials in your boat’s scheme.

By having walls, ceiling and designer furniture all in the same colour, they fuse together and make unusually shaped rooms appear less cumbersome. In the Martin Kemp Design interior, you see a focus on white and the same tone of wood used from room to room, which result in any awkward angles being smoothed out.

Make the most of the minimal square footage

Even on the grandest of super yachts (have a read of our Q&A with superyacht firm Bannenberg and Rowell for seriously grand boat design talk), space is always the biggest constraint. Practicality doesn’t have to overrule good looks, but the two do need to balance to achieve a harmonious interior. Nothing is more frustrating than when there’s not enough room to store belongings, so by ensuring there’s a considerable amount of clever, integrated storage, the less there is to line the corridors and litter any surfaces.

Other key design tips to not over-occupy minimal square footage include ensuring any electrical wiring and speakers for technology like music or entertainment systems is concealed in the boat’s walls with a flush finish if possible. With lighting , concentrate less on floor lamps and more on wall lights , ceiling lights and pendant lights . Look closer at the Martin Kemp Design yacht bedroom and you’ll notice there are bedside wall lights and shelves rather than lamps and tables, as well as lots of LED strip lighting that take up no room.

Build in seamless storage

Attention to detail is always pivotal in interior design, because the smallest of touches can have a huge effect. In terms of a boat’s design, a strong example is making sure any storage is handleless.

Push-to-open mechanisms or cutout handles really do make a room feel far sleeker. The handle-free option combined with integrated storage that’s flush to the wall allows for significant fluidity. This doesn’t mean to say that every piece of storage has to be fitted. But try to bring in any freestanding items of storage in line with the architecture of the room. Follow any places where the walls come out and let them be your guide.

Looking back at the Martin Kemp Design bedroom, the chest of drawers doesn’t protrude past the wall on the left-hand side of the room, and in the twin bedroom, the bedside tables are at the same level as the bed frame which creates a seamless line.

Working with low ceilings

Superyacht design almost always should seek to combat the notorious low ceiling environment. Boat ceilings can be as low as seven feet, so employ design trickery techniques that can give the illusion that they’re on the taller side.

Reflective materials used well will add lift and can even create a feeling of infinity when they’re used in a detail-oriented way. For example, in the Martin Kemp Design bedroom pictured, where there’s a combination of gloss paintwork and reflective panels laid in a chevron formation which draws the eye up and along.

Equally, dark colours used overhead with a reflective finish adds depth to the ceiling that’s hard to calculate – there’s no telling where it ends, and so the ceiling height feels lifted, like it might go on and on and on.

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Sybaris: How Perini Navi brought a yachting dream to life

Art-loving, sailing-obsessed yacht owner Bill Duker has poured his life’s passions into Sybaris . Marilyn Mower tours this ground-breaking and life-changing 70 metre ketch

“When my son, West, was about seven years old, I bought a Palmer Johnson sailing yacht named Shanakee . We would go sailing and imagine what our perfect yacht would be like. With friends who helped us refine the dream over 20 years, the boat became our daily conversation. So more than the creating of a high performance yacht, more than the creation of a work of art, it’s been the thing that’s bonded me and my son.”

These words are from Bill Duker’s address to the guests assembled in Viareggio to celebrate the completion of Sybaris , Duker’s Perini Navi ketch, which, at 70 metres, is the largest sailing yacht launched in Italy to date. It is not a coincidence that the yacht’s name is the same as that ancient Italian city-state known for wealth and a lifestyle of extreme luxury and pleasure seeking. “I have three passions — art, poetry and sailing. This boat combines all three,” he says.

Take a closer look at the 70 metre sailing superyacht Sybaris . Photos: Giuliano Sargentini

Duker is a softly spoken, amiable man who likes projects and enticing people to be creative and thorough. Witness his push for R&D at Perini Navi. As Burak Akgül, managing director of sales, marketing and design, says: “We began talking to the client in 2010 at about the time we had committed to move from the 56 metre to the 60 metre model. We developed this fully custom all aluminium hull interpretation of the 60 especially for him. It has serious performance capability, compared with other recent launches. On a scale of Seahawk to P2 , it’s more like P2 .”

So determined was he to wring every bit of performance out of Perini, Duker brought naval architect Philippe Briand into the mix to evaluate and fine tune the builder’s design work. “The design of the yacht existed, the GA existed and the initial naval architectural plans had been drawn,” says Briand. “The specifications, the main dimensions, the displacement, the centres of gravity and the height of the masts, as well as draught, [had been] defined and approved by the owner. For the final stages, we worked on the hull lines, the appendages and the sailplan. It is a bigger intellectual challenge to [re]design the existing [hull] for tomorrow as opposed to start from scratch.”

In 2012, Briand’s office conducted CFD tests of the hull lines and made 37 changes, including modifying the waterline length and wetted surface and redrawing the bow and stern shapes. The swing keel and single rudder were optimised, as was the vessel’s stability versus overall weight.

Calling the owner a forward-thinking man with very modern tastes, Perini design chief Franco Romani said the brief for Sybaris challenged his team “to create a new interpretation of their design language. The near vertical bow combined with the low profile superstructure has resulted in a new look for Perini.”

Perhaps the biggest change was moving the mizzen mast back 3.3 metres to improve airflow over the mizzen sail for more driving force and to create space for a mizzen staysail. This sail, flown in apparent winds of 50 to 100 degrees, adds 0.6 knots of speed. “It wasn’t our intention to design a racing yacht,” says Briand, “but we can guarantee Sybaris is a cruising yacht with the potential of sailing excitement.”

In its turn, Perini upped the performance of its electric furling drums and captive sheeting winches, delivering speeds beyond those of its previous benchmark, Seahawk . The powerful sailplan on Sybaris uses North Sails’ 3Di technology and relies on two carbon fibre masts stretching 71.59 metres and 60.96 metres above the water, supplied by Rondal, with Carbolink composite stays and Kevlar running rigging. Controlled by Perini’s latest generation electric winches and software, the system allows the yacht to be sailed entirely from the cockpit consoles.

Sybaris is also breaking new ground for the builder in terms of power management. Two variable speed generators supply electrical power via a DC bus to the vessel’s main electrical grid with the potential to store excess power in a 137kWh lithium polymer battery pack that provides two to three hours of silent operation capability, according to Akgül.

Repositioning the mizzen mast also improves the flow of the main and flybridge deck layouts as it shifts the bottom of the mizzen spar away from the aft glass doors of the main saloon, allowing a large, round dining table to take pride of place under the flybridge overhang. The table is milled from titanium, its base looking like a geared drum and its top scribing a rose petal pattern matched in the overhead — a nod to Duker’s estate, Rosehill, near Albany, New York.

In fact, nearly all the exposed metal on Sybaris is bead-blasted titanium or a smoky bronze. “We chose titanium for the way it looks against the natural American ash millwork, and because the owner wanted something fresh and different,” says Peter Hawrylewicz of PH Design . Although this Miami-based architect and designer is new to yacht design, Sybaris is his 12th project for Duker. Yet she didn’t start out as his project.

“We knew he was interviewing designers and, because it was a yacht, we didn’t consider that he would consider us. One night he took my partner and me to dinner and asked what we thought about taking on the Sybaris project. It was a big surprise. The interior company, Genesis Yachtline , had already been given the contract for the joinery and built-ins,” Hawrylewicz recalls. “Knowing how long Bill had been thinking of this boat was daunting.”

The brief was fairly simple: a neutral path. “Even though we didn’t know all the works of art yet, we knew the interior of Sybaris would be lavished with art from the owner’s contemporary collection and this set the theme,” said the architect. “That also ramped up the pressure on developing the lighting plan. We began developing that plan from the first sketches,” Hawrylewicz says, “selecting the amount and type of lighting we wanted first.”

Aside from major statement fixtures such as chandeliers and sconces, which were designed by Lindsey Adelman, Hawrylewicz developed the fixtures such as the wall washers and down lights that fit in architectural recesses next to each door. By directing light away from the intersection of surfaces butting against walls or ceilings, for example, and by leaving tiny gaps instead, he’s created a sensation of even more space, as if there is something behind the gap that you can’t see.

“The team at Perini was an amazing mentor to us,” says Ken Lieber of PH Design. Interestingly, it was Genesis Yachtline’s first Perini project as well. All furniture and surfaces were built offsite and finished before being taken to the yacht for assembly.

Sybaris updates strong features of the Perini Navi design DNA both inside and out. On deck, for example, the recessed cockpit aft of the saloon is still an engaging outdoor living/dining space, but the sweep of terraced steps to it flows beautifully and emphasises the luxury of space that the extra 10 metres delivers. All the furniture, including the bronze end tables with slab marble tops, are from the team at PH Design.

The saloon is open plan, with no structural supports blocking the views. This is no mean feat since there is the load of an 18 metre superyacht sundeck above and the torque of the mainsheet to defuse. The forward bulkhead divides the guest areas from the superyacht wheelhouse , butler’s pantry and the crew stairs to the galley and their quarters.

There are no built-in cabinets in the saloon on Sybaris . Instead four groupings of bureaus, looking like steampunk versions of Louis Vuitton steamer trunks covered in alligator hide, are attached to the walls by titanium straps. The drawers hold glassware and crockery. For handrails around the room, teak batons within titanium turnbuckles add a vintage nautical theme. A dining table is anchored by an ambitious Adelman chandelier and a Ron English Guernica-esque painting commissioned by Duker. Wool and silk carpets by SHIIR of Chicago appear as mirror images in their soft grey and bronze pattern.

The overheads throughout Sybaris are soft matt titanium. Because the cambered overheads on the main deck are 2.1 metres high at window level, the darker material does not cramp the room. It softly reflects and diffuses light and adds a certain liveliness.

“Titanium was entirely Bill’s idea,” says Hawrylewicz. “He said ‘I want to do metal ceilings’ and I thought he meant a thin sheet of painted material, but no, he meant real titanium sheets.” These are rendered in large squares with nearly seamless joints. Titanium, for all its fireproofness and anti-corrosion capability, proved to be a tough material for the yard.

Welded joints tend to leave keloid scars and in the end there was only one subcontractor who could finish the work, from deck rails to the tiny piercings of the overheads for speakers, to both the builder’s and owner’s satisfaction. “If you can dream it, Perini will find a way to build it,” says Duker. “To me, that challenge is why you build a boat.”

Perini Navi aficionados will recall that a superyacht staircase amidships on centreline is the typical access from the saloon to the accommodation for owner and guests. There have been versions with landings, versions with multiple access points and even a spiral. Sybaris delivers a straight fore and aft run of steps but, like the IM Pei pyramid at the Louvre, the staircase is also the way that light — and in this case an epic amount of it — is ushered below to the accommodation lobby, from where all the cabins are entered through very hip titanium-clad submarine doors, with the logo of the bull of Sybaris in the centre of the opening mechanism.

Enormous sheets of laminated tempered glass form the “walls” of the stair column. Hawrylewicz had originally drawn them as a single piece, but no sources yet exist for tempering such large panels of glass. Each of the staircase walls weighs 600 kilograms and they are elastically anchored to the decks above and below. Massive floating oak steps, suspended from the glass with titanium pins, usher guests below.

There are six cabins on the lower deck of Sybaris , including a master suite that takes advantage of the yacht’s full 13 metre beam to create a space to spoil the owner in surroundings of American ash. A superyacht office is situated to starboard with the king-sized bed offset to port. Lindsey Adelman bronze and porcelain sconces above the bed flank an art feature of layers of wood relief that looks a bit topographical. The element was a deliberate contrast to the machined look of many of the pieces in the room and the titanium overhead.

Four pieces of contemporary art dominate the owner’s cabin, which Duker refers to as the poetic centre of Sybaris . Colourful pieces by Roberto Matta, Bäast and Rafa Macarrón contrast with the simple décor while Invisible Domain by Mars-1 opposite his desk seems particularly appropriate.

The bed surround showcases another of the design features in the boat, the mortise and tenon style joinery details that are left exposed. It continues in the full-beam his and hers bathrooms, with their simple palette of ash, stone and titanium. “The simpler the palette, the larger the space,” shares Hawrylewicz. “My goal at the end of the day was to create a yacht that is comfortable, beautiful and perhaps even memorable.”

Or, as the owner wrote in a poem he dashed off on his iPhone thanking his designer:

The ability to conceive the idea To place it in the spot exactly where To light it as if it were in a dream And make it all so simple seem

First published in the June 2017 edition of Boat International

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Best of the Best: Q & A With PH Design Founder Peter Hawrylewicz

The designer discusses the work he did on the perini navi sybaris., michael verdon, michael verdon's most recent stories.

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The founder of PH Design talks with Robb Report contributor Michael Verdon about the interior of ‘Sybaris,’ his first yacht project.

How did Bill Duker, the owner of ‘Sybaris,’ find you? Bill has been a client for 25 years. He first hired me to design his home on Miami Beach when I was working on Gianni Versace’s home. We have developed a great relationship since then.

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This was your first yacht project? Yes, and I did not want to blow it, partly because of my friendship with Bill. Also, there are only so many yacht commissions in the world, so it is a scarce pearl to squander. Bill told me that if I can think it, they will build it. In other words, he was granting me the artistic freedom to exceed my expectations and to meet his.

What was the initial concept? He wanted a state-of-the-art yacht with an interior to show his modern-art collection to its greatest advantage. I wanted the interior to be modern, warm, and personal, depleted of clutter and embellishments, yet rich in detail. Bill inspires people naturally. I wanted his boat to do the same.

How did you choose titanium as a base material? We used it throughout the boat, in the ceilings, furniture, hardware, and railings. I like the titanium ceilings. They provide a muted reflective surface for the interior volumes that I find compelling. Almost all of the furniture on board was designed by me for ‘Sybaris.’ Many pieces have components cast in bronze or titanium. There are challenges with titanium. The material is strong and resilient but can be difficult to work with.

Were you happy with the results? Whether the titanium was welded, cut, cast, or folded, Genesis Yachtline and Perini Navi supervised the work excellently. They were successful at every turn.

Your favorite feature? The large cockpit table on the aft deck. It is made of concentric titanium rings and is mimicked in a tempered reflection in the titanium ceiling above. The design is based on an unfurling rose, a meaningful emblem for the Duker family.

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By SuperyachtNews 18 May 2016

The Pursuit of Pleasure

As perini navi’s largest sailing yacht since the maltese falcon, the presentation of 70m sybaris was a significant event for the italian boat builder.….

As Perini Navi’s largest sailing yacht since The Maltese Falcon , the presentation earlier this month of 70m Sybaris at the Picchiotti yard in La Spezia was a significant event for the Italian boat builder. A collaboration between Perini Navi's in-house team and the French naval architect Philippe Briand, Sybaris represents an innovative evolution in the company’s drive for design and engineering excellence at a difficult time for the super sailing yacht market.

From the left, Milena Perini, Bill Duker, Fabio Perini, Burak Akgul, Fabio Boschi  

The presentation coincided with the appointment of Luca Boldrini (formerly with the Ferretti Group) as sales director of Picchiotti. In January, a meeting of the Group’s shareholders under the chairmanship of Fabio Boschi announced a share capital increase of 15 million euros, and in February naval architect Stèphane Leveel (formerly with Tripp Design) was welcomed to the Perini Navi design team.

Sybaris features a Sealium alloy hull with a variable-draught centreboard keel for enhanced sailing performance and access into shallow bays or marinas. The exterior profile is noticeably sleeker than previous models with a less pronounced sheerline and a more vertical bow. The restyled superstructure is topped with an expansive flying bridge of 18m in length — reportedly the largest of any sailing yacht afloat.

  Sybaris

The powerful sail plan of more than 5,800sqm relies on two carbon fibre masts supplied by Rondal with composite stays and Kevlar running rigging. Equipped with the latest sail handling technology controlled by Perini’s new electric captive winches and software, the system means the yacht can be sailed entirely from the cockpit consoles. 

Arguably the most decisive technical step forward is the power management system. Comprising two variable-speed generators supplying electrical power via a DC bus to the vessel’s main electrical grid with the potential to store excess power in lithium polymer batteries, the set-up improves efficiency, reduces emissions and provides a silent anchor mode at night or in protected areas with the generators switched off.

“ Sybaris raised numerous technical and aesthetic challenges,” says Burak Akgul, managing director of sales, marketing and design at Perini Navi. “But where there’s a will there’s a way, and the result is a uniquely beautiful sailing yacht that pushes the boundaries of design in every conceivable way.”

At 850gt and named after the ancient Greek settlement in southern Italy whose population was renowned for its pursuit of life’s pleasures, Sybaris provided Miami-based PH Design with an ample template for the interior styling. Working on his first yacht project, studio founder Peter Hawrylewicz has created the serenely sophisticated interior the owner desired. Exquisite materials and details abound. Instead of built-in credenzas, for example, the 151-sqm main salon features sculpted pillars milled from solid titanium to support ‘floating’ Louis Vuitton-style travel trunks clad with alligator skin.

Peter Hawrylewicz (image by Justin Ratcliffe)  

“The effect is modern with a remote reminiscence of Old World travel,” says the designer. “The allure lies in the confluence of these two temperaments.”  

Following her presentation, Sybaris will go through intensive sea trails prior to delivery, scheduled for this summer and keenly anticipated by her owner. 

  Bill Duker (image by Justin Ratcliffe)

“This is obviously an exciting time for us,” said American owner Bill Duker in La Spezia. “ Sybaris is a project that started a very long time ago when my son and I would sit in the aft cockpit of the boat we then had, Shanakee , and talk about the boat of our dreams. Over the past 20 years that dream has matured a great deal, and what it became was a dream about collaboration and synergy to create a masterpiece of beauty and performance.”  

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Step aboard 230-foot sailing superyacht Sybaris, owned by William Duker

The same owner as the newly listed $65M Apogee penthouse

The reason William Duker just listed his Apogee penthouse (for $65 million) in Miami Beach is to travel around the world on his marvelous sailing superyacht.

Meet the 230-foot Sybaris, which is currently docked near the Miami Beach Marina off Terminal Isle. Launched in May, it is one of the largest sailing yachts on earth, and came to life after Duker beat cancer, per Boat International .

He set out to build a statement vessel.

“The boat kept growing in order to bring the lines down and make it look as sleek as it does. We thought it’d be a 56 metre, but then I started thinking that it had to be special, it had to be different. And there are already 10 or 11 or so 56 metres; I didn’t want hull number 12. I wanted something people could see from half a mile away and say, ‘Hey, there’s Sybaris ’,” Duker says.

Check out Duker’s favorite features.

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A Year in Focus: Sybaris Takes the World by Storm

By Ben Roberts

In May, Perini Navi launched the 70-metre sailing yacht Sybaris . We continue our look in to 2016 by capturing the rise of Sybaris, one man’s search for the perfect sailing experience that took the year by storm and marked a new era for the Italian master-craftsmen.

After being invited to step on board shortly after her launch in May, Superyachts.com witnessed an early glance into a project which represented a 20-year dream in the making for owner Bill Duker.

From the days of sitting with his son on the aft of their first boat and drawing their dream vessel to the celebrations surrounding its launch, Sybaris is much more than just Italy’s largest sailing yacht.

The most advanced large-scale Perini Navi project since the creation of The Maltese Falcon – which was launched at the builder’s Turkish facilities – and with well-documented performance ability, Sybaris is a marriage of art and technology.

“We wanted to build a boat that combined great art in the interior, put it in a setting that the interior of the boat itself was a piece of art, and then set that interior within a superyacht that was also a masterpiece. Not only a masterpiece of beauty, but a masterpiece of performance.”  Explains Sybaris Owner Bill Duker during the launch ceremony in May.

Superyachts.com caught up with Perini Navi and Sybaris at the Monaco Yacht Show to get a closer look at the stunning interiors by PH Design on camera (above).

Taking numerous awards over 2016 - including ‘Best Interior’ at the Monaco Yacht Show Gala - this is a yacht with an acclaim worthy of the 20-year journey it took from paper to port.

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A glimpse of the S/Y Sybaris – the 70m sailing yacht with the Best Interior this year

Inside S/Y Sybaris – the 70m sailing yacht with the Best Interior this year.

Perini Navi 70m S/Y Sybaris won “Best Interior Award” at 2016 Monaco Yacht Show. From 28 September to 1 October 2016, the 26th Monaco Yacht Show celebrated the best that Superyachts have on offer with 34,000 participants from around the world.

Delivered to her owner, American Bill Duker, earlier this month Sybaris sailing yacht is the latest addition to Perini Navi’s fleet of 61 superyachts . Designed and built by Perini Navi, with input from Philippe Briand on the hull lines and sail plan, the 70m ketch is the largest sailing yacht ever built in Italy (877 GT) and second in the Perini Navi fleet to the iconic Maltese Falcon (88m).

Combining Perini Navi’s continuous research into new technical solutions, the original design was thoroughly revisited and has resulted in an extraordinary yacht, one which captures the advanced engineering and styling that define a Perini Navi. The 70m S/Y Sybaris was presented with the ‘Best Interior’ award for her stunning interiors masterminded by PH Design of Miami.

The brand new sailing yacht built by the Italian shipyard was awarded for the design and bespoke work made on her interior areas made by the yacht designers Peter Hawrylewicz and Ken Lieber. The award was given on stage to her owner Bill Duker.

“A Perini is not only a yacht, it is a style of life and Sybaris proves this,” commented Fabio Boschi, President of Perini Navi on the occasion of the press presentation onboard Sybaris.

Perini Navi also showcased the 38m S/Y Dahlak. Both Sybaris and Dahlak feature Perini Navi’s latest generation sail handling and stored power systems.

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The Haves and the Have-Yachts

By Evan Osnos

In the Victorian era, it was said that the length of a man’s boat, in feet, should match his age, in years. The Victorians would have had some questions at the fortieth annual Palm Beach International Boat Show, which convened this March on Florida’s Gold Coast. A typical offering: a two-hundred-and-three-foot superyacht named Sea Owl, selling secondhand for ninety million dollars. The owner, Robert Mercer, the hedge-fund tycoon and Republican donor, was throwing in furniture and accessories, including several auxiliary boats, a Steinway piano, a variety of frescoes, and a security system that requires fingerprint recognition. Nevertheless, Mercer’s package was a modest one; the largest superyachts are more than five hundred feet, on a scale with naval destroyers, and cost six or seven times what he was asking.

For the small, tight-lipped community around the world’s biggest yachts, the Palm Beach show has the promising air of spring training. On the cusp of the summer season, it affords brokers and builders and owners (or attendants from their family offices) a chance to huddle over the latest merchandise and to gather intelligence: Who’s getting in? Who’s getting out? And, most pressingly, who’s ogling a bigger boat?

On the docks, brokers parse the crowd according to a taxonomy of potential. Guests asking for tours face a gantlet of greeters, trained to distinguish “superrich clients” from “ineligible visitors,” in the words of Emma Spence, a former greeter at the Palm Beach show. Spence looked for promising clues (the right shoes, jewelry, pets) as well as for red flags (cameras, ornate business cards, clothes with pop-culture references). For greeters from elsewhere, Palm Beach is a challenging assignment. Unlike in Europe, where money can still produce some visible tells—Hunter Wellies, a Barbour jacket—the habits of wealth in Florida offer little that’s reliable. One colleague resorted to binoculars, to spot a passerby with a hundred-thousand-dollar watch. According to Spence, people judged to have insufficient buying power are quietly marked for “dissuasion.”

For the uninitiated, a pleasure boat the length of a football field can be bewildering. Andy Cohen, the talk-show host, recalled his first visit to a superyacht owned by the media mogul Barry Diller: “I was like the Beverly Hillbillies.” The boats have grown so vast that some owners place unique works of art outside the elevator on each deck, so that lost guests don’t barge into the wrong stateroom.

At the Palm Beach show, I lingered in front of a gracious vessel called Namasté, until I was dissuaded by a wooden placard: “Private yacht, no boarding, no paparazzi.” In a nearby berth was a two-hundred-and-eighty-foot superyacht called Bold, which was styled like a warship, with its own helicopter hangar, three Sea-Doos, two sailboats, and a color scheme of gunmetal gray. The rugged look is a trend; “explorer” vessels, equipped to handle remote journeys, are the sport-utility vehicles of yachting.

If you hail from the realm of ineligible visitors, you may not be aware that we are living through the “greatest boom in the yacht business that’s ever existed,” as Bob Denison—whose firm, Denison Yachting, is one of the world’s largest brokers—told me. “Every broker, every builder, up and down the docks, is having some of the best years they’ve ever experienced.” In 2021, the industry sold a record eight hundred and eighty-seven superyachts worldwide, nearly twice the previous year’s total. With more than a thousand new superyachts on order, shipyards are so backed up that clients unaccustomed to being told no have been shunted to waiting lists.

One reason for the increased demand for yachts is the pandemic. Some buyers invoke social distancing; others, an existential awakening. John Staluppi, of Palm Beach Gardens, who made a fortune from car dealerships, is looking to upgrade from his current, sixty-million-dollar yacht. “When you’re forty or fifty years old, you say, ‘I’ve got plenty of time,’ ” he told me. But, at seventy-five, he is ready to throw in an extra fifteen million if it will spare him three years of waiting. “Is your life worth five million dollars a year? I think so,” he said. A deeper reason for the demand is the widening imbalance of wealth. Since 1990, the United States’ supply of billionaires has increased from sixty-six to more than seven hundred, even as the median hourly wage has risen only twenty per cent. In that time, the number of truly giant yachts—those longer than two hundred and fifty feet—has climbed from less than ten to more than a hundred and seventy. Raphael Sauleau, the C.E.O. of Fraser Yachts, told me bluntly, “ COVID and wealth—a perfect storm for us.”

And yet the marina in Palm Beach was thrumming with anxiety. Ever since the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, launched his assault on Ukraine, the superyacht world has come under scrutiny. At a port in Spain, a Ukrainian engineer named Taras Ostapchuk, working aboard a ship that he said was owned by a Russian arms dealer, threw open the sea valves and tried to sink it to the bottom of the harbor. Under arrest, he told a judge, “I would do it again.” Then he returned to Ukraine and joined the military. Western allies, in the hope of pressuring Putin to withdraw, have sought to cut off Russian oligarchs from businesses and luxuries abroad. “We are coming for your ill-begotten gains,” President Joe Biden declared, in his State of the Union address.

Nobody can say precisely how many of Putin’s associates own superyachts—known to professionals as “white boats”—because the white-boat world is notoriously opaque. Owners tend to hide behind shell companies, registered in obscure tax havens, attended by private bankers and lawyers. But, with unusual alacrity, authorities have used subpoenas and police powers to freeze boats suspected of having links to the Russian élite. In Spain, the government detained a hundred-and-fifty-million-dollar yacht associated with Sergei Chemezov, the head of the conglomerate Rostec, whose bond with Putin reaches back to their time as K.G.B. officers in East Germany. (As in many cases, the boat is not registered to Chemezov; the official owner is a shell company connected to his stepdaughter, a teacher whose salary is likely about twenty-two hundred dollars a month.) In Germany, authorities impounded the world’s most voluminous yacht, Dilbar, for its ties to the mining-and-telecom tycoon Alisher Usmanov. And in Italy police have grabbed a veritable armada, including a boat owned by one of Russia’s richest men, Alexei Mordashov, and a colossus suspected of belonging to Putin himself, the four-hundred-and-fifty-nine-foot Scheherazade.

In Palm Beach, the yachting community worried that the same scrutiny might be applied to them. “Say your superyacht is in Asia, and there’s some big conflict where China invades Taiwan,” Denison told me. “China could spin it as ‘Look at these American oligarchs!’ ” He wondered if the seizures of superyachts marked a growing political animus toward the very rich. “Whenever things are economically or politically disruptive,” he said, “it’s hard to justify taking an insane amount of money and just putting it into something that costs a lot to maintain, depreciates, and is only used for having a good time.”

Nobody pretends that a superyacht is a productive place to stash your wealth. In a column this spring headlined “ A SUPERYACHT IS A TERRIBLE ASSET ,” the Financial Times observed, “Owning a superyacht is like owning a stack of 10 Van Goghs, only you are holding them over your head as you tread water, trying to keep them dry.”

Not so long ago, status transactions among the élite were denominated in Old Masters and in the sculptures of the Italian Renaissance. Joseph Duveen, the dominant art dealer of the early twentieth century, kept the oligarchs of his day—Andrew Mellon, Jules Bache, J. P. Morgan—jockeying over Donatellos and Van Dycks. “When you pay high for the priceless,” he liked to say, “you’re getting it cheap.”

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In the nineteen-fifties, the height of aspirational style was fine French furniture—F.F.F., as it became known in certain precincts of Fifth Avenue and Palm Beach. Before long, more and more money was going airborne. Hugh Hefner, a pioneer in the private-jet era, decked out a plane he called Big Bunny, where he entertained Elvis Presley, Raquel Welch, and James Caan. The oil baron Armand Hammer circled the globe on his Boeing 727, paying bribes and recording evidence on microphones hidden in his cufflinks. But, once it seemed that every plutocrat had a plane, the thrill was gone.

In any case, an airplane is just transportation. A big ship is a floating manse, with a hierarchy written right into the nomenclature. If it has a crew working aboard, it’s a yacht. If it’s more than ninety-eight feet, it’s a superyacht. After that, definitions are debated, but people generally agree that anything more than two hundred and thirty feet is a megayacht, and more than two hundred and ninety-five is a gigayacht. The world contains about fifty-four hundred superyachts, and about a hundred gigayachts.

For the moment, a gigayacht is the most expensive item that our species has figured out how to own. In 2019, the hedge-fund billionaire Ken Griffin bought a quadruplex on Central Park South for two hundred and forty million dollars, the highest price ever paid for a home in America. In May, an unknown buyer spent about a hundred and ninety-five million on an Andy Warhol silk-screen portrait of Marilyn Monroe. In luxury-yacht terms, those are ordinary numbers. “There are a lot of boats in build well over two hundred and fifty million dollars,” Jamie Edmiston, a broker in Monaco and London, told me. His buyers are getting younger and more inclined to spend long stretches at sea. “High-speed Internet, telephony, modern communications have made working easier,” he said. “Plus, people made a lot more money earlier in life.”

A Silicon Valley C.E.O. told me that one appeal of boats is that they can “absorb the most excess capital.” He explained, “Rationally, it would seem to make sense for people to spend half a billion dollars on their house and then fifty million on the boat that they’re on for two weeks a year, right? But it’s gone the other way. People don’t want to live in a hundred-thousand-square-foot house. Optically, it’s weird. But a half-billion-dollar boat, actually, is quite nice.” Staluppi, of Palm Beach Gardens, is content to spend three or four times as much on his yachts as on his homes. Part of the appeal is flexibility. “If you’re on your boat and you don’t like your neighbor, you tell the captain, ‘Let’s go to a different place,’ ” he said. On land, escaping a bad neighbor requires more work: “You got to try and buy him out or make it uncomfortable or something.” The preference for sea-based investment has altered the proportions of taste. Until recently, the Silicon Valley C.E.O. said, “a fifty-metre boat was considered a good-sized boat. Now that would be a little bit embarrassing.” In the past twenty years, the length of the average luxury yacht has grown by a third, to a hundred and sixty feet.

Thorstein Veblen, the economist who published “The Theory of the Leisure Class,” in 1899, argued that the power of “conspicuous consumption” sprang not from artful finery but from sheer needlessness. “In order to be reputable,” he wrote, “it must be wasteful.” In the yachting world, stories circulate about exotic deliveries by helicopter or seaplane: Dom Pérignon, bagels from Zabar’s, sex workers, a rare melon from the island of Hokkaido. The industry excels at selling you things that you didn’t know you needed. When you flip through the yachting press, it’s easy to wonder how you’ve gone this long without a personal submarine, or a cryosauna that “blasts you with cold” down to minus one hundred and ten degrees Celsius, or the full menagerie of “exclusive leathers,” such as eel and stingray.

But these shrines to excess capital exist in a conditional state of visibility: they are meant to be unmistakable to a slender stratum of society—and all but unseen by everyone else. Even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the yachting community was straining to manage its reputation as a gusher of carbon emissions (one well-stocked diesel yacht is estimated to produce as much greenhouse gas as fifteen hundred passenger cars), not to mention the fact that the world of white boats is overwhelmingly white. In a candid aside to a French documentarian, the American yachtsman Bill Duker said, “If the rest of the world learns what it’s like to live on a yacht like this, they’re gonna bring back the guillotine.” The Dutch press recently reported that Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, was building a sailing yacht so tall that the city of Rotterdam might temporarily dismantle a bridge that had survived the Nazis in order to let the boat pass to the open sea. Rotterdammers were not pleased. On Facebook, a local man urged people to “take a box of rotten eggs with you and let’s throw them en masse at Jeff’s superyacht when it sails through.” At least thirteen thousand people expressed interest. Amid the uproar, a deputy mayor announced that the dismantling plan had been abandoned “for the time being.” (Bezos modelled his yacht partly on one owned by his friend Barry Diller, who has hosted him many times. The appreciation eventually extended to personnel, and Bezos hired one of Diller’s captains.)

As social media has heightened the scrutiny of extraordinary wealth, some of the very people who created those platforms have sought less observable places to spend it. But they occasionally indulge in some coded provocation. In 2006, when the venture capitalist Tom Perkins unveiled his boat in Istanbul, most passersby saw it adorned in colorful flags, but people who could read semaphore were able to make out a message: “Rarely does one have the privilege to witness vulgar ostentation displayed on such a scale.” As a longtime owner told me, “If you don’t have some guilt about it, you’re a rat.”

Alex Finley, a former C.I.A. officer who has seen yachts proliferate near her home in Barcelona, has weighed the superyacht era and its discontents in writings and on Twitter, using the hashtag #YachtWatch. “To me, the yachts are not just yachts,” she told me. “In Russia’s case, these are the embodiment of oligarchs helping a dictator destabilize our democracy while utilizing our democracy to their benefit.” But, Finley added, it’s a mistake to think the toxic symbolism applies only to Russia. “The yachts tell a whole story about a Faustian capitalism—this idea that we’re ready to sell democracy for short-term profit,” she said. “They’re registered offshore. They use every loophole that we’ve put in place for illicit money and tax havens. So they play a role in this battle, writ large, between autocracy and democracy.”

After a morning on the docks at the Palm Beach show, I headed to a more secluded marina nearby, which had been set aside for what an attendant called “the really big hardware.” It felt less like a trade show than like a boutique resort, with a swimming pool and a terrace restaurant. Kevin Merrigan, a relaxed Californian with horn-rimmed glasses and a high forehead pinked by the sun, was waiting for me at the stern of Unbridled, a superyacht with a brilliant blue hull that gave it the feel of a personal cruise ship. He invited me to the bridge deck, where a giant screen showed silent video of dolphins at play.

Merrigan is the chairman of the brokerage Northrop & Johnson, which has ridden the tide of growing boats and wealth since 1949. Lounging on a sofa mounded with throw pillows, he projected a nearly postcoital level of contentment. He had recently sold the boat we were on, accepted an offer for a behemoth beside us, and begun negotiating the sale of yet another. “This client owns three big yachts,” he said. “It’s a hobby for him. We’re at a hundred and ninety-one feet now, and last night he said, ‘You know, what do you think about getting a two hundred and fifty?’ ” Merrigan laughed. “And I was, like, ‘Can’t you just have dinner?’ ”

Among yacht owners, there are some unwritten rules of stratification: a Dutch-built boat will hold its value better than an Italian; a custom design will likely get more respect than a “series yacht”; and, if you want to disparage another man’s boat, say that it looks like a wedding cake. But, in the end, nothing says as much about a yacht, or its owner, as the delicate matter of L.O.A.—length over all.

The imperative is not usually length for length’s sake (though the longtime owner told me that at times there is an aspect of “phallic sizing”). “L.O.A.” is a byword for grandeur. In most cases, pleasure yachts are permitted to carry no more than twelve passengers, a rule set by the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, which was conceived after the sinking of the Titanic. But those limits do not apply to crew. “So, you might have anything between twelve and fifty crew looking after those twelve guests,” Edmiston, the broker, said. “It’s a level of service you cannot really contemplate until you’ve been fortunate enough to experience it.”

As yachts have grown more capacious, and the limits on passengers have not, more and more space on board has been devoted to staff and to novelties. The latest fashions include IMAX theatres, hospital equipment that tests for dozens of pathogens, and ski rooms where guests can suit up for a helicopter trip to a mountaintop. The longtime owner, who had returned the previous day from his yacht, told me, “No one today—except for assholes and ridiculous people—lives on land in what you would call a deep and broad luxe life. Yes, people have nice houses and all of that, but it’s unlikely that the ratio of staff to them is what it is on a boat.” After a moment, he added, “Boats are the last place that I think you can get away with it.”

Even among the truly rich, there is a gap between the haves and the have-yachts. One boating guest told me about a conversation with a famous friend who keeps one of the world’s largest yachts. “He said, ‘The boat is the last vestige of what real wealth can do.’ What he meant is, You have a chef, and I have a chef. You have a driver, and I have a driver. You can fly privately, and I fly privately. So, the one place where I can make clear to the world that I am in a different fucking category than you is the boat.”

After Merrigan and I took a tour of Unbridled, he led me out to a waiting tender, staffed by a crew member with an earpiece on a coil. The tender, Merrigan said, would ferry me back to the busy main dock of the Palm Beach show. We bounced across the waves under a pristine sky, and pulled into the marina, where my fellow-gawkers were still trying to talk their way past the greeters. As I walked back into the scrum, Namasté was still there, but it looked smaller than I remembered.

For owners and their guests, a white boat provides a discreet marketplace for the exchange of trust, patronage, and validation. To diagram the precise workings of that trade—the customs and anxieties, strategies and slights—I talked to Brendan O’Shannassy, a veteran captain who is a curator of white-boat lore. Raised in Western Australia, O’Shannassy joined the Navy as a young man, and eventually found his way to skippering some of the world’s biggest yachts. He has worked for Paul Allen, the late co-founder of Microsoft, along with a few other billionaires he declines to name. Now in his early fifties, with patient green eyes and tufts of curly brown hair, O’Shannassy has had a vantage from which to monitor the social traffic. “It’s all gracious, and everyone’s kiss-kiss,” he said. “But there’s a lot going on in the background.”

O’Shannassy once worked for an owner who limited the number of newspapers on board, so that he could watch his guests wait and squirm. “It was a mind game amongst the billionaires. There were six couples, and three newspapers,” he said, adding, “They were ranking themselves constantly.” On some boats, O’Shannassy has found himself playing host in the awkward minutes after guests arrive. “A lot of them are savants, but some are very un-socially aware,” he said. “They need someone to be social and charming for them.” Once everyone settles in, O’Shannassy has learned, there is often a subtle shift, when a mogul or a politician or a pop star starts to loosen up in ways that are rarely possible on land. “Your security is relaxed—they’re not on your hip,” he said. “You’re not worried about paparazzi. So you’ve got all this extra space, both mental and physical.”

O’Shannassy has come to see big boats as a space where powerful “solar systems” converge and combine. “It is implicit in every interaction that their sharing of information will benefit both parties; it is an obsession with billionaires to do favours for each other. A referral, an introduction, an insight—it all matters,” he wrote in “Superyacht Captain,” a new memoir. A guest told O’Shannassy that, after a lavish display of hospitality, he finally understood the business case for buying a boat. “One deal secured on board will pay it all back many times over,” the guest said, “and it is pretty hard to say no after your kids have been hosted so well for a week.”

Take the case of David Geffen, the former music and film executive. He is long retired, but he hosts friends (and potential friends) on the four-hundred-and-fifty-four-foot Rising Sun, which has a double-height cinema, a spa and salon, and a staff of fifty-seven. In 2017, shortly after Barack and Michelle Obama departed the White House, they were photographed on Geffen’s boat in French Polynesia, accompanied by Bruce Springsteen, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks, and Rita Wilson. For Geffen, the boat keeps him connected to the upper echelons of power. There are wealthier Americans, but not many of them have a boat so delectable that it can induce both a Democratic President and the workingman’s crooner to risk the aroma of hypocrisy.

The binding effect pays dividends for guests, too. Once people reach a certain level of fame, they tend to conclude that its greatest advantage is access. Spend a week at sea together, lingering over meals, observing one another floundering on a paddleboard, and you have something of value for years to come. Call to ask for an investment, an introduction, an internship for a wayward nephew, and you’ll at least get the call returned. It’s a mutually reinforcing circle of validation: she’s here, I’m here, we’re here.

But, if you want to get invited back, you are wise to remember your part of the bargain. If you work with movie stars, bring fresh gossip. If you’re on Wall Street, bring an insight or two. Don’t make the transaction obvious, but don’t forget why you’re there. “When I see the guest list,” O’Shannassy wrote, “I am aware, even if not all names are familiar, that all have been chosen for a purpose.”

For O’Shannassy, there is something comforting about the status anxieties of people who have everything. He recalled a visit to the Italian island of Sardinia, where his employer asked him for a tour of the boats nearby. Riding together on a tender, they passed one colossus after another, some twice the size of the owner’s superyacht. Eventually, the man cut the excursion short. “Take me back to my yacht, please,” he said. They motored in silence for a while. “There was a time when my yacht was the most beautiful in the bay,” he said at last. “How do I keep up with this new money?”

The summer season in the Mediterranean cranks up in May, when the really big hardware heads east from Florida and the Caribbean to escape the coming hurricanes, and reconvenes along the coasts of France, Italy, and Spain. At the center is the Principality of Monaco, the sun-washed tax haven that calls itself the “world’s capital of advanced yachting.” In Monaco, which is among the richest countries on earth, superyachts bob in the marina like bath toys.

The nearest hotel room at a price that would not get me fired was an Airbnb over the border with France. But an acquaintance put me on the phone with the Yacht Club de Monaco, a members-only establishment created by the late monarch His Serene Highness Prince Rainier III, whom the Web site describes as “a true visionary in every respect.” The club occasionally rents rooms—“cabins,” as they’re called—to visitors in town on yacht-related matters. Claudia Batthyany, the elegant director of special projects, showed me to my cabin and later explained that the club does not aspire to be a hotel. “We are an association ,” she said. “Otherwise, it becomes”—she gave a gentle wince—“not that exclusive.”

Inside my cabin, I quickly came to understand that I would never be fully satisfied anywhere else again. The space was silent and aromatically upscale, bathed in soft sunlight that swept through a wall of glass overlooking the water. If I was getting a sudden rush of the onboard experience, that was no accident. The clubhouse was designed by the British architect Lord Norman Foster to evoke the opulent indulgence of ocean liners of the interwar years, like the Queen Mary. I found a handwritten welcome note, on embossed club stationery, set alongside an orchid and an assemblage of chocolate truffles: “The whole team remains at your entire disposal to make your stay a wonderful experience. Yours sincerely, Service Members.” I saluted the nameless Service Members, toiling for the comfort of their guests. Looking out at the water, I thought, intrusively, of a line from Santiago, Hemingway’s old man of the sea. “Do not think about sin,” he told himself. “It is much too late for that and there are people who are paid to do it.”

I had been assured that the Service Members would cheerfully bring dinner, as they might on board, but I was eager to see more of my surroundings. I consulted the club’s summer dress code. It called for white trousers and a blue blazer, and it discouraged improvisation: “No pocket handkerchief is to be worn above the top breast-pocket bearing the Club’s coat of arms.” The handkerchief rule seemed navigable, but I did not possess white trousers, so I skirted the lobby and took refuge in the bar. At a table behind me, a man with flushed cheeks and a British accent had a head start. “You’re a shitty negotiator,” he told another man, with a laugh. “Maybe sales is not your game.” A few seats away, an American woman was explaining to a foreign friend how to talk with conservatives: “If they say, ‘The earth is flat,’ you say, ‘Well, I’ve sailed around it, so I’m not so sure about that.’ ”

In the morning, I had an appointment for coffee with Gaëlle Tallarida, the managing director of the Monaco Yacht Show, which the Daily Mail has called the “most shamelessly ostentatious display of yachts in the world.” Tallarida was not born to that milieu; she grew up on the French side of the border, swimming at public beaches with a view of boats sailing from the marina. But she had a knack for highly organized spectacle. While getting a business degree, she worked on a student theatre festival and found it thrilling. Afterward, she got a job in corporate events, and in 1998 she was hired at the yacht show as a trainee.

With this year’s show five months off, Tallarida was already getting calls about what she described as “the most complex part of my work”: deciding which owners get the most desirable spots in the marina. “As you can imagine, they’ve got very big egos,” she said. “On top of that, I’m a woman. They are sometimes arriving and saying”—she pointed into the distance, pantomiming a decree—“ ‘O.K., I want that!  ’ ”

Just about everyone wants his superyacht to be viewed from the side, so that its full splendor is visible. Most harbors, however, have a limited number of berths with a side view; in Monaco, there are only twelve, with prime spots arrayed along a concrete dike across from the club. “We reserve the dike for the biggest yachts,” Tallarida said. But try telling that to a man who blew his fortune on a small superyacht.

Whenever possible, Tallarida presents her verdicts as a matter of safety: the layout must insure that “in case of an emergency, any boat can go out.” If owners insist on preferential placement, she encourages a yachting version of the Golden Rule: “What if, next year, I do that to you? Against you?”

Does that work? I asked. She shrugged. “They say, ‘Eh.’ ” Some would gladly risk being a victim next year in order to be a victor now. In the most awful moment of her career, she said, a man who was unhappy with his berth berated her face to face. “I was in the office, feeling like a little girl, with my daddy shouting at me. I said, ‘O.K., O.K., I’m going to give you the spot.’ ”

Securing just the right place, it must be said, carries value. Back at the yacht club, I was on my terrace, enjoying the latest delivery by the Service Members—an airy French omelette and a glass of preternaturally fresh orange juice. I thought guiltily of my wife, at home with our kids, who had sent a text overnight alerting me to a maintenance issue that she described as “a toilet debacle.”

Then I was distracted by the sight of a man on a yacht in the marina below. He was staring up at me. I went back to my brunch, but, when I looked again, there he was—a middle-aged man, on a mid-tier yacht, juiceless, on a greige banquette, staring up at my perfect terrace. A surprising sensation started in my chest and moved outward like a warm glow: the unmistakable pang of superiority.

That afternoon, I made my way to the bar, to meet the yacht club’s general secretary, Bernard d’Alessandri, for a history lesson. The general secretary was up to code: white trousers, blue blazer, club crest over the heart. He has silver hair, black eyebrows, and a tan that evokes high-end leather. “I was a sailing teacher before this,” he said, and gestured toward the marina. “It was not like this. It was a village.”

Before there were yacht clubs, there were jachten , from the Dutch word for “hunt.” In the seventeenth century, wealthy residents of Amsterdam created fast-moving boats to meet incoming cargo ships before they hit port, in order to check out the merchandise. Soon, the Dutch owners were racing one another, and yachting spread across Europe. After a visit to Holland in 1697, Peter the Great returned to Russia with a zeal for pleasure craft, and he later opened Nevsky Flot, one of the world’s first yacht clubs, in St. Petersburg.

For a while, many of the biggest yachts were symbols of state power. In 1863, the viceroy of Egypt, Isma’il Pasha, ordered up a steel leviathan called El Mahrousa, which was the world’s longest yacht for a remarkable hundred and nineteen years, until the title was claimed by King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. In the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt received guests aboard the U.S.S. Potomac, which had a false smokestack containing a hidden elevator, so that the President could move by wheelchair between decks.

But yachts were finding new patrons outside politics. In 1954, the Greek shipping baron Aristotle Onassis bought a Canadian Navy frigate and spent four million dollars turning it into Christina O, which served as his home for months on end—and, at various times, as a home to his companions Maria Callas, Greta Garbo, and Jacqueline Kennedy. Christina O had its flourishes—a Renoir in the master suite, a swimming pool with a mosaic bottom that rose to become a dance floor—but none were more distinctive than the appointments in the bar, which included whales’ teeth carved into pornographic scenes from the Odyssey and stools upholstered in whale foreskins.

For Onassis, the extraordinary investments in Christina O were part of an epic tit for tat with his archrival, Stavros Niarchos, a fellow shipping tycoon, which was so entrenched that it continued even after Onassis’s death, in 1975. Six years later, Niarchos launched a yacht fifty-five feet longer than Christina O: Atlantis II, which featured a swimming pool on a gyroscope so that the water would not slosh in heavy seas. Atlantis II, now moored in Monaco, sat before the general secretary and me as we talked.

Over the years, d’Alessandri had watched waves of new buyers arrive from one industry after another. “First, it was the oil. After, it was the telecommunications. Now, they are making money with crypto,” he said. “And, each time, it’s another size of the boat, another design.” What began as symbols of state power had come to represent more diffuse aristocracies—the fortunes built on carbon, capital, and data that migrated across borders. As early as 1908, the English writer G. K. Chesterton wondered what the big boats foretold of a nation’s fabric. “The poor man really has a stake in the country,” he wrote. “The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht.”

Each iteration of fortune left its imprint on the industry. Sheikhs, who tend to cruise in the world’s hottest places, wanted baroque indoor spaces and were uninterested in sundecks. Silicon Valley favored acres of beige, more Sonoma than Saudi. And buyers from Eastern Europe became so abundant that shipyards perfected the onboard banya , a traditional Russian sauna stocked with birch and eucalyptus. The collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1991, had minted a generation of new billionaires, whose approach to money inspired a popular Russian joke: One oligarch brags to another, “Look at this new tie. It cost me two hundred bucks!” To which the other replies, “You moron. You could’ve bought the same one for a thousand!”

In 1998, around the time that the Russian economy imploded, the young tycoon Roman Abramovich reportedly bought a secondhand yacht called Sussurro—Italian for “whisper”—which had been so carefully engineered for speed that each individual screw was weighed before installation. Soon, Russians were competing to own the costliest ships. “If the most expensive yacht in the world was small, they would still want it,” Maria Pevchikh, a Russian investigator who helps lead the Anti-Corruption Foundation, told me.

In 2008, a thirty-six-year-old industrialist named Andrey Melnichenko spent some three hundred million dollars on Motor Yacht A, a radical experiment conceived by the French designer Philippe Starck, with a dagger-shaped hull and a bulbous tower topped by a master bedroom set on a turntable that pivots to capture the best view. The shape was ridiculed as “a giant finger pointing at you” and “one of the most hideous vessels ever to sail,” but it marked a new prominence for Russian money at sea. Today, post-Soviet élites are thought to own a fifth of the world’s gigayachts.

Even Putin has signalled his appreciation, being photographed on yachts in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. In an explosive report in 2012, Boris Nemtsov, a former Deputy Prime Minister, accused Putin of amassing a storehouse of outrageous luxuries, including four yachts, twenty homes, and dozens of private aircraft. Less than three years later, Nemtsov was fatally shot while crossing a bridge near the Kremlin. The Russian government, which officially reports that Putin collects a salary of about a hundred and forty thousand dollars and possesses a modest apartment in Moscow, denied any involvement.

Many of the largest, most flamboyant gigayachts are designed in Monaco, at a sleek waterfront studio occupied by the naval architect Espen Øino. At sixty, Øino has a boyish mop and the mild countenance of a country parson. He grew up in a small town in Norway, the heir to a humble maritime tradition. “My forefathers built wooden rowing boats for four generations,” he told me. In the late eighties, he was designing sailboats when his firm won a commission to design a megayacht for Emilio Azcárraga, the autocratic Mexican who built Televisa into the world’s largest Spanish-language broadcaster. Azcárraga was nicknamed El Tigre, for his streak of white hair and his comfort with confrontation; he kept a chair in his office that was unusually high off the ground, so that visitors’ feet dangled like children’s.

In early meetings, Øino recalled, Azcárraga grew frustrated that the ideas were not dazzling enough. “You must understand,” he said. “I don’t go to port very often with my boats, but, when I do, I want my presence to be felt.”

The final design was suitably arresting; after the boat was completed, Øino had no shortage of commissions. In 1998, he was approached by Paul Allen, of Microsoft, to build a yacht that opened the way for the Goliaths that followed. The result, called Octopus, was so large that it contained a submarine marina in its belly, as well as a helicopter hangar that could be converted into an outdoor performance space. Mick Jagger and Bono played on occasion. I asked Øino why owners obsessed with secrecy seem determined to build the world’s most conspicuous machines. He compared it to a luxury car with tinted windows. “People can’t see you, but you’re still in that expensive, impressive thing,” he said. “We all need to feel that we’re important in one way or another.”

In recent months, Øino has seen some of his creations detained by governments in the sanctions campaign. When we spoke, he condemned the news coverage. “Yacht equals Russian equals evil equals money,” he said disdainfully. “It’s a bit tragic, because the yachts have become synonymous with the bad guys in a James Bond movie.”

What about Scheherazade, the giant yacht that U.S. officials have alleged is held by a Russian businessman for Putin’s use? Øino, who designed the ship, rejected the idea. “We have designed two yachts for heads of state, and I can tell you that they’re completely different, in terms of the layout and everything, from Scheherazade.” He meant that the details said plutocrat, not autocrat.

For the time being, Scheherazade and other Øino creations under detention across Europe have entered a strange legal purgatory. As lawyers for the owners battle to keep the ships from being permanently confiscated, local governments are duty-bound to maintain them until a resolution is reached. In a comment recorded by a hot mike in June, Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national-security adviser, marvelled that “people are basically being paid to maintain Russian superyachts on behalf of the United States government.” (It usually costs about ten per cent of a yacht’s construction price to keep it afloat each year. In May, officials in Fiji complained that a detained yacht was costing them more than a hundred and seventy-one thousand dollars a day.)

Stranger still are the Russian yachts on the lam. Among them is Melnichenko’s much maligned Motor Yacht A. On March 9th, Melnichenko was sanctioned by the European Union, and although he denied having close ties to Russia’s leadership, Italy seized one of his yachts—a six-hundred-million-dollar sailboat. But Motor Yacht A slipped away before anyone could grab it. Then the boat turned off the transponder required by international maritime rules, so that its location could no longer be tracked. The last ping was somewhere near the Maldives, before it went dark on the high seas.

The very largest yachts come from Dutch and German shipyards, which have experience in naval vessels, known as “gray boats.” But the majority of superyachts are built in Italy, partly because owners prefer to visit the Mediterranean during construction. (A British designer advises those who are weighing their choices to take the geography seriously, “unless you like schnitzel.”)

In the past twenty-two years, nobody has built more superyachts than the Vitellis, an Italian family whose patriarch, Paolo Vitelli, got his start in the seventies, manufacturing smaller boats near a lake in the mountains. By 1985, their company, Azimut, had grown large enough to buy the Benetti shipyards, which had been building enormous yachts since the nineteenth century. Today, the combined company builds its largest boats near the sea, but the family still works in the hill town of Avigliana, where a medieval monastery towers above a valley. When I visited in April, Giovanna Vitelli, the vice-president and the founder’s daughter, led me through the experience of customizing a yacht.

“We’re using more and more virtual reality,” she said, and a staffer fitted me with a headset. When the screen blinked on, I was inside a 3-D mockup of a yacht that is not yet on the market. I wandered around my suite for a while, checking out swivel chairs, a modish sideboard, blond wood panelling on the walls. It was convincing enough that I collided with a real-life desk.

After we finished with the headset, it was time to pick the décor. The industry encourages an introspective evaluation: What do you want your yacht to say about you? I was handed a vibrant selection of wood, marble, leather, and carpet. The choices felt suddenly grave. Was I cut out for the chiselled look of Cream Vesuvio, or should I accept that I’m a gray Cardoso Stone? For carpets, I liked the idea of Chablis Corn White—Paris and the prairie, together at last. But, for extra seating, was it worth splurging for the V.I.P. Vanity Pouf?

Some designs revolve around a single piece of art. The most expensive painting ever sold, Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi,” reportedly was hung on the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman’s four-hundred-and-thirty-nine-foot yacht Serene, after the Louvre rejected a Saudi demand that it hang next to the “Mona Lisa.” Art conservators blanched at the risks that excess humidity and fluctuating temperatures could pose to a five-hundred-year-old painting. Often, collectors who want to display masterpieces at sea commission replicas.

If you’ve just put half a billion dollars into a boat, you may have qualms about the truism that material things bring less happiness than experiences do. But this, too, can be finessed. Andrew Grant Super, a co-founder of the “experiential yachting” firm Berkeley Rand, told me that he served a uniquely overstimulated clientele: “We call them the bored billionaires.” He outlined a few of his experience products. “We can plot half of the Pacific Ocean with coördinates, to map out the Battle of Midway,” he said. “We re-create the full-blown battles of the giant ships from America and Japan. The kids have haptic guns and haptic vests. We put the smell of cordite and cannon fire on board, pumping around them.” For those who aren’t soothed by the scent of cordite, Super offered an alternative. “We fly 3-D-printed, architectural freestanding restaurants into the middle of the Maldives, on a sand shelf that can only last another eight hours before it disappears.”

For some, the thrill lies in the engineering. Staluppi, born in Brooklyn, was an auto mechanic who had no experience with the sea until his boss asked him to soup up a boat. “I took the six-cylinder engines out and put V-8 engines in,” he recalled. Once he started commissioning boats of his own, he built scale models to conduct tests in water tanks. “I knew I could never have the biggest boat in the world, so I says, ‘You know what? I want to build the fastest yacht in the world.’ The Aga Khan had the fastest yacht, and we just blew right by him.”

In Italy, after decking out my notional yacht, I headed south along the coast, to Tuscan shipyards that have evolved with each turn in the country’s history. Close to the Carrara quarries, which yielded the marble that Michelangelo turned into David, ships were constructed in the nineteenth century, to transport giant blocks of stone. Down the coast, the yards in Livorno made warships under the Fascists, until they were bombed by the Allies. Later, they began making and refitting luxury yachts. Inside the front gate of a Benetti shipyard in Livorno, a set of models depicted the firm’s famous modern creations. Most notable was the megayacht Nabila, built in 1980 for the high-living arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, with a hundred rooms and a disco that was the site of legendary decadence. (Khashoggi’s budget for prostitution was so extravagant that a French prosecutor later estimated he paid at least half a million dollars to a single madam in a single year.)

In 1987, shortly before Khashoggi was indicted for mail fraud and obstruction of justice (he was eventually acquitted), the yacht was sold to the real-estate developer Donald Trump, who renamed it Trump Princess. Trump was never comfortable on a boat—“Couldn’t get off fast enough,” he once said—but he liked to impress people with his yacht’s splendor. In 1991, while three billion dollars in debt, Trump ceded the vessel to creditors. Later in life, though, he discovered enthusiastic support among what he called “our beautiful boaters,” and he came to see quality watercraft as a mark of virtue—a way of beating the so-called élite. “We got better houses, apartments, we got nicer boats, we’re smarter than they are,” he told a crowd in Fargo, North Dakota. “Let’s call ourselves, from now on, the super-élite.”

In the age of oversharing, yachts are a final sanctum of secrecy, even for some of the world’s most inveterate talkers. Oprah, after returning from her sojourn with the Obamas, rebuffed questions from reporters. “What happens on the boat stays on the boat,” she said. “We talked, and everybody else did a lot of paddleboarding.”

I interviewed six American superyacht owners at length, and almost all insisted on anonymity or held forth with stupefying blandness. “Great family time,” one said. Another confessed, “It’s really hard to talk about it without being ridiculed.” None needed to be reminded of David Geffen’s misadventure during the early weeks of the pandemic, when he Instagrammed a photo of his yacht in the Grenadines and posted that he was “avoiding the virus” and “hoping everybody is staying safe.” It drew thousands of responses, many marked #EatTheRich, others summoning a range of nautical menaces: “At least the pirates have his location now.”

The yachts extend a tradition of seclusion as the ultimate luxury. The Medici, in sixteenth-century Florence, built elevated passageways, or corridoi , high over the city to escape what a scholar called the “clash of classes, the randomness, the smells and confusions” of pedestrian life below. More recently, owners of prized town houses in London have headed in the other direction, building three-story basements so vast that their construction can require mining engineers—a trend that researchers in the United Kingdom named “luxified troglodytism.”

Water conveys a particular autonomy, whether it’s ringing the foot of a castle or separating a private island from the mainland. Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist, gave startup funding to the Seasteading Institute, a nonprofit group co-founded by Milton Friedman’s grandson, which seeks to create floating mini-states—an endeavor that Thiel considered part of his libertarian project to “escape from politics in all its forms.” Until that fantasy is realized, a white boat can provide a start. A recent feature in Boat International , a glossy trade magazine, noted that the new hundred-and-twenty-five-million-dollar megayacht Victorious has four generators and “six months’ autonomy” at sea. The builder, Vural Ak, explained, “In case of emergency, god forbid, you can live in open water without going to shore and keep your food stored, make your water from the sea.”

Much of the time, superyachts dwell beyond the reach of ordinary law enforcement. They cruise in international waters, and, when they dock, local cops tend to give them a wide berth; the boats often have private security, and their owners may well be friends with the Prime Minister. According to leaked documents known as the Paradise Papers, handlers proposed that the Saudi crown prince take delivery of a four-hundred-and-twenty-million-dollar yacht in “international waters in the western Mediterranean,” where the sale could avoid taxes.

Builders and designers rarely advertise beyond the trade press, and they scrupulously avoid leaks. At Lürssen, a German shipbuilding firm, projects are described internally strictly by reference number and code name. “We are not in the business for the glory,” Peter Lürssen, the C.E.O., told a reporter. The closest thing to an encyclopedia of yacht ownership is a site called SuperYachtFan, run by a longtime researcher who identifies himself only as Peter, with a disclaimer that he relies partly on “rumors” but makes efforts to confirm them. In an e-mail, he told me that he studies shell companies, navigation routes, paparazzi photos, and local media in various languages to maintain a database with more than thirteen hundred supposed owners. Some ask him to remove their names, but he thinks that members of that economic echelon should regard the attention as a “fact of life.”

To work in the industry, staff must adhere to the culture of secrecy, often enforced by N.D.A.s. On one yacht, O’Shannassy, the captain, learned to communicate in code with the helicopter pilot who regularly flew the owner from Switzerland to the Mediterranean. Before takeoff, the pilot would call with a cryptic report on whether the party included the presence of a Pomeranian. If any guest happened to overhear, their cover story was that a customs declaration required details about pets. In fact, the lapdog was a constant companion of the owner’s wife; if the Pomeranian was in the helicopter, so was she. “If no dog was in the helicopter,” O’Shannassy recalled, the owner was bringing “somebody else.” It was the captain’s duty to rebroadcast the news across the yacht’s internal radio: “Helicopter launched, no dog, I repeat no dog today”—the signal for the crew to ready the main cabin for the mistress, instead of the wife. They swapped out dresses, family photos, bathroom supplies, favored drinks in the fridge. On one occasion, the code got garbled, and the helicopter landed with an unanticipated Pomeranian. Afterward, the owner summoned O’Shannassy and said, “Brendan, I hope you never have such a situation, but if you do I recommend making sure the correct dresses are hanging when your wife comes into your room.”

In the hierarchy on board a yacht, the most delicate duties tend to trickle down to the least powerful. Yacht crew—yachties, as they’re known—trade manual labor and obedience for cash and adventure. On a well-staffed boat, the “interior team” operates at a forensic level of detail: they’ll use Q-tips to polish the rim of your toilet, tweezers to lift your fried-chicken crumbs from the teak, a toothbrush to clean the treads of your staircase.

Many are English-speaking twentysomethings, who find work by doing the “dock walk,” passing out résumés at marinas. The deals can be alluring: thirty-five hundred dollars a month for deckhands; fifty thousand dollars in tips for a decent summer in the Med. For captains, the size of the boat matters—they tend to earn about a thousand dollars per foot per year.

Yachties are an attractive lot, a community of the toned and chipper, which does not happen by chance; their résumés circulate with head shots. Before Andy Cohen was a talk-show host, he was the head of production and development at Bravo, where he green-lighted a reality show about a yacht crew: “It’s a total pressure cooker, and they’re actually living together while they’re working. Oh, and by the way, half of them are having sex with each other. What’s not going to be a hit about that?” The result, the gleefully seamy “Below Deck,” has been among the network’s top-rated shows for nearly a decade.

To stay in the business, captains and crew must absorb varying degrees of petty tyranny. An owner once gave O’Shannassy “a verbal beating” for failing to negotiate a lower price on champagne flutes etched with the yacht’s logo. In such moments, the captain responds with a deferential mantra: “There is no excuse. Your instruction was clear. I can only endeavor to make it better for next time.”

The job comes with perilously little protection. A big yacht is effectively a corporation with a rigid hierarchy and no H.R. department. In recent years, the industry has fielded increasingly outspoken complaints about sexual abuse, toxic impunity, and a disregard for mental health. A 2018 survey by the International Seafarers’ Welfare and Assistance Network found that more than half of the women who work as yacht crew had experienced harassment, discrimination, or bullying on board. More than four-fifths of the men and women surveyed reported low morale.

Karine Rayson worked on yachts for four years, rising to the position of “chief stew,” or stewardess. Eventually, she found herself “thinking of business ideas while vacuuming,” and tiring of the culture of entitlement. She recalled an episode in the Maldives when “a guest took a Jet Ski and smashed into a marine reserve. That damaged the coral, and broke his Jet Ski, so he had to clamber over the rocks and find his way to the shore. It was a private hotel, and the security got him and said, ‘Look, there’s a large fine, you have to pay.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry, the boat will pay for it.’ ” Rayson went back to school and became a psychotherapist. After a period of counselling inmates in maximum-security prisons, she now works with yacht crew, who meet with her online from around the world.

Rayson’s clients report a range of scenarios beyond the boundaries of ordinary employment: guests who did so much cocaine that they had no appetite for a chef’s meals; armed men who raided a boat offshore and threatened to take crew members to another country; owners who vowed that if a young stew told anyone about abuse she suffered on board they’d call in the Mafia and “skin me alive.” Bound by N.D.A.s, crew at sea have little recourse.“We were paranoid that our e-mails were being reviewed, or we were getting bugged,” Rayson said.

She runs an “exit strategy” course to help crew find jobs when they’re back on land. The adjustment isn’t easy, she said: “You’re getting paid good money to clean a toilet. So, when you take your C.V. to land-based employers, they might question your skill set.” Despite the stresses of yachting work, Rayson said, “a lot of them struggle with integration into land-based life, because they have all their bills paid for them, so they don’t pay for food. They don’t pay for rent. It’s a huge shock.”

It doesn’t take long at sea to learn that nothing is too rich to rust. The ocean air tarnishes metal ten times as fast as on land; saltwater infiltrates from below. Left untouched, a single corroding ulcer will puncture tanks, seize a motor, even collapse a hull. There are tricks, of course—shield sensitive parts with resin, have your staff buff away blemishes—but you can insulate a machine from its surroundings for only so long.

Hang around the superyacht world for a while and you see the metaphor everywhere. Four months after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the war had eaten a hole in his myths of competence. The Western campaign to isolate him and his oligarchs was proving more durable than most had predicted. Even if the seizures of yachts were mired in legal disputes, Finley, the former C.I.A. officer, saw them as a vital “pressure point.” She said, “The oligarchs supported Putin because he provided stable authoritarianism, and he can no longer guarantee that stability. And that’s when you start to have cracks.”

For all its profits from Russian clients, the yachting industry was unsentimental. Brokers stripped photos of Russian yachts from their Web sites; Lürssen, the German builder, sent questionnaires to clients asking who, exactly, they were. Business was roaring, and, if some Russians were cast out of the have-yachts, other buyers would replace them.

On a cloudless morning in Viareggio, a Tuscan town that builds almost a fifth of the world’s superyachts, a family of first-time owners from Tel Aviv made the final, fraught preparations. Down by the docks, their new boat was suspended above the water on slings, ready to be lowered for its official launch. The scene was set for a ceremony: white flags in the wind, a plexiglass lectern. It felt like the obverse of the dockside scrum at the Palm Beach show; by this point in the buying process, nobody was getting vetted through binoculars. Waitresses handed out glasses of wine. The yacht venders were in suits, but the new owners were in upscale Euro casual: untucked linen, tight jeans, twelve-hundred-dollar Prada sneakers. The family declined to speak to me (and the company declined to identify them). They had come asking for a smaller boat, but the sales staff had talked them up to a hundred and eleven feet. The Victorians would have been impressed.

The C.E.O. of Azimut Benetti, Marco Valle, was in a buoyant mood. “Sun. Breeze. Perfect day to launch a boat, right?” he told the owners. He applauded them for taking the “first step up the big staircase.” The selling of the next vessel had already begun.

Hanging aloft, their yacht looked like an artifact in the making; it was easy to imagine a future civilization sifting the sediment and discovering that an earlier society had engaged in a building spree of sumptuous arks, with accommodations for dozens of servants but only a few lucky passengers, plus the occasional Pomeranian.

We approached the hull, where a bottle of spumante hung from a ribbon in Italian colors. Two members of the family pulled back the bottle and slung it against the yacht. It bounced off and failed to shatter. “Oh, that’s bad luck,” a woman murmured beside me. Tales of that unhappy omen abound. In one memorable case, the bottle failed to break on Zaca, a schooner that belonged to Errol Flynn. In the years that followed, the crew mutinied and the boat sank; after being re-floated, it became the setting for Flynn’s descent into cocaine, alcohol, orgies, and drug smuggling. When Flynn died, new owners brought in an archdeacon for an onboard exorcism.

In the present case, the bottle broke on the second hit, and confetti rained down. As the family crowded around their yacht for photos, I asked Valle, the C.E.O., about the shortage of new boats. “Twenty-six years I’ve been in the nautical business—never been like this,” he said. He couldn’t hire enough welders and carpenters. “I don’t know for how long it will last, but we’ll try to get the profits right now.”

Whatever comes, the white-boat world is preparing to insure future profits, too. In recent years, big builders and brokers have sponsored a rebranding campaign dedicated to “improving the perception of superyachting.” (Among its recommendations: fewer ads with girls in bikinis and high heels.) The goal is partly to defuse #EatTheRich, but mostly it is to soothe skittish buyers. Even the dramatic increase in yacht ownership has not kept up with forecasts of the global growth in billionaires—a disparity that represents the “one dark cloud we can see on the horizon,” as Øino, the naval architect, said during an industry talk in Norway. He warned his colleagues that they needed to reach those “potential yacht owners who, for some reason, have decided not to step up to the plate.”

But, to a certain kind of yacht buyer, even aggressive scrutiny can feel like an advertisement—a reminder that, with enough access and cash, you can ride out almost any storm. In April, weeks after the fugitive Motor Yacht A went silent, it was rediscovered in physical form, buffed to a shine and moored along a creek in the United Arab Emirates. The owner, Melnichenko, had been sanctioned by the E.U., Switzerland, Australia, and the U.K. Yet the Emirates had rejected requests to join those sanctions and had become a favored wartime haven for Russian money. Motor Yacht A was once again arrayed in almost plain sight, like semaphore flags in the wind. ♦

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Bill Duker Luxury Yacht – Sybaris

Luxury Sailing Yacht Sybaris is a 70 m / 229′8″ sailing vessel. She was built by Perini Navi in 2016.

With a beam of 13.24 m and a draft of 4.54 m, she has an aluminium hull and aluminium superstructure. She is powered by MTU engines of 1930 hp each. The sailing yacht can accommodate guests in cabins and an exterior design by Philippe Briand.

Commissioned for serial yacht owner Bill Duker, Sybaris is one of the largest yachts built by Italian yard Perini Navi to date, second only to the 88 metre Maltese Falcon.

Luxury Sailing Yacht Sybaris Awards

Monaco Yacht Show 2016 – Best Interior

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Her carbon-fiber rig includes two masts, which measure 72 and 62 metre’s respectively. Naval architecture, exterior design and sail plan optimization are all by Philippe Briand, while her interiors were styled by PH Design. Accommodation is for 12 guests, split across six cabins, and her total interior volume of 870 gross tonne’s also allows for a crew of up to 11.

Luxury Sailing Yacht Sybaris Interior

The subtle nature of Sybaris, even with her imposing 72 and 61 metre main and mizzen masts, is astounding. The performance under sail has the makings of a cutting-edge classic, and the resounding core of her creation is to house art, while becoming a masterpiece herself.

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Interiors notebook: Peter Hawrylewicz on designing Sybaris

As first yacht interior design commissions go, 70 metre sailing yacht Sybaris is quite the debut performance. Peter Hawrylewicz, co-founder of PH Design , takes us inside the creation of Bill Duker's beautiful yacht and expands on his design ethos.

I was shocked when Bill Duker asked us to design his Perini Sybaris . He’d been a client for years but we’d never done a yacht and there were others far more qualified. He tasked us with creating a floating gallery: the result is warm, modern, subtle interiors which let the art stand out.

I’ve always taken a “bones first, bonnets later” approach to land-based interiors and Sybaris was no different. We did have the advantage of starting with a blank piece of paper, though, which we rarely do on land.

One of the most beautiful sights in the world is a boat glowing alone on a dark sea. The direction of natural light on a boat is unpredictable so good lighting design is imperative on yachts. It’s a great way of creating intimacy or making spaces feel bigger.

I appreciate the enthusiasm designers bring to their superyacht projects but I don’t always like the outcome. Yachts that take a more-is-more approach can leave one wanting. Restraint adds clarity.

Yachts are all about economy of space. Guest cabins should be like Japanese mystery boxes where surfaces slide, swing and part to reveal compartments beneath. The trick is making it look effortless.

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The largest yachts owned by tech billionaires, from Mark Zuckerberg to Jeff Bezos

• Megayachts have become a status symbol for the richest of the rich.
• In recent years, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg have splurged on enormous boats.
• These are the biggest yachts owned by tech billionaires.

The average Joe celebrating a personal renaissance after, say, the end of a long-term relationship or when approaching a fresh decade might commemorate it with an ankle tattoo or a sports car. But if you're a billionaire, you may instead spend hundreds of millions on a yacht .

A few years after he and his wife divorced, Jeff Bezos shelled out on a megayacht. Last year, Bezos debuted the 127-meter vessel "Koru," a Māori symbol that signifies a fresh start — perhaps referring to that with his fiancée Lauren Sanchez.

Earlier this year, just before his 40th birthday, Mark Zuckerberg became the rumored owner of a yacht originally built for a Russian oligarch.

Superyachts have increasingly become ultrawealthy status symbols , providing highly secluded leisure and networking sites. They are — even more so than real estate — the single most expensive asset you can own.

"It's a bit of a celebration of your success in life, of wealth," Giovanna Vitelli, the chair of the Azimut Benetti Group, the world's biggest producer of superyachts, told Business Insider.

While many tech billionaires have bought yachts, the richest of the rich, like Bezos, Zuckerberg, and Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, have gone bigger. Their boats are virtual palaces at sea, decked with amenities like gyms, spas, pools, nightclubs, and movie theaters.

A look at these megayachts — broadly defined as over 70 meters long, mostly custom-built, and often costing nine figures — offers a glimpse into how the .00001% lives. It's something few others will ever get to experience. Even chartering a yacht of this size for a week typically costs upwards of $1 million.

One major thing that hundreds of millions of dollars can buy is privacy. There are likely yachts that have not been publicly recorded or registered — for example, Evan Spiegel is rumored to own the 94-meter megayacht Bliss. In an industry ruled by discretion , deciphering who owns what is typically an exercise in stringing together many clues.

Here are the largest yachts owned by tech billionaires, listed in order of length.

Jeff Bezos: Koru and Abeona

Amazon founder Bezos' $500 million megayacht, the 127-meter Koru, made a splash last year as she crisscrossed the Mediterranean in her first summer at sea, with her 75-meter support vessel Abeona in tow.

The sailing yacht, which is hard to miss thanks to her massive size and unique design, was host to Bezos and his fiancée Lauren Sanchez's famous friends . The couple held an engagement party on board, which reportedly drew guests including Bill Gates, Ari Emanuel, and Leonardo DiCaprio. Just a week later, they were seen on the streets of Dubrovnik, Croatia, with Orlando Bloom, Katy Perry, and Usher.

Even before her completion, Koru made headlines. She drew the ire of some Dutch people, who vowed to hurl eggs after she was announced a historic bridge in Rotterdam might be taken apart to allow the Oceanco boat through. Luckily, the shipyard made alternative plans, and an egg crisis was averted.

Among yacht world insiders , Koru is widely praised for her craftsmanship.

"I heard back in 2018 or something that somebody had ordered a classic sailing yacht," one superyacht expert told BI. "You order 125 meters, that's not really going to be classic. But it is. I think it's pretty cool."

Mark Zuckerberg: Launchpad

Earlier this year, the yacht world was rife with rumors that Zuckerberg purchased Launchpad, a 118-meter superyacht originally designed for a sanctioned Russian businessman.

The ship made her maiden voyage in March, going from Gibraltar to St. Maarten and mooring in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Little is known about her interior, but photos show a large swimming pool and helipad. Her price, too, has been kept under wraps but is said to be nine figures.

Eric Schmidt: Whisper

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt made waves last year when he agreed to buy the Alfa Nero , the yacht of a sanctioned Russian oligarch, for $67 million in an auction conducted by Antigua and Barbuda. But he backed out of the deal following legal issues over her true owner. He quietly purchased Kismet instead. The 95-meter-long Lürssen-built boat was formerly owned by the Jacksonville Jaguar's billionaire owner Shahid Khan . Schmidt renamed her Whisper.

The ship can fit 12 guests and a crew of 28, according to Moran Yacht & Ship, which oversaw her construction. She features a master deck with a private jacuzzi, full-service spa, lap pool, movie theater, and outdoor fireplace.

While her final sale price was not public, she was listed for 149 million euros (about $161 million at current exchange rates), and at a charity auction in January, one week aboard the ship went for $2.4 million, according to industry outlet Yacht Charter Fleet.

Barry Diller: Eos

Barry Diller , the chairman of digital media company IAC, co-owns the megayacht Eos with his wife, fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg , who is immortalized by a figurehead sculpture by Anh Duong.

One of the largest private sailing yachts in the world, the three-masted Lürssen schooner measures 93 meters long. She took three years to be built before being delivered to Diller in 2009, and since then, little has come to light about her interior and features.

The power couple has hosted many celebrities on the Eos, which spends her summers crisscrossing the Mediterranean and New Year ' s Eve in St. Barts . Over the years, guests have included Oprah Winfrey, Emma Thompson, Anderson Cooper, and Bezos, leading some to believe she provided inspiration for his Koru.

Jim Clark: Athena

Netscape founder Jim Clark purchased the 90-meter sailing yacht Athena in 2004.

"I could easily have built a 50- or 60-meter motor yacht that would have had the same space as Athena, but I was never really interested in building a motor yacht," he told Boat International in 2016. "To my eye, she's one of the most gorgeous large sailing yachts, maybe the most gorgeous large sailing yacht in the world."

Athena has room for 10 guests and 21 crewmembers, and the only change Clark says he'd make in her design is adding more space for his kids.

"If I was forced to change something, I would convert the office on the lower deck into a children's room," he said.

The former Stanford professor tried to sell her at various points — listing her for $95 million in 2012 , $69 million in 2016, and $59 million in 2017 — but she has yet to change hands.

Larry Ellison: Musashi

Oracle founder Larry Ellison has owned several superyachts over the years, including the Katana, the Ronin, and the Rising Sun — which he sold to fellow billionaire David Geffen .

He purchased his current boat, Musashi, in 2011 for a reported $160 million from custom-yacht giant Feadship.

Named after a famous samurai warrior, the 88-meter-long yacht has both Japanese and Art Deco-inspired design elements. She also boasts amenities including an elevator, swimming pool, beauty salon, gym, and basketball court.

Ellison is known for his extravagant spending — private islands, jets, a tennis tournament — and yachting is among his favorite and most expensive hobbies. He took up racing them in the 1990s and financed the America's Cup-winning BMW Oracle Racing team .

Laurene Powell Jobs: Venus

Steve Jobs' wife, investor and philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, inherited a nearly finished 78-meter yacht named Venus when the Apple cofounder died in 2011.

After spending years vacationing on Ellison's yachts, Jobs wanted one for himself. He designed Venus with French starchitect and decorator Philippe Starck , and she was worth $130 million at completion.

"Venus comes from the philosophy of minimum," Starck said of her design. "The elegance of the minimum, approaching dematerialization."

Jobs and Starck began working together in 2007, the designer told Vanity Fair , and held monthly meetings over four years. Venus was delivered in 2012 to Jobs' specification: six identical cabins, a design to ensure spaces of absolute silence, and the most up-to-date technology.

"There will never again be a boat of that quality again. Because never again will two madmen come together to accomplish such a task," Starck told the magazine. "It was not a yacht that Steve and I were constructing, we were embarked on a philosophical action, implemented according to a quasi-religious process. We formed a single brain with four lobes."

Charles Simonyi: Norn

Early Microsoft employee Charles Simonyi has purchased two megayachts from the German shipyard Lürssen: the 90-meter Norn and 71-meter Skat.

Delivered in 2023, Norn is full of luxe features, including an outdoor cinema and a pool floor that lifts to become a light-up dancefloor. She shares a militaristic style with Skat , which Simonyi sold in 2021.

Skats's name is derived from the Danish word for treasure, and she had a listing price of 56.5 million euros and was launched in 2002.

"The yacht is to be home away from my home in Seattle, and its style should match the style of the house, adapted for the practicalities of the sea," Simonyi once said .

Sergey Brin: Dragonfly

Google cofounder Sergey Brin has built a flotilla of yachts, boats, and toys known as the "Fly Fleet."

Named after a once-secret Google product , the largest of Brin's armada is the sleek Dragonfly , which boasts a movie theater and a helipad. The 73-meter-long vessel was built by the Australian shipyard Silver Yachts and can fit up to 18 guests and 16 crew members, according to SuperYacht Times.

Also in his fleet is the superyacht Butterfly, a mere 38 meters long. Often moored in the Bay Area, her crewmembers spend their downtime kitesurfing and giving swimming lessons to local kids.

The rest of his marine lineup includes a smaller boat called Firefly, as well as Jet Skis, foilboards, dinghies, and kiteboards. She takes a team of 50 full-time employees to manage, steer, and maintain the entire operation.

Sindhu Sundar contributed to an earlier version of this story.

Correction: May 6, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misstated Giovanna Vitelli's title. She is the chair of the Azimut Benetti Group, not a vice president.

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Killer whales attack and sink 50-foot yacht in Strait of Gibraltar: Spanish officials

A pod of killer whales attacked and sunk a yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar, between Spain and Morocco, officials confirmed to ABC News.

Two people were on board the vessel when the incident occurred Sunday at 9 a.m. local time, according to Spain's maritime authority.

The nearly 50-foot yacht, named The Alboran Cognac, was 15 miles from Cabo Espartel in Morocco when an unknown number of orcas began ramming it.

The couple alerted Spanish authorities and a rescue team arrived to extricate them from the vessel an hour after the attack, though officials were unable to salvage the sinking boat.

There have been approximately 700 orca attacks since 2020, according to GT Orca Atlantica, a conservation group, and officials believe there are more than 37 orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar.

The Strait of Gibraltar connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea, separating Europe from Africa.

"During the summer and autumn of 2020, interaction events began to occur between several specimens of this species and vessels, mainly sailboats, both in the Strait of Gibraltar and in the waters of the Galician coast," according to Spanish government officials. "These interactions have ranged from persistent approaches to ships, to ramming the hull and rudder, causing various types of damage, which continue today."

It's unclear whyorcasattack boats, though experts hypothesize the marine mammals could be targeting vessels for sport or they feel threatened.

According to a study in Biological Conservation , a peer-reviewed journal, "sophisticated learning abilities" have been found to exist in orcas.

In June 2023, racing yachts in the Strait of Gibraltar had a close encounter with a pod oforcas, race officials said at the time.

Crew members aboard a rival pair of 65-foot yachts were on the final leg of The Ocean Race, a global sailing competition, when they reported being intercepted by killer whales as their boats approached the Strait of Gibraltar.

No fatalities were reported in the incident, according to officials.

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Up, Up and Not OK: Letting Go of Balloons Could Soon Be Illegal in Florida

In an effort to curb microplastics and marine pollution, state lawmakers voted to ban intentional releases.

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By Cara Buckley

Balloons released in the sky don’t go to heaven. They often end up in oceans and waterways, where they’re 32 times more likely to kill seabirds than other types of plastic debris. Despite this, humans like to release them en masse, be it to celebrate a loved one’s life or a wedding, or to reveal the gender of a baby.

The practice is on the verge of becoming illegal in Florida, where the legislature has joined a growing number of states to ban the intentional release of balloons outdoors. The Florida ban is expected to be signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and would take effect July 1.

Florida is at the forefront of a dizzying and contentious array of statewide bans, outlawing lab grown meat , certain books from school libraries and classrooms, and most abortions after six weeks . But the balloon ban is rare for garnering widespread bipartisan support. It was championed by environmentalists and sponsored by two Republican lawmakers from the Tampa Bay area, Linda Chaney, a state representative and Nick DiCeglie, a state senator.

“Balloons contribute to the increase in microplastic pollution which is harmful to every living thing including humans, polluting our air and drinking water,” Ms. Chaney wrote in an email.

“My hope is that this bill changes the culture, making people more aware of litter in general, including balloons,” she said.

Ms. Chaney said she first heard about the perils of balloon debris in 2020. Aquatic animals often mistake balloons for jellyfish and feel full after eating them, essentially starving from the inside out. Ribbons affixed to balloons entangle turtles and manatees. Balloons also pose a threat to land animals. In her research, Ms. Chaney learned about a pregnant cow that died after ingesting a balloon while grazing. The unborn calf died too.

The bill closes a loophole in an existing Florida law that allowed for the outdoor release of up to nine balloons per person in any 24-hour period, a provision that critics say didn’t achieve the goal of reducing marine trash.

The new legislation makes it clear that balloons can pose an environmental hazard, supporters say. It equates intentionally releasing a balloon filled with a gas lighter than air with littering, a noncriminal offense that carries a fine of $150. The ban also applies to outdoor releases of any balloons described by manufacturers as biodegradable.

The ban does not restrict the sale of balloons by party suppliers or manufacturers; they could still be used indoors or as decorations outdoors if properly secured.

Balloons released by a government agency or for government sanctioned scientific purposes would be exempt from the new law. Hot air balloons recovered after launch or balloons released by children aged 6 and younger would also be exempt.

The bill counts among its supporters the Florida Retail Association as well as the Coalition for Responsible Celebration, a trade association for balloon distributors and party stores, which in a statement said it recognized “the importance of promoting responsible balloon usage and ensuring safe access to these joy-inspiring products.”

The legislation marks a win for environmentalists hamstrung by Florida legislation known as the “ban on bans,” which prohibits counties and local municipalities from regulating single use plastics and plastic bags.

Jon Paul “J. P.” Brooker, director of Florida conservation for the nonprofit group Ocean Conservancy, said that increased concern about the health of beaches, a major driver of tourism, helped conservationists and lawmakers find common ground.

“Florida is its beaches,” Mr. Brooker said, “People are not going to flock by millions to them if they’re trashed and there’s dead animals and plastic and trash all over.”

Mr. Brooker said while it remains to be seen how vigorously police will enforce the ban, the fact that they will be able to issue tickets was a good thing. “More than anything,” he added,” it gives us in the environmental community an opportunity to educate the public as to why it’s bad.”

Public sentiment in Florida against balloon releases has been growing. Earlier this year, the city of Miami Beach adopted an ordinance banning party balloons from public marinas, marine facilities, parks and public beaches. This followed the arrest of two people in 2022 who were filmed popping balloons aboard a chartered yacht and letting the remnants fall into Biscayne Bay.

The balloon release ban follows another environmental win in the state. For more than 30 years, Mr. Brooker said cigarettes were the number one form of trash found on the state’s beaches. Then in 2022, the state passed a law allowing local governments to restrict cigarette smoking and vaping on public beaches and parks. More than 50 counties and municipalities, accounting for more than 500 miles of the state’s 1,350 miles of coastline, have since outlawed smoking and vaping on beaches, Mr. Brooker said.

“This isn’t just the bailiwick of progressives, and it’s certainly not something that draws the enmity of conservatives,” Mr. Brooker said. “It’s all Floridians banding together to protect Florida’s beaches that are the backbone of our economy and the underpinning of our cultural identity.”

According to Emma Haydocy, Florida policy manager for the Surfrider Foundation, seven other states have cracked down on outdoor balloon releases. And just last week, lawmakers in North Carolina filed their version of the Florida legislation.

In lieu of releasing balloons, conservationists are urging people to instead plant a tree or toss flower petals into the water.

“There are so many other ways of celebrating that are not detrimental,” Ms. Haydocy said.

Cara Buckley is a reporter on the climate team at The Times who focuses on people working toward climate solutions. More about Cara Buckley

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To celebrate _Sybaris _being named Sailing Yacht of the Year at the World Superyacht Awards 2017, we bring you this interview from our archive, in which Duker gave us the inside story on the build of the Perini Navi yacht. Superyacht owner Bill Duker was always the man with a plan - until, as he tells Stewart Campbell and Sacha Bonsor, a health scare forced his life philosophy to change.

Bill Duker, owner of the newly launched 70m sailing yacht Sybaris, discusses his original vision for the project as well as his favourite features on board.F...

To celebrate _Sybaris _being named Sailing Yacht of the Year at the World Superyacht Awards 2017, we bring you this interview from our archive, in which Duker gave us the inside story on the build of the Perini Navi yacht. Superyacht owner Bill Duker was always the man with a plan - until, as he tells Stewart Campbell and Sacha Bonsor, a health scare forced his life philosophy to change....

This is Sybaris, one man's dream turned Italy's largest sailing yacht. Shortly after her technical launch and mast stepping operations, we arrived at the Perini Navi Group 's Picchiotti shipyard in La Spezia to step on board the 70 metre ketch during her official launch ceremony. This is Perini Navi's most advanced project since the ...

Bill Duker chats to The Superyacht Owner about his long-awaited 70m Perini Navi build. How is S/Y Sybaris progressing? I expect that the boat will be delivered sometime in early to mid August. In the meantime, engineering and interior work are coming to completion and sea trials should begin in April. I am pleased with the high quality of the ...

These words are from Bill Duker's address to the guests assembled in Viareggio to celebrate the completion of Sybaris, Duker's Perini Navi ketch, which, at 70 metres, is the largest sailing yacht launched in Italy to date. It is not a coincidence that the yacht's name is the same as that ancient Italian city-state known for wealth and a ...

The founder of PH Design talks with Robb Report contributor Michael Verdon about the interior of 'Sybaris,' his first yacht project.. How did Bill Duker, the owner of 'Sybaris,' find you ...

Delivered to her American owner, Bill Duker, earlier this month, Sybaris is the latest addition to the company's fleet of 61 superyachts. Designed and built by Perini Navi, with input from Philippe Briand on the hull lines and sail plan, the 70m ketch is the largest sailing yacht ever built in Italy (877 GT) and second in the Perini Navi fleet ...

Bill Duker (image by Justin Ratcliffe) "This is obviously an exciting time for us," said American owner Bill Duker in La Spezia. "Sybaris is a project that started a very long time ago when my son and I would sit in the aft cockpit of the boat we then had, Shanakee, and talk about the boat of our dreams. Over the past 20 years that dream ...

The same owner as the newly listed $65M Apogee penthouse. By Josh Baumgard Dec 2, 2016, 10:50am EST. Sybaris is the reason William Duker is selling his $65M penthouse. via Boat International. The ...

The yacht was built for Bill Duker. Who is Bill Duker? He is a former New York lawyer, who later founded Amici LLC. He was born in 1954. He is married to Sharon. They have a son named West. Duker was the owner of the sailing yacht Sybaris and the Feadship motor yacht Rasselas. He sold Sybaris in 2018. Amici

In May, Perini Navi launched the 70-metre sailing yacht

The brand new sailing yacht built by the Italian shipyard was awarded for the design and bespoke work made on her interior areas made by the yacht designers Peter Hawrylewicz and Ken Lieber. The award was given on stage to her owner Bill Duker. "A Perini is not only a yacht, it is a style of life and Sybaris proves this," commented Fabio ...

In a candid aside to a French documentarian, the American yachtsman Bill Duker said, "If the rest of the world learns what it's like to live on a yacht like this, they're gonna bring back ...

Mega Yacht. Luxury Sailing Yacht Sybaris is a 70 m / 229′8″ sailing vessel. She was built by Perini Navi in 2016. With a beam of 13.24 m and a draft of 4.54 m, she has an aluminium hull and aluminium superstructure. She is powered by MTU engines of 1930 hp each. The sailing yacht can accommodate guests in cabins and an exterior design by ...

View Bill Duker's profile on LinkedIn, the world's largest professional community. ... CEO at IYC - The International Yacht Company, driving global growth. ... New York, NY. Connect william ...

As first yacht interior design commissions go, 70 metre sailing yacht Sybaris is quite the debut performance. Peter Hawrylewicz, co-founder of PH Design, takes us inside the creation of Bill Duker's beautiful yacht and expands on his design ethos.. I was shocked when Bill Duker asked us to design his Perini Sybaris.He'd been a client for years but we'd never done a yacht and there were ...

The 95-meter-long Lürssen-built boat was formerly owned by the Jacksonville Jaguar's billionaire owner Shahid Khan. Schmidt renamed her Whisper. The ship, which can fit 12 guests and a crew of 28 ...

Tuesday, May 14, 2024 1:21PM. A pod of killer whales attacked and sunk a yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar, between Spain and Morocco, on Sunday morning, officials confirmed to ABC News. Two people ...

May 14 (UPI) -- Rescuers saved two crew members from a sinking sailing yacht after an orca pod attacked it off the Strait of Gibraltar in Moroccan waters. The 49-foot sailing yacht Alboran Cognac ...

A residential and industrial region in the south-east of Mocsow. It was founded on the spot of two villages: Chagino (what is now the Moscow Oil Refinery) and Ryazantsevo (demolished in 1979). in 1960 the town was incorporated into the City of Moscow as a district. Population - 45,000 people (2002). The district is one of the most polluted residential areas in Moscow, due to the Moscow Oil ...

Both politicians have clashed bitterly over the new bill, which requires the media, NGOs and nonprofits to register as foreign agents if more than 20 per cent of their funding comes from abroad.

The bill closes a loophole in an existing Florida law that allowed for the outdoor release of up to nine balloons per person in any 24-hour period, a provision that critics say didn't achieve ...

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, greets U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, right, prior to their meeting in Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, May 14, 2024.

Sample Bill of Lading 183 shipment records available. Date. 2022-07-28 . Shipper Name "Mercatus Nova Company" Llc . Shipper Address. ELEKTROSTAL'SKOYE SHOSSE 1-A MOSCO NOGINSK 142410 RUSSIAN FEDERATION . Notify Party Name. ... 55 Water Street, 42nd Floor New York, ...

Constructing a new custom house is a huge and multifaceted undertaking, so it's important to find custom house builders in Elektrostal', Moscow Oblast, Russia you can trust to bring your vision to life, as well as keep the process under control from start to finish. Although a construction job is never without surprises and challenges ...

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2024 World Superyacht Awards celebrate innovative luxury yacht charters

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By Katie Scott   9 May 2024

The 19th edition of the World Superyacht Awards closed its doors with a bang, celebrating some of the most innovative luxury yacht charters on the market, and the expert craftsmanship that goes into each and every superyacht.

Presenting the coveted Neptunes awards, the World Superyacht Awards is industry-wide renowned for crowning the best in the business each year with accolades including the likes of Motor Yacht of the Year, Classic Rebuilt Yachts, Judges' Special Award and Displacement Motor Yachts 500GT to 999GT.

Many crewed yacht charters have featured in the lineup of winners from this year's event so let's take a look at which award-winning yacht charters you could embark on a Mediterranean or Caribbean yacht charter these coming seasons. 

ALCHEMY - Motor Yacht of the Year

The most prestigious award of the entire World Superyacht Awards ceremony, the winner of Motor Yacht of the Year was presented to 216.6ft (66m) luxury yacht charter ALCHEMY . A Rossinavi yacht charter featuring interior styling by Italian designer Enrico Gobbi, ALCHEMY was delivered in 2023 and boasts a six-cabin layout for up to 12 charter guests.

Laden with indulgent amenities including a premium beauty and wellness area, complete with a spacious beach club and sauna, a deck Jacuzzi, and Wi-Fi connectivity, she knows how to entertain her charter guests whether they're looking for a family or corporate yacht charter experience.  

Also sporting an impressive water toy garage, charter guests can make use of a wide array of gear such as Jet Skis, foilboards, SEABOBs, waterskis, paddleboards, and loads more.

CARINTHIA VII - Refitted Yachts

Impressing judges with her recently completed refit, 318.11ft (97.2m) charter yacht CARINTHIA VII was designed for exquisite indoor/outdoor living connectivity, with extensive glazing for sweeping views during Meditteranean yacht charters and abundant options for alfresco lounge and dining choices.

Part of the fleet of Lurssen yacht charters , motor yacht charter CARINTHIA VII is an ideal partner for outstanding watersports yacht charters with a great collection of toys including; Jet Skis, a flyboard, WaveRunners, waterskis, a SEABOB, wakeboards, kayaks, scuba diving equipment.

Hosting a configuration of eight cabins for up to 12 charter guests, Lurssen charter yacht CARINTHIA VII has everything needed to create lifelong memories.

STELLAMAR - Displacement Motor Yachts 499GT and below

A 2023  Cantiere Delle Marche yacht charter , 114.10ft (35m) luxury yacht charter STELLAMAR  is a captivating superyacht charter with abundant amenities for a relaxing and indulgent East or West Mediterranean yacht charter .

With interior styling by Italian designer Francesco Paszkowski Design and a wealth of uncluttered spaces throughout, STELLAMAR provides optimal comfort for her charter guests with plush furnishings, ample space to admire the views around the exterior decks, and Wi-Fi connectivity to keep everyone connected at all times. 

Suitable for charter guests of all ages, this family-friendly yacht charter provides exceptional experiences of the most popular yacht charter destinations .

ENTOURAGE - Displacement Motor Yachts 500GT to 999GT

An Amels yacht charter that oozes sophistication and elegance, 196.10ft (60m) charter yacht ENTOURAGE is a multi-award winning superyacht charter with a multitude of decks packed with premium amenities for an indulgent Mediterranean or Greece yacht charter .

Featuring spacious exterior decks suitable for incredible events yacht charters , motor yacht charter ENTOURAGE encourages charter guests to fully immerse themselves throughout the duration of a yacht charter vacation with obstruction-free interiors and an eyebrow-raising collection of water toys for unforgettable sessions on the waves.

Hosting a six-cabin layout, charter yacht ENTOURAGE can accommodate up to 12 charter guests and a dedicated crew of 12.

Scheduled to return in May 2025, the official dates of the 20th World Superyacht Awards are yet to be released, however, if you're interested in chartering one of the award winners contact your preferred yacht charter broker today for availability and details on yacht charter costs .

Alternatively, find more inspiration by viewing all luxury yacht rentals .

Previous World Superyacht Awards winning yacht charters

75m Admiral Yachts 2022

59m Camper & Nicholsons 1931 / 2022

63m Holland Jachtbouw 2010 / 2023

44m Conrad Shipyard 2023

60m Amels 2022

73m Lurssen 1994 / 2022

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Hush-Hush Luxuries: 9 Coveted Luxury Brands of the Super-Rich

B eyond the usual household names like Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Cartier lies a world of discreet ultra-luxury reserved for those at the very pinnacle of wealth and taste .

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This is the rarefied realm where six-figure price tags are merely the barrier to entry. Their clientele spans oligarchs and royalty, titans of industry and chief executives paid in eight to nine figures annually. Shopping here is strictly by appointment or referral, with little, if any, public presence. 

For the select few granted access, the rewards are matchless: access to the absolute best in materials, craftsmanship and design, elevated to the level of art. Join us as we unveil some of the most coveted and exclusive luxury brands that even most of the super-rich have never heard of, but which represent the ne plus ultra for those who can afford it.

Here are 9 luxury brands flying under the radar of the super-rich.

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The ultra rich know all about Sunseeker — the luxury brand known for being a global leader in yachts. The website doesn’t list prices, and you’re encouraged to find your local yacht dealer for additional information. One could only imagine how much a typical luxury yacht would go for. If you’re ever interested in browsing the various options, you can check out YachtWorld , where you can pick out your sports yacht for a few million dollars.

If you’re wondering if you’ve ever seen this luxury brand, chances are that you may have caught a glimpse of a Sunseeker luxury yacht in a James Bond film. Sunseeker yachts are in as many Bond films, like Aston Martin cars, so you may have spotted one in the past without realizing what you were looking at.

Brunello Cucinelli

You may have seen pictures of celebrities dressed in this luxury fashion brand, but chances are that you weren’t aware of the brand name. The Brunello Cucinelli brand is called after the Italian fashion designer who started the company in 1978 and has since gone on to dress celebrities and Silicon Valley giants. Despite dressing many famous celebrities, the luxury brand doesn’t rely on celebrity endorsements in advertisements, as it prefers to be more subtle. 

You may not have noticed from the casual appearance, but many tech moguls have appeared in interviews in luxury clothing from the Cucinelli line. On top of the $5,000 blazers, the rich have purchased high-end casual clothing pieces, like $2,500 sweatpants or $800 sneakers. You may be surprised by how many notable celebrities have been spotted in this luxury brand.

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Despite being around since 1766, chances are you haven’t heard about this luxury brand, since it’s a huge auction house for those looking to buy and sell expensive art pieces. The price points at Christie’s auctions range from $500 to over $100 million, with work available from 80 art and luxury categories.

Christie’s also has a network of specialists who can assist clients with various services ranging from art appraisal to art financing. The company also offers art education for those new to the space. Even though their wares are mainly on the radar of the ultra-wealthy, there may be an auction house near you — Christie’s has a flagship location in New York City and a presence in 46 countries globally.

If you’ve ever looked into experiencing luxury travel (and are super rich), you’ve likely heard of Virtuoso. Everyone else likely hasn’t heard about this global network of luxury travel advisors. The Virtuoso platform offers luxury experiences, ranging from private yacht adventures to trips based around sporting events. The platform, with over 20,000 luxury travel advisors, has seen tourists spending up to $50,000 per trip.

With many rich folks adding wellness into their travel routine, the demand for unique private experiences has increased. If you’re looking for inspiration, you can create a “Wanderlist” on the Virtuoso website.

While everyone has likely heard of a Rolex watch, another luxury watch brand that isn’t a household name is Omega. The luxury Swiss watch brand has been around since 1848, and the company hired Zoë Kravitz and Zhou Dongyu as brand ambassadors this year to promote the Aqua Terra Shades campaign.

The Omega brand recently partnered with the more affordable watch company Swatch to bring the collaborative effort into the market with a surprising disruption. The MoonSwatch Collection was a viral sensation and the limited edition project was challenging to find in stores.

Farfetch was launched by José Neves in 2008 as an online marketplace for luxury boutiques worldwide — and it’s beloved by the mega rich. The official website touts that the company is the top global online luxury fashion platform. With over 1,400 luxury retailers and 3.9 million active consumers, the platform is growing globally, so you may start hearing about them more often.

The Farfetch platform is known for connecting creators, curators and consumers of luxury brands. You’ll likely discover new luxury brands on the platform, since Farfetch sells various products from men’s, kids’, beauty and women’s styles.

This luxury fashion retailer was founded in Germany in 2006, and the company has expanded to offer luxury children’s wear and home goods. The luxury platform has a simple user interface with a white background and basic black text. With almost two million followers on Instagram, this luxury brand has long been beloved by the ultra-wealthy and is starting to gain traction worldwide.

Mytheresa executives recently announced that it expected to increase net sales by anywhere from 8% to 13% in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2024. Most of the top spenders with this luxury brand are high-powered business leaders with limited time and don’t want to look for the perfect outfit.

Exclusive Resorts

For the jet-setting elite who crave privacy and luxury above all else, there exists a secretive high-end travel club that provides access to the world’s most exclusive destinations. Known only to those who travel at the highest stratospheres of wealth, Exclusive Resorts offers a level of luxury, convenience, and exclusivity that puts even Four Seasons and Aman resorts to shame. 

This members-only utopia comes at an appropriately elite price — with membership initiation fees starting at a cool $100,000 and reaching up to $250,000. But for those who can afford it, what they get in return is the key to unlocking the world’s most coveted locales precisely when they want them. We’re talking finish-line villas in Monaco for the Grand Prix, ski-in cabins beside the Waltons’ own in Aspen for Christmas and penthouses overlooking the Champs Elysees during Paris Fashion Week.

With a $600 million portfolio of owned homes and villas globally, Exclusive Resorts can accommodate virtually any whim or wish of its select 3,000 members. Don’t expect to browse listings on their website — privacy and exclusivity are paramount. Membership is by invitation and referral only. But for those privileged few granted access to this gilded world of luxury travel, no dream is unattainable. One call to their personal travel advisors sets even the loftiest vacation desires in motion — after all, they have Jeff Bezos on speed dial. Exclusive Resorts makes the fantasy vacations of billionaires and titans of industry an everyday reality.

Frette Linens

For those who crave the ultimate indulgence between their Italian percale sheets, there is one iconic luxury name that promises unparalleled comfort and extravagance: Frette. This storied Italian linen company has been clothing the beds of royalty, dignitaries, and the wealthy elite since 1860. 

One touch of their exquisite bed sheets, with a 280-thread count woven from the world’s finest long-staple Egyptian cotton, and you’ll be hooked. But be prepared to pay for the privilege. Their sheet sets start at around $4,000, while their prized Belgian linen duvet covers can fetch up to $25,000. They offer over 20 choices of fabric, including the softest cottons and silkiest linens, in the industry’s highest thread counts. 

Laura Beck contributed to the reporting for this article.

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This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com : Hush-Hush Luxuries: 9 Coveted Luxury Brands of the Super-Rich