Winners Revealed for the 2020 BOAT International Design and Innovation Awards

Race

Length: 49.9m

Exterior stylist: Officina Italiana Design

Naval architecture: Riva

Builder: Riva

The task for the design and build team behind Riva’s flagship Race was to combine the beauty typical of the Riva brand with the functionality of a superyacht and incorporate the owner’s demand for an all-round experience of the sea and an uninterrupted view of the coast or horizon. Designers Officina Italiana Design incorporated Carlo Riva’s classic Riva design language, which includes trademark materials such as stainless steel details and varnished mahogany handrails, along with a balanced and appealing profile. The decks are defined by strong horizontal lines and masculine angles, unlike the feminine curves of many of her Riva predecessors. Although the 120m² sundeck sports a substantial hardtop for shaded al fresco dining, there are naturally a lot of sunning spaces, including a walkaround bridge deck and forward seating area plus an elegant cockpit at the bow. The built-in exterior furniture is crisp and neat – inkeeping with the yacht’s lines – and covered in the consistent dark mahogany veneer. Race narrowly edged out another Italian builder, Pershing, and its flagship 14 Chorusline, which the judges noted had several bold and innovative styling features.

Lady S

Length: 93m

Exterior stylist: Michael Leach Design

Naval architecture: Feadship De Voogt

Builder: Feadship

Michael Leach Design hid the yacht’s high volume within a contemporary low profile, with a near plumb bow, a visible chine and complex shapes and beauty lines that employ shadow rather than paint to break up hull surfaces. Bands of black glass emphasise the yacht’s length. Judges appreciated the open and very liveable deck spaces and the transparency between decks brought about by balconies with glass inserts and a clever wasp waist that makes the helipad/sundeck seem like a special destination while ushering light to the owner’s deck below. The way the gym’s full-beam skylight transitions to opening glass walls presented an engineering challenge to builder Feadship, as did the owner’s insistence that there be no exposed hinges on any exterior doors or opening panels. Maximising sleekness, stern bollards hide below sections of deck and air intake grilles are disguised by strips of glass. A massive pool on main deck links the stern beach club to the living areas and guest accommodation. A touch-and-go landing area forward of the master suite can be rigged as a sports court in minutes and three huge hatches open the beach club, sports bar and massage room to the sea at the stern.

Scout

Length: 63.7m

Exterior stylist : H2 Yacht Design

Naval architect: Diana Yacht Design

Builder: Hakvoort

Among the yachts entered into the Design & Innovation Awards this year, the judges noted several possible feature items for a special commendation award, ranging from a novel solution for rigging from Future Fibres, a sleek user-friendly glass bridge on the Azimut sport yacht, and the sprawling spa on Flying Fox, which rivals the best to be found on land with its scope and leading-edge treatments rooms. However, it was the holistic design of 63.7m Scout that eventually edged out the other contenders. Scout, designed inside and out by H2 Yacht Design, is perfectly attuned to her owner’s vision of a home away from home with a unique, light-hearted Jules Verne- inspired theme, and a consistent style and colour scheme. Because this is a home rather than a temporary holiday escape, the yacht must keep its occupants entertained for months on end and make provisions for all members of the household, which includes two dogs. H2 did a superb job of blending the owner’s vision and the yacht’s long-range cruising purpose within a consistent yet highly entertaining shippy platform that surprises at every turn. One key requirement from the owners was for a large, totally open sundeck, with lift access and a dayhead. H2 founder Jonny Horsfield cleverly incorporated the two features into the arch to give the owners exactly what they wanted.

Liara

Length: 34.1m

Exterior stylist: Malcolm McKeon Yacht Design

Naval architect: Malcolm McKeon Yacht Design

Builder: Baltic Yachts

With this selection, the judges were equally impressed with innovation and aesthetics. While Liara is not a huge yacht, her owner has big cruising plans. The boat is designed to take him and his wife on a safe and easy circumnavigation with careful thought on how to keep the cockpit dry and warm or equally shaded from the broiling sun. Yet competitive sailors often find it hard to abandon the excitement of racing completely, and eventually the brief to Malcolm McKeon changed to accommodate the occasional superyacht regatta, which led to the design and construction of a removable hardtop for the now multipurpose sloop. Carbon-fibre and foam cores infused and vacuum- bagged resulted in a light but strong top that can easily be removed by the crew and stored ashore. The fact that Liara presents a lovely profile in both cruising and racing modes is noteworthy. Accommodating the gear of a racing boat without torturing a cruising layout was addressed by individual deck access bins for large racing sails and clever ’tween deck positioning of most sheets, winches and sheaves, a feature that keeps the deck safe and uncluttered for passages.

Calypso

Length: 36m

Interior design: Vickers Studio

Naval architect: Van Oossanen Naval Architects

Builder: Mulder

In Calypso's rich and detailed beach-house- style interior, designer John Vickers cleverly incorporated Mulder Shipyard’s 80-year history in design elements and construction techniques such as an illuminated art wall that hints at a wooden sailing ship. A bar decorated with diagonal planking is reminiscent of cold-moulded construction. The easy, well-proportioned layout featuring some built-in furniture to direct traffic flow, is appropriate to the relaxed raised pilothouse form and fits in a generous main-deck master suite and a full-beam VIP below. The decor relies on pale bleached oak, stainless steel, leather, light fabrics, louvred doors and lots of natural light spilling in through large windows. It’s a beachy, barefoot look but elegant lights and hardware make sure it’s chic, giving it an upmarket Ibiza vibe. To maximise the feeling of height, Vickers relied on a few indirectly lit tray ceilings, a theme of wall washers and lights recessed under furniture for iPad-controlled ambience. So complete was the design that when the yacht was purchased from Nick Mulder midway through construction, the new owners changed nothing but the angles of the saloon sofa backs and commissioned paintings.

Lady S

Length: 93m

Interior design: Reymond Langton Design

Naval architecture: Feadship De Voogt

Builder: Feadship

The result of a lengthy design and build process where perfection was paramount, Lady S pleased the judges with a complex, multilayered interior that manages to pair extreme elegance with fun and entertainment.The interior reads as mostly white to serve as a foil to the turquoise colours of the family’s favourite cruising grounds. The range of exquisite materials and details employed creates enough drama to keep guests intrigued no matter the length of the stay. A clever layout showcases adaptability for charter with either four, five or six cabins on main deck, plus a pair of staff cabins with access to both crew and guest passageways. The owner’s deck lounge can transform into a disco with interactive dance floor. Lady S was built to house the first floating IMAX cinema, which spans two decks and is large enough to seat all guests at once. A separate boarding entrance for the theatre is a nice touch. Locating the beach club and gym on different decks provides guests with elbow room, as do folding terraces and balconies off cabins. Large pantries on each deck, two galleys and multiple crew stairways are part of the well-conceived service plan.

Excellence

Length: 80m

Interior design: Winch Design

Naval architect: Abeking & Rasmussen

Builder: Abeking & Rasmussen

Yacht lighting has improved steadily during the tenure of this awards programme yet there are yachts whose designers and builders push the envelope to create special ambience and extra dimension through lighting. Judges debated several interior design contenders as deserving special mention for the use of artificial light, but gave the nod to the stunning 80m Excellence. The yacht has a very personal interior inspired by the owner’s interest in automobiles, art and sculpture. Its well-executed lighting plan, which includes column details, discreet downlights and well-placed spotlights, such as a beam trained on the centre of a coffee table, strikes the right tone and emphasises all the right areas. Tunable and warm, the lighting is a perfectly balanced complement for the yacht’s bright, contemporary interior. Clever use of mirrors throughout the interior adds to the effect of the lighting. There are mirrors behind louvres in the main saloon, making the casing around the ventilation shafts disappear, and thin mirror strips around the top of the walls in the cabins give the impression of even more space. The use of indirect lighting then enhances these effects.The judges also noted that Excellence’s multistorey atrium with its exceptionally large wall of windows presented both an opportunity and a lighting colour balance and fixture location challenge for the design team, one that they handled beautifully.

Liara

Length: 34.1m

Interior design: Adam Lay Studio

Naval architect: Malcolm McKeon Yacht Design

Builder: Baltic Yachts

The overall decor and the usefulness of Liara’s interior layout earned the top score in this category. Weathered-looking oak joinery and easy- care textured materials in warm colours met the owner’s brief to recall the look of the Channel Islands and lend an appealing backdrop for world cruising. An open plan flows from the cockpit accessed through a wide glass door to the recessed saloon and down three steps to a study occupying the same level as the master and VIP cabins. The deckhead recessed between structural beams creates a feature and maximises height in the sleek, low deckhouse. The dining and coffee table surface finishes mimic ripples – as when a pebble is dropped into a pond. Hanging locker doors are also designed to echo the appearance of water or tree bark and lighting is carefully positioned to highlight these elements. The experienced owner was closely involved with the design of a sliding track and box system to utilise undersole stowage spaces and a requirement for large crew quarters with clear separation between laundry, crew mess and galley. A ship’s office thoughtfully converts to an extra crew cabin for regattas.

Zalanka

Length: 27.3m

Naval architect: Dominator

Builder: Dominator

Evaluating supplied data from very different types of yachts, especially when they have a variety of propulsion methods, makes for an interesting number-crunching task for the naval architecture sub-committee. As contrasting as their above waterline appearance is, their hull materials, underbodies, power, design speeds and propulsion are equally different and first had to be considered for their appropriateness to the yacht’s stated mission. While all three finalists did well on that basis, Dominator’s Illumen 28, Zalanka, the fourth hull in this model series from the Austria- headquartered, Italy-based builder, achieved the best total score on the basis of achieving higher marks for her seaworthiness, hydrodynamics and cruising range.The hull shape uses a combination of methods to increase efficiency and was developed using computational fluid dynamics followed by model testing in a towing tank — always the best practice although a more costly approach — and the entire naval architecture solution included finite element analysis to pinpoint ways and places to reduce weight aloft for greater cruising economy and passenger comfort. In the judges’ opinion, that’s exactly what was achieved in Zalanka.

Najiba

Length: 58m

Naval architect: Feadship De Voogt/Philippe Briand

Builder: Feadship

There were six highly qualified finalists in this competition and the final analysis was made more difficult by the secrecy surrounding one of the contenders, nevertheless, our naval architecture sub-committee was able to rate the data. Of particular attention in the full displacement category are the issues of efficiency as borne out by details of range and horsepower for given displacements, and efforts made to reduce drag. The two top scorers in this analysis were an unlikely pair with very different gross tonnages, Najiba and Flying Fox.Interestingly, the core mission for both was the same – comfortable long-range cruising. While Flying Fox had advantages stemming from waterline length (at 124m), Najiba exploited the benefits of a relatively narrow beam (at 11m). In comparative analysis, the approach taken by a naval architect noted for his sailing yacht designs – Philippe Briand – working in concert with De Voogt Design presented a more efficient hull form and one more innovative and forward - looking in its approach. In sea trials, Najiba had average fuel consumption of just 11.4 litres per nautical mile at 12 knots and a range of 6,000nm-plus, more than 1,000nm over the estimate.