On board the 77m Boardwalk owned by Tilman Fertitta

“If you look at a lot of these big boats, people don’t get into the detail. They’ll just let the big boatyards do a flat ceiling and they don’t have all the curves on the bulwark and everything else,” he says. That is not his style.

When he ordered his Westport 164, a Donald Starkey and William Garden design that the American shipyard debuted in 2006 (his was hull No 7), he made about nine pages of amendments to the specifications to turn it into his family’s ideal retreat. And he took many features from it: the design of the stainless-steel railing surrounding the staircases, for example, is a replica of the design found on the previous Boardwalk – only the scale is quite different.

The main deck owner’s suite and a large show galley, where preparing and enjoying a quick meal becomes a social experience, were must-haves on the new Boardwalk too. Indeed, Fertitta and his long-time captain, Tristan Judson, developed the plans in a way that – aside from a massive increase in volume (the Westport 164 was around 492GT) – the family would be able to transition easily to the new boat without losing their bearings and yet enjoy so much more. Fertitta’s son Michael says of the new Boardwalk: “This takes it to a whole new level,” but adds that he can pretty much follow the same path to find his cabin.

Perhaps because he makes multiple decisions at a breakneck pace in his business life, Tilman Fertitta enjoys stability when it comes to his boating life; aside from his long-time designer and captain (the new-build’s project manager) and a familiar layout, he wanted an exterior styling that echoes his previous yacht. He would have gone for the same builder too if it weren’t for the fact that the new superyacht is a full-displacement steel and aluminium yacht. 

“The only reason that I did not build with Westport was that this is a steel-hulled boat and they build fibreglass boats; it was just they had never done it before. I think that they would have done it and probably would have turned out a good product, but we wanted to use one of the European big names when we decided to build this type of boat,” he says. 

Feadship was one of just three of the top northern European superyacht builders he and Captain Judson discussed. By the time they were deep in conversation with Feadship, they already had a very substantial brief, a solid layout and more than a passing thought on what the yacht should look like. The exterior design by Studio de Voogt was done with extensive input from the owner’s team. 

De Voogt’s designer, Thijs Orth, says he has good memories of the collaborative effort. “We developed the general arrangement, exterior design and exterior furniture very closely together with the owner,” he says, adding that the studios produced multiple options to meet the desired aesthetic and technical requirements. “A nice challenge was to get the superstructure treatment right: classic or modern, white mullions or black glass all flush,” he says. A back and forth between the two led to the present iteration. 

Despite her substantial volume and 12.5-metre beam, Boardwalk looks lean and long. The forward section of the main deck is taken over by a tender garage that holds a pair of superb 8.5-metre tenders (an open and a limo) from the US’s oldest builder, Hodgdon Yachts, and naval architect Michael Peters. The aft section of the lower deck is dedicated to a beach and fitness club with an impressive dive and watersports locker. The gear is neatly displayed and lit just right, and the beach club is finished in a way (complete with a bar and Swarovski crystal light fixture) that is attractive even with all doors closed. The sundeck features a 2.7-metre by six-metre pool lined with mosaics and there is an observation deck above that, topped with a substantial mast. But it’s only when standing on that deck that you get a real sense of the yacht’s impressive height and beam.

To entertain, Fertitta wanted to have what he calls feature bars on each deck. Halffman looked for eye-catching marbles and stones that give each space a distinctive style – a backlit opal white for the main saloon and an onice grigio with a cloud-like pattern for the sky lounge bar. Wine, as it should be, is kept in a separate custom-designed wine cellar that can store 120 bottles. Fertitta’s good friend (and merger and acquisition maven) Dave Jacquin surprised him with premium labels, which are stabilised and chilled thanks to a dedicated air conditioning unit. The floor is an attractive black-and-white tile behind glass doors with a custom stainless-steel design that implies they are protecting something very special indeed.

In all, the yacht features 54 different types of stone, marble and tiles. One of the designer’s favourites is a mother-of-pearl tile that has a pleasant texture on bare feet in the beauty/massage room, one of the yacht’s new additions. 

Almost everything on board was created for the new Boardwalk – from furniture to light fixtures to the art pieces. “[The owner’s] direction was a lot of lighter materials and accents, pillows, art, things that can be swapped and always a big focus on lighting,” Halffman says. She used shimmering fabrics and wallpapers in lighter tones for the background, and custom light accents, including pieces from Charles Loomis and Wired Lighting that sparkle like jewels.

For contrast, she selected a mix of sapele, plus straight grain and crotch mahogany, all custom stained. The foyer draws all these elements together – darker wood, light fabric on the walls, sparkling stainless steel, a light pendant by Charles Loomis, appliqués by Wired Custom Lighting and a glass sculpture by David Wright, representing a wave. “I was going for classic elegance – beautiful spaces that could stand the test of time, and I think we achieved that,” Halffman says. One of her challenges was to gain centimetres in height to add interest to the ceilings. 

“There is so much detail,” she says. “We spent a lot of time going through the boat, looking at everything down to the quarter-inch of detail,” she says. 

The results are impressive, to say the least. “The boat is beautiful,” Fertitta says, but as he just begins to enjoy the new Boardwalk’s many charms his mind is already on his next projects – one of them a bigger yacht. A builder must build.