The Alloy Yachts-built 'Savannah' in New Zealand and the Pendennis 106ft 'Wally B' were OYS's first big projects to launch, and current builds include 'Tiketitan', a 17m German Frers being finished at Bill Green's Southampton base and a 107ft Lucca Brenta Wally.
The company is also supplying the rigging for Steve Fosset's Gino Morrelli-designed catamaran being built by Cooksons in time for The Race.
'Hyperion', Jim Clark's 155ft sloop nearing completion at the Royal Huisman yard in Holland, is also an OYS boat, stepping the world's tallest carbon mast.
Another superb-looking yacht due to be launched this year is 'Rebecca', a 140ft German Frers design at Pendennis. She is an alloy yacht, but will have carbon spars supplied by Marten Marine in New Zealand. 1998 11 25 The Wally phenomenon David Glenn sails aboard Wally B, the biggest of a new breed of stylish, all-carbon superyachts Yachting World The Wally phenomenon It takes a lot these days to turn heads in super-chic St Tropez. And yet this year no fewer than seven yachts managed to wow the crowds. The link between these all-carbon, minimalist machines was one name. Wally.
Wally yachts have become the object of desire in the carbo-riche fashion elite. And yet it has taken only seven years to build this reputation, with nine multi-million dollar yachts ranging from 67ft to 107ft afloat, another five due for 1999, and talk of a 125-footer on the drawing board.
Named after the Wallygator cartoon character, the Wally yacht is now synonymous with the leading edge of design and style. Take Simon Fry's new Wally 'B', for instance. At 107ft and 75.4 tons, she's the biggest of the type to be launched, and uses carbon technology that has allowed the owner to indulge in a unique styling exercise which has the potential to blow away almost anything on the race course. Wally 'B' was designed by Luca Brenta and launched by Pendennis Shipyard in Falmouth, England. Giovanni Belgrano of SP Systems engineered the yacht's structure, elements of which are direct spin-offs from the America's Cup design.
Her hull is a pre-preg carbon/foam composite structure. The yacht's 147ft 6in tall Southern Spars mast is also carbon. The North 3DL sails are reinforced with carbon. The boom is carbon; the passarelle is carbon. Even the owner's bath is carbon. And what of the ludicrously expensive titanium, liberally employed for handrails, blocks, stanchions and trim? It's stylish and 'maintenance free', says Simon Fry. Lower maintenance means fewer crew and less cost within a given length. So titanium is seen as a cost-saving material.
Wally 'B' has hi-tech sailing systems that enable her to be sailed with a minimum of crew. In fact, this 107-footer can be happily raced by six people. There are no runners, and high speed hydraulics handle the single line mainsheet at the push of a button. Headsails are non-overlapping and are sheeted using electro-hydraulic Harken winches, again of the press-button variety. Running sails are asymmetric - no poles, guys, uphauls, downhauls...
Below, things are just as simple, or complex, depending on how you look at it. There are very few cabin doors, no switches, no handles. Lighting is operated by discreet touch-screen control panels in every cabin. These command a computer which also activates flat Plasmascreen Tvs which fold down from the deckhead, selects music from a 200CD library, operates four separate video units, sets air conditioning levels, and even draws the automatic mosquito screens covering every hatch.
It's early days, but Wally 'B' should be a 20-knot plus boat in the right conditions. In the race I took part in, the wind died and brought everything to an end somewhere near the Porquerolles Islands. Extraordinarily, five Wallys crossed the line within feet of each other. Wally 'B' was sandwiched to weather and to leeward and struggled to keep in touch.
But I suspect that Simon Fry's determination to master close quarters racing and a growing familiarity with his yacht will soon have him reaching for the (carbon fibre) binoculars to view the opposition over his stern... 1998 11 25 At Liberty in the Caribbean James Boyd sails on 'Liberty', a 170ft Perini Navi ketch, from Miami to Tortola Yachting World At Liberty in the Caribbean Fabio Perini was an inventor. So when, in the early 1980s, he was in the market for a luxury yacht, it was in his nature to end up creating one for himself. He started developing his yachts with his own in-house design team. His company, Perini Navi, bought the Picchiotti yard in 1989 and now also owns a yard near Istanbul where the steel hulls, aluminium decks and superstructure are fabricated, before being shipped by a movable dry dock to Italy for completion.
Perini's original concept - the large luxury yacht, capable of being handled by a modest crew - is now considered normal. And their success is undeniable: since 1984 the company have built 22 yachts from 25m to the 58m Taouey. Liberty, the first of Perini Navi's new range of 52m yachts, is available for charter through Yachting Partners International for $98-126,000 per week.
Luxury sailing ship is perhaps a more accurate description of Liberty. The complex systems are looked after by the chief engineer, Graham Pickering, and his assistant. There are 11 other crew, from stewardesses and deckhands to a chef.
Liberty has a lower deck which spans the length of the ship, housing a lazarette with a hydraulic door, laundry room and engine room - split down the middle by the enormous case for the 45tonne centreboard. It also allows the crew to get from one end of the boat to the other without going on deck or through the accommodation.
Externally Liberty's unique feature is a circular saloon on deck between the main mast and the bridge. The idea behind this 'sky lounge' is to allow guests more privacy on deck when the yacht is moored stern-to.
Below decks the cherry wood-finished accommodation is on two levels. On the lower level aft is a full width owner's suite complete with its own dressing room and a sauna. Guests stay in either the two double-berth cabins immediately forward of this or the two twin-berth cabins forward of the main saloon . All the cabins have the full complement of mod cons - TV, video, hi-fi, air conditioning, access to the satphone, as well as an en-suite head with bidet and shower. Forward is the galley, crew mess and accommodation.
She is capable of 14 knots under the power of her twin 1,250hp V12 Duetz diesels which soak up 150lt of fuel an hour.
The rig on Liberty is phenomenal: she is a staysail ketch, fitted with a Fisherman, a triangular sail that flies above the mainsail and is sheeted to a track at the top of the mizzen. The masts stand at 48.9 and 35m above deck and the equipment used to handle the rig is massive.
All five sails are on roller furlers with sheets and outhauls on captive winches, controlled from the bridge or the upper deck by joystick. All the furlers and captive winches are electric (instead of hydraulic) and this way a central computer can monitor exactly when a sail is completely furled or unfurled by the number of turns on the furler or of sheet/outhaul on the captive winches. In this fully automatic mode the captive winches keep exactly the correct amount of tension on the sails at all times and it is also possible to tack and gybe the sails automatically - the main and mizzen have a vang and a sheet which reverse roles.
Liberty's performance is continuously recorded in an aircraft-style black box so that Perini Navi can later download and evaluate it. The outputs from various load cells at key points around the rig are also recorded. Another function of these load cells is that a target figure can be set up for the sheets so that if a strong gust hits, overloading, say, the genoa sheets, they will simply release and automatically sheet in again when the load has dropped.
At 480 tonnes Liberty is no lightweight.Yet with all the sails unfurled save for the Fisherman (only used off the wind) she sails at around eight knots 50° off in 15-20 knots of wind. Dan Jackson told us that in brisker conditions he has had the boat up to around 17 knots.It was alarming to feel a boat of this size heeling, despite her 12ft 4in draught and huge centreboard.
As I stepped off the boat in Tortola to fly home, I was left with the feeling a few weeks cruising gently from tropical paradise to tropical paradise on board this luxurious US$22 million vessel would be an experience to die for. 1998 11 25
Cyber-Yacht Breaks New Ground The yacht with its own web site. Yachting World hypyard.jpg Cyber-Yacht Breaks New Ground
Hyperion, the 155ft German Frers designed sloop being built at the Royal Huisman yard in Holland, is not only one of the biggest yachts in build today but is the only yacht we know with her own website. Not only that she can be controlled remotely through the Internet from the other side of the world.
It won't come as any suprise therefore, that her owner is Dr Jim Clark, the man who founded Silicon Graphics and the popular website browser Netscape. Clark has taken onboard technology to new limits with Hyperion where talking alarms are being developed to let her skipper know whether she is on a collision course with another vessel or heading for dangerously narrow water. Theoretically, Hyperion can alter course herself if the skipper doesn't respond.
Jim Clark was also keen to do away with the scores of 'black boxes' large modern yachts need at their steering position - wind instruments, sail handling controls, alarm systems, charts, even sound systems and video controls. Instead the information is all transferred to a series of onboard computers and then made available at 26 flat screen monitors dotted around the yacht.
But what if it all goes wrong, the electrics crash and he's left with a blank screen? Alan Prior, his his highly experienced skipper, veteran of several Whitbreads and mastermind of Anakena, another complex Huisman yacht, said that he still carries a sextant and a full set of charts, just in case.
If you want to know more about Hyperion there is a detailed article in the May issue of Yachting World, but in the meantime there are some basic details available on Hyperion's own site www.yacht-hyperion.com.
Hyperion will be launched this summer and will be handed over to Jim Clark in October when Yachting World hopes to be aboard for an update on progress and a demanostration of her remarkable computer system.
1998 11 25 The Thinking Yacht How does one meet a man worth more than $1 billion? Yachting World clark.jpg The Thinking Yacht Get on the Internet and send an e-mail to jim@netscape.com, for Jim Clark (left) is the man who founded the Internet browser company, Netscape so successful that when it was floated on the New York Stock Exchange in August 1995, 18 months after it was founded, it raised $2.7 billion. Clark, the venture capitalist behind the firm, was worth nearly $1 billion that day.
A one-time high school drop-out, the tall Texan completed his education with a Masters in Physics and PhD in Computer Science; Clark's thesis foretold of what is now called virtual reality.
Clark came late to sailing, ten years ago, starting with a Baltic 55. He was also involved in the America's Cup, offering some workstations to Il Moro in 1992, having met North Sails' ace designer, Michael Richelsen. Clark supported Team New Zealand in 1995, his objective being to help the America's Cup out of San Diego.
Clark was poised to play a huge role in the 2000 Cup as chairman of the St Francis YC AmericaOne syndicate headed by Paul Cayard, but he subsequently withdrew from the project.
He's often at Huisman where he helps write the programs for Hyperion's computers.
1998 11 25 Pendennis at Full Stretch A diverse workload to cater for extraordinary yachts. Yachting World Pendennis at Full Stretch There can be very few yards in Europe, perhaps the world, which can boast such a diverse workload as that currently in evidence at Pendennis Shipyard in Falmouth. We touched on what they were planning to launch last month, but a recent visit helped focus our attention on the yard's capacity and ability.
Expansion in the form of a new furniture coatings shop, the occupation of several floors of the old Bridon rope store, where full size mock-ups of superyachts can now be built, the covering of their wet dock for repair and refit and the installation of a composites oven which can bake hulls of well over 100ft to computerised accuracy, are among some of the areas now being used to capacity.
Perhaps the most extraordinary yacht is the 107ft Luca Brenta-designed Wally B, an all carbon fibre boat for a UK client. She's the biggest Wally yet to be built, 2ft longer than Wallygator,the first yacht bearing the marketing/management company's logo.
The difference is that this yacht will be a sloop instead of a ketch and is likely to be a good deal faster.
The interior, by a leading Rome interior design studio, is distinctly minimalist. Despite the yacht's size there are only two wardrobes in the owner's accommodation and they are designed for just one item of clothing apiece a ball gown for her and a dinner jacket for him. 1998 11 25 Total Weather Info from Met View Find out everything you want to know in one place. Yachting World Total Weather Info from Met View If you are looking for comprehensive weather information for the Mediterranean, MetView might help. This service collates data from a number of sources and, through a special software package, enables users to access anything from severe weather warnings to wind vectors and sea state charts.
You need a computer running Windows 95 and a telephone connection via landline, mobile or high power GSM, or Satcom A,B,M or mini M (worldphone).
Then you need the free MetView software. Finally, complete your MetView registration which is how the system charges you for info used.
The MetView server is based in Palma and downloads information from Metosat, local stations, meteorologists and other sources. Once on the server it can be accessed by MetView registration members.
The great advantage is that you don't have to rely on a number of pieces of equipment to get the information you want.
Because MetView only tranfers information on the chart which changes (cloud cover and isobars), phone charge are greatly reduced. Other features include automatic updating and programming for selected information depending on customer requirements.
Contact: MetView, Palma de Mallorca, Spain. Tel 34 (9) 71 40 42 08/40 07 38. Fax: 34 (9) 71 40 44 31. Email: metview@jet.es 1998 11 25 Spare Parts Worldwide A gold-plated bidet? No problem. Yachting World Spare Parts Worldwide Whether it's flying a gold-plated bidet from Germany to New York or shifting a tonne of chain from Holland to Antibes, Simon Alexander and his Alexspares company have the means to deliver.
Simon has just published his latest 50-page catalogue which details some of the more obscure fixtures and fittings modern superyachts now have to carry.
The catalogue has expanded this year, due to equipment needed for yachts to comply with MSA regulations. And there are separate sections on GMDSS equipment.
Simon's been in the business for 27 years. Managing the red tape for is all part of the service.
Contact: Alexspares 1998 11 25 Busy Year at Pendennis British yards are struggling to remain competitive in the wake of the strengthening pound. Yachting World Busy Year at Pendennis Apart from Wally B, Pendennis will be launching the Bill Dixon-designed wood core sloop, New Dawn, about now and this will be followed by the 45m Ed Dubois-designed motor yacht, the Wally sloop and the Frers-designed 40m ketch, Rebecca, towards the end of the year.
Although Pendennis are busy and have diversified by assembling the new, all-aluminium press box for the Lord's cricket ground, they are looking for a new build, and high on their shopping list is a new 40m schooner designed by Dutchman Gerry Dijkstra.
A number of yards are keen to win this order, but as the pound grows stronger British yards are struggling to remain competitive and the recent growing weakness of the New Zealand dollar has increased the popularity of that country for building. 1998 11 25 Sweden Yachts 80-footers will launch this year. Yachting World Sweden Yachts Sweden Yachts, well on the way to recovery following the failure of the bank that backed them, will launch two identical German Frers-designed 80ft composite sloops this autumn.
The hulls are carbon Kevlar epoxy pre-preg with Divinycell foam cores and with carbon spars, Park Avenue-style booms and other go faster gear, the boats are likely to be of the greyhound variety. Frers has drawn a particularly large bulb on a relatively small fin.
The clients for the two yachts are likely to sail them together in various high profile regattas around the world. Despite their lightweight construction, the yachts are fully fitted out and there is a big dinghy garage in the transom. The first boat is due to launch this autumn.
Contact: Sweden Yachts, Stenungsund. Tel: 46 303 7706 40. Fax: 46 303 886 10.
1998 11 25 Fly to Phuket to Try Concepta If you decide to buy, the cost of your trip will be reimbursed! Yachting World phuk.gif Fly to Phuket to Try Concepta This Ron Holland and Andrew Winch-designed 65-footer, built by Yachting Developments in New Zealand, is now cruising the Far East and is available for inspection by prospective purchasers in Phuket, Thailand.
Designed for comfortable cruising in warm climes, Concepta has twin cockpits, underdeck sheeting, air conditioning throughout and easy sail controls positioned in the steering cockpit. A self-tacking jib and in-boom reefing for the main all aim to make sailing the boat easy.
Founder of Concepta Yachts is Godfrey Scotchbrook, a Hong Kong-based businessman. He has recently sold the second Concepta 65.
Ron Holland said that a lot of mega sailing yacht technology has been used in this yacht. Her composite hull makes her relatively light and easily driven. Derek Jarman of Luke Brown Associates is arranging special viewing trips to Thailand. Those who decide to purchase get the cost of their trip reimbursed.
Contact: Derek Jarman. Tel: 44 (0)1329 663188.
1998 11 25 New Refit Yard Near Marseilles A dry dock facility aimed at servicing the superyacht industry, has been opened in the south of France. Yachting World New Refit Yard Near Marseilles A new drydock facility, aimed at servicing the superyacht industry, has been opened in the south of France at La Ciotat, between Marseilles and Toulon.
Ailsa-Perth, the Chatham-based builders and refit specialists, have teamed up with Mega-Yacht Watershed International (MWI) in the USA to revitalise the 350m long drydock.
1998 11 25 Sailing in Cyberspace Skipper your yacht from the office, and keep an eye on the crew. Yachting World Sailing in Cyberspace Imagine this: you're stuck in your office about as far from the sea as you can get. As usual, the weather sounds great in the Caribbean where your yacht is based and being prepared for your long weekend away.
But you want to check out a couple of things aboard. What's left in the cellar and did the guys fix that furling gear?
Select Netscape on your desk computer, tap in your secret password and suddenly you are 'aboard' your yacht. Access the computerised victualling list and check the stores.
Hey, the guys are out sailing checking that staysail tap into rig status which is linked to a load cell network measuring the rig 30 times a second to provide 'real time' information about every piece of standing and running rigging on your yacht. Everything's looking just fine.
How about a look at how the boat is going from the masthead? Access the remote videocam and take a look at how your yacht is surfing down those rollers. You're tempted to hit 'remote steering' to alter course by 5° to catch that big one and trim in the reacher . . . and then the other phone goes it's your captain, letting you know the yacht will be ready for the weekend.
This isn't fantasy. Five years ago it would have been, but now remote access and control has arrived. The technology is being built into Dr Jim Clark's Hyperion, the 155ft sloop under construction at Royal Huisman.
At the Fort Lauderdale Boat Show, Jim Clark, founder of Silicon Graphics and Netscape, keen yachtsman and one time America's Cup backer, addressed the superyacht fraternity.
He managed to astonish architects, project managers, the media, owners and specialist suppliers about how his yacht will provide the superhighway afloat, 'accessible' and even controllable via the Internet from anywhere in the world!
More than 20 computers, several servers, countless screens using flatscreen rather than cathode ray technology, intricate control and monitoring systems, are being custom-designed and installed aboard this floating 'chip ship,' as one wag decribed her.
Wolter Huisman, now in his sixties and, as a woodworker, more at home with teak than silicon, admits with typical modesty to being a touch sceptical and not a little confused by the cyber onslaught. But without his family business's commitment to this sensational leap in technology, Clark's vision could not be turned into reality.
Clark wanted a carbon spar. So Wolter built a 200ft long oven in which one-piece carbon masts can be laid up and then 'cooked' to 90°. Once a carbon sceptic, Wolter has been convinced of the need to offer the 'black stuff' as an option.
"I am also aware of the demands of fashion," he added.
1998 11 25