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It’s
not easy being a custom builder.
No,
this isn’t a ploy to make you feel sorry for the yards that construct
one-off yachts; rather, the intent is to shed light on why more megayacht
builders are offering yachts on a semicustom basis. In fact, ask the principals
of any megayacht yard building yachts in a series why they’re following
this path, and chances are they’ll candidly tell you that the biggest
reason is cost control. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to pinpoint
exactly how much money it takes to create one-of-a-kind yachts, especially
when one owner wants a modified hull design, another makes change order
after change order, and yet another wants to use an exotic wood the yard
has never imported and cut to fit before.
All
this said, however, being a semicustom builder isn’t exactly an
“if you build it, they will come” situation. Rather, because
buyers of megayachts, regardless of size or origin, tend to have more
sophisticated expectations than production boat buyers, a builder has
to make sure that its offerings incorporate touches that make them stand
out from the crowd—a crowd which, you may have noticed, has gotten
bigger within the past couple of years and continues to grow.
Washington-based
Westport Shipyard is one of the yards that embraces this concept. Having
successfully built a number of yachts in series over the past decade,
including recent 112-footers and 130-footers, it introduced the newest
member of its fleet, a 98-foot raised-pilothouse motoryacht, at the 2003
Yacht & Brokerage Show in Miami. Despite her “small” size,
she still shows off some big-yacht, custom-construction features.
One
of the things that makes the 98 different is the smart space planning.
It’s carried throughout the yacht, literally from the engine room
on up to the aft deck and into the relaxation areas inside. In the engine
room, you’ll find full walkaround access to the twin 1,480-hp MTUs
(which permit a mid-20-knot cruise speed, according to Westport). This
practical access is something some semicustom builders still don’t
offer in the 100-foot-plus range. There’s also abundant space above
each powerplant to let an engineer reach across to a critical maintenance
point. A handy workbench that comes complete with a set of tools is just
to port inside the entrance to the engine room. Also handy are the sight
gauges forward for the fuel and labels on all the pumps.
As
for the relaxation spaces, the size of the aft deck is akin to that of
a much larger custom yacht. Of course, there’s the customary curved
benchseat and table for dining or simply enjoying the view, but more than
a handful of guests can stand in small groups about the shaded space without
bumping elbows. Also notable is the fact that the area is fully decked
in teak, a classy, albeit higher-maintenance, touch. (The rest of the
exterior decks are FRP with nonskid.)
More
well-planned highlights lie inside. The comfortable saloon, with a combination
of fabric wall coverings and satin-finished cherrywood paneling, contains
a clever feature for when cocktails are the order of the day. When guests
pick up a drink from the bar that lies to port immediately inside the
doors from the aft deck, a pull-out drink table just forward of it, made
by Westport’s joinery department, frees their hands.
Next page >
Part 2: Westport took practical steps with the composite-constructed 98...
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4, 5
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