Abramovich to build world's Largest Yacht?

You have to admire a man who owns that many awesome yachts. I can't wait for Platinum to put to sea.

Good on Abramovich, if it is indeed his project. Raising the bar and challenging the builders makes it better for all of us.

This green yacht, (looks like an Oeino design), seems to be much longer. Compare to the Pandora of 540´...? Maybe it is the "Evergreen" successor?

I don't know about this bigger thing;
I mean, Pelorus is an absolute beauty and as such it scores.
Platinum is just another nondescript ship with the added bonus that its the biggest of those; so?

If you've got the money every gorilla is able to have the biggest ship being build for him but this is hardly a bonus for the yachting community.

Personally, i hope that all this money will give us a new "Bannenberg" like designer, new technologies, something inspirational!

I agree with tantetruus. These proposed private cruise ships look like ..... cruise ships!

Kelly Cook

I agree as well. Yachts bigger than Limitless are ships. We call them Gigayachts today, but Lady Moura, Mipos, Pelorus, Octopus, Rising Sun and Dubai are all too big to be considered yachts in my mind.

They might have superyacht finish and interiors, but as with houses, at some point it is not a villa but a castle. Too big for society to accept as reasonable.

If yacht buyers wanted to excel in design and refined taste I would be much happier than seeing those floating palaces. What R A is doing right, is that he is having several yachts, but bigger is certainly not better.

If you want a really big yacht, I think between 80 and 90 meters will be more than enough. If you want a really nice and still big yacht, I think 55 to 60 meters is ideal. If you just want a great superyacht, any size between 30 and 50 meter will fulfill your dreams.

The real challenge is to get a good, special and purposeful design, but especially today it seems as the buyers don´t care any longer. Semicustom boats of 45 to 55 meters is more pollution than progress seen from a designers point of view...

But before this thread is completely derailed, have a look at the thread on Designer Yachts where discussions on style and quality over size and quantity can continue...

http://www.YachtForums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3378

Just to be clear, it is not the sheer size I object to but rather that these designs have become so bland and predictable. If you can afford a private cruise ship, Ok. But why look pretty much like all the other cruise ships?

Kelly

I remember to have seen something like this 560-footer before and digged into one of my notebooks from the early sixties, there it was!

(The text is: Luxury yacht owner...)

Exactly!
I would think that it becomes progressively more difficult to design a vessel that doesn't look like a cruise ship as the size increases. This project could either turn out to be a wedding cake harbour queen of offensive proportions or something of beauty.

Oh, but quite the contrary. I would think that a larger design would give the designer MORE freedom to try new themes . I agree that the bland wedding cakes must die. Just look at the largest expedition yachts. They show more novelty than these private cruise ships.

Feel free to jump in Lars

Kelly

im glad that im not the only one who has his doubts on the "bigger" thing.
Lars said some sensible thing about sizes and their usability but my main objective is maybe not even size alone, but the lack of art and frankly, i dont understand that all this money should be unable to create something stunning, both in beauty and technology.

Most of the Bannenberg ships made me very happy, just looking at em (this sounds a bit weird, but still) and thats exactly the quality i hardly see anymore.

Kelly
When a vessel, or for that matter any structure, gets larger, any mis-step in design is magnified. What might be overlooked on a smaller vessel becomes a huge eyesore simply due to scale.

This would seem to presume that any departure from tradition is a "mis-step". My view is rather different. But then I once owned a Studebaker

out of step Kelly

Size matters...

No doubt the size is a design problem. You don´t like to have her looking like a cruise ship, but to just zoom up a modern yacht design isn´t really good either.

The Rising Sun is a design inspired of LE:s Ronin and Katana. Ronin gave the hull and main deck, Katana the glassed superstructure. On a distance, she looks good if you like this kind of ascetic designs. But up close, she is just a wall of shiny painted steel. Not really appealing and I blame it on the size. Scale her down to 100 meter would make her look much better.

Pelorus and Octopus are also yachts that should look better if they were, say 25 percent reduced in size. Large yachts need more details to make them look good, but this will also make them look more like cruise ships.

It is pretty simple really, a yacht in a size that can carry 2.000 pax as a cruise ship will look strange if built for less than 200...

Compare the Rising Sun with the 53 m Feadship Kisses in the same position...

Kelly
Departures from tradition are not an issue for me. My enthusiasm for Skat and for AMG's Anemone should indicate that I welcome something different.
Scale and proportion can do some nasty things to the finished product.

Golden Hawk, I hope.


What AMG said. His post beat mine.

Again, I would stand that argument on its head. Were I to lay out the millions (dream on ) then I would expect, even insist, on a strange looking yacht. I agree that simply scaling up a "normal" yacht would not do. This is why I tried to point to the large expedition yachts as an example. Their configuration is based on merchant ships (or "industrial" as Ladies Choice likes to put it). And yet they still manage to come up with different themes from merchant ships.

Kelly