[imagesource: Courtesy Burgess Yachts]
There’s a younger yachtie client base climbing the ranks, and they apparently require a boat with a focus on adventure over leisure.
Thanks largely to cryptocurrency investments and tech, there are more millionaires in their twenties and thirties who also want to hit the seas.
As a result, leading yacht designers have had to swallow their scoffs and design something suitable for this emerging Millennial market.
Gregory Marshall, a designer at Expedition yachts, mentioned that this client base has different wants and needs per Robb Report:
“These new owners don’t want to sit around and look at their stuff as the previous generation did,” he says.
“They are more about the activities that you can undertake from a boat.”
From the new generation of explorer yachts designed for a younger owner, Project Fox, currently under build at the UK’s Pendennis yard, is a prime example:
“There’s a shift in the way people are using boats and experience-based has become the currency,” Burgess Yachts’ Ian Sherwood, who has the listing for Project Fox, told Robb Report during a recent tour.
“The explorer market is still a niche sector, but it’s growing.”
At 35 metres in length, Project Fox isn’t as aesthetic as it is practical and equipped:
The yacht has 1,200 square feet (111 square metres) of exterior space, with two cranes in the aft deck for launching and retrieving two large tenders, or if the owner can afford it, a personal submersible.
Once the tenders are removed from the huge aft deck, it transforms into a beach club with significantly more space than many larger yachts:
The space inside, “akin to a blank canvas”, is designed to allow the owner to personalise and decorate as they see fit:
Key features include two full-beam master suites, one on the main deck, and the other on the lower deck, with two double-twin convertible cabins.
“It was always up for debate, whether to add a third VIP cabin or keep two very good-sized staterooms,” said Ratcliffe. “We chose the two large master cabins. It works for two business partners wanting to charter for a weekend or a family with guests.”
As a result, the interior offers more of a flow, where crew members mix relatively freely with the owners and guests.
The fact that the staff won’t be cordoned off in their own quarters is a testament to the “new type of spirit among younger owners,” who aren’t necessarily into the usual ‘you over there, us over here’ situation.
On the top deck, there’s a salon with floor-to-ceiling windows and a pilothouse with a walkaround passage on all sides and a lounge at the end:
Plus, there is a DJ station, a glass-walled sky lounge, and a wine fridge:
Listed at $17,2 million (R252 million), Project Fox is looking for its owner and is able to be a standalone yacht, a charter yacht, or a support vessel for larger superyachts.
[source:robbreport]
