The latest trends on the luxury yachts of the super rich

The snow-white dream ship is moored at the Nobiskrug equipment pier between the Ober-Eider and the Kiel Canal. In a few days it will make its first test laps across the canal to the Baltic Sea. A dozen craftsmen are busy this morning with the interior work on the three decks of the luxury yacht.

At the top of the ship, just below the chrome-plated exhaust pipes, the outer wall is covered with plastic film at one point: "That's where the name is," says Philipp Maracke, the shipyard's managing director. There are only a few letters, but they cannot be read. The name of the ship or even the name of the ship owner must not be known before the 70 meter yacht has been handed over. A centimeter-thick contract binds Manager Maracke and his employees to secrecy.

Due to the extreme width, the ship appears bulky, which is rather unusual in this ranks of luxury yachts. But storage space on board is needed. Several large outer gates can be seen on the ship's wall. At the front of the ship's bow behind it is the tender for dinghies - if ten meter long motor boats deserve the name dinghy. The ship owner and his crew will, for example, pick up guests on land and bring them to the yacht. There are more of these gates at the back of the ship's stern. Behind them are fold-out platforms which, together with a bar and dance floor, serve as a beach club for the party community.

The teak wood of the three decks is also covered with thick foil, as is the swimming pool. Even more impressive than the sheer size is the yacht's gleaming skin. The viewer has to squint to absorb the brilliant white in the sunlight of a November day.

Specialists filled and painted the walls of the steel ship many times over a period of up to six months until everything was perfect. “Only a few companies can do that, the painting is incredibly complex. These are skills bordering on art,” says shipyard manager Maracke. Later on the sea voyages, crew members will clean the facades and floors every day, keeping the ship owner's pride to a high gloss. Between 20 and 25 employees will then take care of the ship and well-being on board.

Even in times of war and the consequences of the corona pandemic, the luxury yacht business is largely stable. This is also due to the scarce supply of construction capacity and the increasing financial assets of the global group of the super-rich. In Northern Europe there are less than a dozen shipyards that can build such luxury yachts. In addition to Nobiskrug, there are Lürssen from Bremen or Abeking and Rasmussen from Lemwerder.

Their most important competitors in Northern Europe come from the Netherlands - such as the shipbuilder Amels, which belongs to the Damen Group, or the companies Feadship and Oceana. Fincantieri from Italy also builds large motor yachts. The market is small, each of these shipyard companies manages to complete at most a handful of luxury yachts a year. It takes three to four years to build a ship.

“Right before the Ukraine war, demand was stronger than I have ever experienced,” says shipyard manager Maracke. According to the British ship database Vessels Value, 77 percent more luxury yachts were sold in 2021 than in the previous year. At the end of 2021, there were 134 orders for motor yachts over 40 meters in length in the shipyards’ order books worldwide. This ensures capacity utilization until 2026. And even now, despite the failure of the Russian sales market, the industry is in no way concerned about its own future. According to the shipbuilders, customers from Russia would be replaced by buyers from the USA or the Arab countries of the Gulf region.

“The Russian market was lost due to the war in Ukraine and we are preparing for this situation in the years to come. But that is currently being compensated for by customers from the USA,” says Maracke. According to Nobiskrug, with two ships under construction and other "timely" orders, it has a "reasonable capacity utilization". Around 300 shipyard workers are employed. The shipyard belongs together with the Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft to the Tennor Holding of the businessman Lars Windhorst.

Luxury yachts have taken on a different meaning in recent years. Instead of just a few days or weeks, the owners now spend a few months a year on them, and in some cases the ships have become the most common place to stay during the Corona pandemic.

A few steps further on the shipyard premises there is a huge dry dock, a large and air-conditioned hall with space for two superyachts. The "Black Shark", as the project name of a 77-meter-long luxury yacht is currently moored in it. The mast with the radar system should be reminiscent of a shark fin, the inlets in the front of the outer skin are modeled on the gills of the shark.

The hull is painted in matt black, the superstructure in silver metallic. Almost every square meter of the construction project is covered with foil, as if a packaging artist were at work. On the ship, craftsmen buzz back and forth between kilometer-long cable harnesses and pipelines. What is striking is the huge space on board. The rooms are spread over several hundred square meters.

This trip did not go as planned: nine nautical miles off the coast of Calabria in the Ionian Sea, a 40-meter-long luxury yacht wrecked. The crew and passengers, a total of ten people, were rescued by the Italian Coast Guard, but not the yacht.

Source: WORLD

On such luxury ships, a fitness studio, a sauna or a hammam are a matter of course. Access to the owner's private rooms is mostly locked. Only familiar people know which wall unit hides a door and a staircase leading to the bedroom, study or children's room. In the rooms for the children, on the other hand, a small room is occasionally integrated, in which the nanny lives, who looks after the owner's offspring around the clock on trips.

Unknown worlds open up on board for the occasional boater. The interior design is so exclusive and not comparable to the most luxurious hostels on land that there are hardly any superlatives left. Quality, material, texture and functionality are unique. Costs of several tens of thousands of euros are usual for the expansion per square meter of interior space. There is also a wine cabinet in the saloon included in the price, which goes across the entire width of the ship. Or in the middle of the ship, a rounded glass elevator is waiting to take guests to the decks.

Current trends in the construction of luxury yachts are open spaces and large windows. The task is to bring nature into the ship. Meter-high glass walls, for example on the recently completed "Artefact", allow a view into the distance from every interior: 760 square meters of glass surface with panes up to ten centimeters thick ensure this. The ship, also built by Nobiskrug, is said to belong to Mike Lazaridis, the co-founder of Blackberry.

The equipment includes a wide variety of “water toys”. Neuer Schrei is a kind of water cannon: It is attached to the back and shoots the bather ten meters into the air with the water pressure. Submarines of all lengths and numbers can often be found on board and replace the physically arduous diving.

If the owner is enthusiastic about the Asian martial art of Thai Chi, then the practice room must have a ceiling height of several meters - so that he can swing the sword the way he wants. All this is reflected in the money: from a ship length of around 50 meters, a price of two million euros per meter is not unrealistic, smaller yachts are significantly cheaper. There are no upper limits. The luxury yacht "SY A" built in northern Germany by the Russian Andrei Melnitschenko is said to have cost half a billion euros.

The “green drive” is also a trend, albeit in its infancy. Most luxury yachts still sail the seas with conventional marine diesel and exhaust aftertreatment. "It is not clear in which direction the alternatives will go when it comes to propulsion," says shipyard boss Maracke.

The first hybrid drives including battery power can be found on some yachts and supply the floating luxury property in the harbor or at anchor with energy. However, the battery capacity is not sufficient for longer journeys. Other options are fuels such as methanol or ammonia. However, it is technically demanding to have such toxic substances on board and to use them as fuel.

The speed on these yachts, on the other hand, is not very spectacular. About 20 knots (37 km/h) are considered the absolute maximum speed. That's not exactly slow for a steel ship weighing several thousand tons. However, should a container ship like the "Emma Maersk" come into sight at sea, the 400-meter-long ship giant could pull past it - at up to 27 knots.

"Everything on shares" is the daily stock exchange shot from the WELT business editorial team. Every morning from 5 a.m. with the financial journalists from WELT. For stock market experts and beginners. Subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcast, Amazon Music and Deezer. Or directly via RSS feed.