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Lady May: Inside the 46m Feadship superyacht

Update : This superyacht was named Como when launched but has since been sold and renamed Lady May . BOAT International was invited on board for a first look at Como in 2014, when she was owned by New Zealand businessman and former racecar driver Neville Crichton.

I first encountered Neville Crichton more than 20 years ago while researching an article about a boat built for him in his home country, New Zealand. I wrote then: ‘Crichton has a habit of thinking about ways to improve things. Race cars, business ventures, sailboats – it makes no difference. He restlessly turns things over in his mind looking for ways to optimise everything in his life.’

Some things never change. As I tour Neville Crichton’s motor yacht,  Como , a 46 metre Feadship, project manager Ludo van der Lelie points out functional details, storage spaces and crew area features resulting from Neville Crichton’s trips to the yard during construction. It is classic Crichton-isation.

Neville Crichton also relied on the talents of the same design team, Dubois Naval Architects, which has designed eight yachts for this owner, and the interior design firm Redman Whiteley Dixon (RWD).

Como : an unexpected yacht for Feadship

As logical as  Como  is in the evolution of Neville Crichton’s taste and yachting experience, she is an unexpected yacht for Feadship. It’s been 16 years since either the Van Lent or De Vries yard built a raised pilothouse motor yacht, and few are the all-aluminium motor yachts with a Feadship badge. Yet there is no denying the quality and diversity of Feadship’s aluminium yachts,  Sussurro ,  Venus  and  Gallant Lady  among them. Aluminium is the perfect material for semi-displacement yacht designs where speed and/or efficiency and shallow draught are more important than volume.

By its very nature, the raised pilothouse shines in terms of visibility, access to the working deck, crew circulation and crew quarters, and stability for those on watch. Access to the bridge is easy and unintimidating for owner and guests. Perhaps the most significant element of a raised pilothouse motor yacht is that its low profile obviates the necessity for foldout terraces or transforming transoms to allow passengers to have a relationship with the ocean.

Dubois has been working with this style since 2003, and Alloy Yachts has built five to his designs, including one for Neville Crichton, the 2007 41.4 metre  Como . But with this new boat, Dubois has drawn a race car enthusiast’s motor yacht: a 19-knot head-turner that looks like she’s always ready to run. Her silver metallic paint dazzles, and the glass that goes on forever is as perfectly undistorted as the windscreen of any of the cars Neville Crichton used to race, except much of this glass goes up and down at the touch of a button.

Re-designing the new  Como

Neville Crichton also loves projects. According to Malcolm McKeon, formerly with Dubois Naval Architects, Crichton began talking about a new motor yacht when the last one was barely a year-and-a-half old.

‘When I began thinking about a new boat,’ Neville Crichton says, ‘my idea was just a larger version of [the 41.4 metre]  Como , but it was the height of the global financial crisis and even though Australia came through that pretty well, I just wasn’t excited,’ Neville Crichton says. The new drawing lay untouched. ‘Then [about 12 months later] Ed and Malcolm went back to the drawing board and came up with something that really worked for my lifestyle.’

‘Instead of stretching the current  Como , we went back to scratch, back to first principles,’ says Dubois. ‘Create a seaworthy hull that can be easily driven to 19 knots with conventional power.’

By 2011, Dubois Naval Architects had come up with the package for a two-and-a-half deck, 46 metre boat, that had a more upright bow, and a lobster boat or whale back sheer-line, to supply a higher bow forward but low bulwarks next to the main saloon. Neville Crichton became enthused. The Dubois office proceeded with the engineering and tank tested the hull model for speed potential and spray at the bow. The bow has a rake of 16 per cent compared to the 40 degrees of other motor yachts off the Dubois boards. ‘We were worried about not having much bow overhang, so we created a massive knuckle to turn away the spray and widen the working area forward,’ explains Dubois.

‘At about the same time, [Feadship director] Henk de Vries approached me about building a new boat. I had the design package and frankly it appealed to my long-time desire to own a Feadship,’ Neville Crichton says. ‘At the beginning they were cautious, because it was the first time De Vries was working without drawings from De Voogt, and they had to build a relationship with my team. As the process progressed, this relationship developed very well, in particular through Malcolm working as a conduit for the communications.’

The superyacht designed for entertaining

Both Dubois and Justin Redman from RWD concur that apart from performance, the main driver of any design for Neville Crichton is its ability to support entertaining. ‘Neville is the consummate gracious host. That’s one of the reasons the flybridge works for him because you can have a lot of people together in an open environment,’ says Dubois. ‘Only this time a bit more grand,’ adds McKeon. ‘On the last  Como , the weather enclosure for the flybridge was plastic. This time, he wanted glass but we had to be able to remove it if he wanted the breeze.’

As a result, says Van der Lelie, the glass surround protecting the front of the flybridge is in three large distortion-free sections, each curved and mounted on a lift mechanism, and flat side panels to semi-enclose the space at the touch of a button. The flybridge hardtop contains fan coil units to distribute heated or cooled air so that it functions like an all-season outdoor living room with a large bar, dining space and large pieces of moveable furniture.

‘The boat is very liveable. The design means that we have enjoyed the effect of being outside but inside at the same time,’ says Neville Crichton.  Como ’s coming out party was none other than trackside as one of the yachts at the Monaco Grand Prix . ‘We had an absolute ball. We could look at part of the track [while enjoying] all the comforts of the boat. The combination of the position and the fact that we could see the jumbo screen, as well as the TV screens on the boat meant, from a spectating point of view, it was like being in a prime grandstand. At the same time, I could entertain 50 people on the flybridge comfortably. The boat is the centre of attention and allows me to entertain many friends. It is, without doubt, the best way to attend the Monaco Grand Prix.’

Responding to the brief that the boat must be a step up, Redman emphasised a key feature. ‘Often on these boats, the stairs are small and simple. We wanted to give the stairs more importance as you aren’t just going up to the deck, you are going to what, in essence, is another room, and the stairs down lead to really nice guest suites. We thought that since the themes of this boat are light and line height, the staircase should participate in that with openness and reflective surfaces. The light just bounces around from the white Thassos marble treads onto the polished stainless steel, and it’s brilliant. The stairs look twice as large and impressive as they are, adding to the illusion of even more height.’

Indeed, from the aft end of the saloon, they create a trompe l’oeil effect. The mirror-polished stainless steel runs up the stair surround and flows out across the saloon overhead as well to pull a visitor’s eye upward.

Dubois and RWD’s experience with sailing yachts had the yard wringing every bit of use out of the space between decks, rerouting plumbing stacks, HVAC and conduits to create maximum ceiling height and nearly full-height saloon windows.

Como  benefits from Feadship's glass technology research

Everywhere in the boat the potential for outside views is maximised, and this reaches its apex in the owner’s suite, where dark glass wraps the superstructure port and starboard and sweeps around the front, creating a room with substantial views. Of course, given the high bow and bulwarks mandated for dryness and seakeeping, the effect would have been lost except to those standing.

‘Our first thought was to cut a hole in the bulwarks so you could see out if you were sitting or lying in bed – and then we realised: “Right, how do we keep the water out?”’ says McKeon.

The answer was a six metre-long window in the bulwarks on either side. The designers wanted the look of an unbroken panel of glass flush with the metal. Not only did MCA and Lloyd’s impose tough restrictions on wave-impact resistance of those exterior windows, they insisted on significantly more aluminium stiffening the flange that surrounds the opening. Although Feadship has put extensive R&D into glass as a structural material beginning with its own X-Stream concept in 2006, the approvals process for tempered and chemically hardened and bonded glass is a shattering experience – literally.

‘The classification society requires extensive engineering studies on the glass panels, and even when they approve the plans, during construction all the panels have to be tested,’ says Van der Lelie. The Lloyd’s process requires that full-size samples of the pieces to be installed be presented for testing not just one, but multiple copies. In this case, the test was a 13-pound (5.9 kilo) weight dropped three times from a height of 26 feet (7.9 metres). Typically, if the sample passes the design specification, they will continue increasing the impact until the piece fails. ‘We did three tests of each of the wheelhouse panels and when those were successful, we only had to test the side pieces twice. It was a good thing the glass passed because we had already faired the sides of the hull to the thickness a 3D scan showed us was required for this glass to set flush with the metal when painted. If the glass had to been remade or the aluminium surround reconfigured, we would not have delivered on time.’

Belowdecks, the four guest suites each have one oversized, fixed, hull portlight lined up with the guest beds placed athwartships, which the surveyors told Feadship won’t be approved in the future. ‘That’s a shame because they make really great views. You can’t get around it by installing storm shutters for offshore passages because the storm shutters would just be too big and heavy for the crew to handle,’ says Van der Lelie.

The interior styling of  Como

Blurring the indoors and outdoors also extends to the saloon. ‘In most boats the saloon just doesn’t get used,’ says Redman. ‘The owner rarely uses the interior dining area so the exercise was to make the saloon space multifunctional, opening it up to the aft deck or making it cosy for watching a movie. The key element is the bar, which spills over from the saloon to the aft deck. When entertaining, the aft glass doors and the window that bisects the bar disappear, making one large social space, connected by adjacent stairs to the upper deck, which now has equal stature.’

The snug spot is the circular sofa in the centre of the saloon. Often, when you enter a saloon from the stern you see the back of a piece of furniture. On  Como , the entire seating area, including the coffee table and carpet, can rotate 360 degrees on a cushion of compressed air to face the aft deck, the bar, the 82-inch TV, the dining table or anywhere else.

Como ’s décor is overtly masculine and monochromatic. The scrubbed oak joinery that forms a backdrop for the owner and guest spaces contrasts with natural fabrics, glossy Macassar cabinets and details and stainless steel trim. RWD sourced the black-and-white photos that, along with a large piece of carved New Zealand jade, serve as the sole artwork aboard the yacht.

Como : a sophisticated superyacht

Neville Crichton pushed for optimum performance from a pair of Caterpillar C32s, the largest engines he would allow. After controlling interior weight as much as possible yet still installing the largest tender the stern garage could accommodate, meeting the contract speed solution came down to the performance of two small metal bars on the bottom of the hull just forward of the transom. ‘They function like interceptors, but they aren’t adjustable,’ says McKeon. ‘They are drilled and tapped into place and deflect just enough water when the yacht is going 10 knots or better to keep the stern from squatting and creating drag.’ Running at its 16-knot cruising speed,  Como  burns 380 litres per hour.

‘We are delighted to make our mark once again in this size range,’ comments de Vries. ‘Feadship is not only about very large superyachts: we also pride ourselves on creating exceptionally well-honed objects on a more human scale. We have used the very latest technologies and developments to push the window – and the windows – on what is surely the most sophisticated 46 metre superyacht in the world today.’

Superyacht  Como  specifications

Draught: 2.25m

Displacement: 352 tonnes

Gross tonnage: 406GT

Power: 2 X Caterpillar C32 ACERT

Speed (max/cruise) 19/16.5 knots

Range: 2,000nm @ 16.5 knots

Construction: Aluminium

Naval architecture and exterior design: Dubois Naval Architects

Interior design: Redman Whiteley Dixon

Owner's project manager: Steve Jacover Yacht Project Management

Builder/year: Feadship/2014

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Como: New 46m Feadship yacht launched for owner Neville Crichton

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Experienced yachtsman Neville Crichton has praised Feadship following the launch of his latest superyacht, the 46.2-metre semi-displacement Como...

“Having built many yachts in New Zealand, my choice of Feadship came after a careful and extensive examination of its expertise and facilities,” he says. “Once the decision to work with Feadship for the first time was made, I followed the construction process closely at all stages.

“I am pleased to be able to report that Feadship has exceeded my expectations. Working with them both professionally and personally has been an enjoyable experience, with a remarkable and unique superyacht as the end result.”

The custom-built Como features exterior design by Dubois Naval Architects. The yacht has unprecedentedly large windows in the hull with a great deal of glass in the superstructure: a continuous glass surface that enhances the environment inside, and gives spectacular uninterrupted views from the owner’s stateroom.

Neville Crichton (second right), with (from the right) Henk de Vries, Daniella Riccardi, Como’s designer Ed Dubois and Paul Ashton

Neville Crichton’s love of sporty designs manifests itself in the tumblehome in the superstructure. Como has two and a half decks – an exception for Feadship in recent times when most projects have had four or five.

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The wheelhouse is slightly recessed into the main deck structure, re-emphasising the streamline of the design while creating a gigantic outside deck – a wonderful party area surrounded by glass, which can be lowered and raised. The interior by Redman Whiteley Dixon features a number of dark timbers.

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“We are delighted to make our mark once again in this size range,” says Feadship director Henk de Vries. “Feadship is not only about very large superyachts . We also pride ourselves in creating exceptionally well-honed objects on a more human scale.

“And, like all our yachts, everything has been totally customised to the client’s individual requirements. We have used the very latest technologies and developments to create the windows on what is surely the most sophisticated 46m superyacht in the world.”

Neville Crichton was made Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit by Queen Elizabeth in 2012 for his services to yachting and business. He has previously built a large number of competitive sailing yachts in his native New Zealand and more recently owned a motor yacht from a leading New Zealand yard.

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Neville Crichton’s J-Class Rainbow to Race under RNZYS Colours

Story by Ivor Wilkin, and pictures by Carlo Borlenghi, courtesy of J-Class Association, show in the Breeze Magazine . Read the Breeze Magazine online here.

RNZYS Life Member Neville Crichton has purchased the magnificent J-Class yacht, Rainbow, and his first response to questions about this latest acquisition is to make jokes at his own expense.

“I never thought I would pay a great deal of money to go slow,” he chuckles, before adding: “I have always loved the classic look of the J-Class yachts, but felt it was best to leave it to others to own them.

“However, Rainbow came on the market and Erle Williams and Mark Hauser ganged up on me and persuaded me she would be a good one to buy.”

Sydney-based Crichton has owned and built a veritable fleet of yachts – from Ton Cup Admiral’s Cuppers to supermaxis to luxury superyachts – but over the past couple of years has been sitting out the racing scene.

With the purchase of Rainbow, however, his competitive juices are back in full flow and he is relishing the challenge of getting the boat race-ready in time for the 2024 J-Class racing season in Europe, the highlight of which will be their Barcelona regatta coinciding with the America’s Cup.

For Squadron members, there will be two yachts to root for at Barcelona – the Emirates Team New Zealand AC75 defending the America’s Cup and Crichton’s J-Class, Rainbow, both of which will sail under the RNZYS burgee.

“I have obtained special permission from the class association to carry the New Zealand sail number J-KZ1,” says Crichton. At 38.5m, Rainbow will be by far the largest race yacht ever to grace the Squadron lists.

She will also be the third Rainbow on the RNZYS register, joining the 1898 Logan classic Rainbow, jointly owned by Brad Butterworth, David Glen and Hamish Ross; and Rainbow II, registered under Life Member John Street’s name in the Classic Yacht Charitable Trust.

Designed by Starling Burgess, the original J-Class Rainbow was commissioned by New York magnate Harold Vanderbilt for the 1934 America’s Cup defence. Up against Sir T.O.M. Sopwith’s Endeavour, Rainbow lost the first two matches, but then won the next four to retain the trophy for the New York Yacht Club.

Under new ownership, Rainbow entered the trials to select a NYYC defender for the 1937 Cup series, but lost to Vanderbilt’s potent new yacht, Ranger. Rainbow was later scrapped and the materials used for the War Effort.

Under the J-Class Association rules, modern replica yachts can be built to the original lines of earlier models. The current Rainbow was built in Holland in 2012 and passed through several owners before Crichton secured her earlier this year.

Despite his jokes, he is thrilled with the purchase. “It is a really nice boat, which has not been raced” he says. “I am excited about it and looking forward to campaigning it. It is smaller and lighter than the other Js and with some tidying up and good crew, we feel it will be competitive.”

Rainbow has been put on the hard at Palma, Majorca, where a six-month refit is planned. “We are going to manage the refit ourselves with sub-contractors undertaking the various specialist projects.”

The refit will be extensive including fully fairing the hull below the waterline, particularly around the rudder area, a repaint, new decks and revised deck layouts with winches and sail tracks repositioned, and the hydraulic control systems upgraded. To come into racing compliance, the Southern Spars carbon mast will be shortened by 850mm and there will be a completely new wardrobe of racing sails.

“The plan is to have Rainbow back in the water in July,” Crichton says. “We will do no formal racing in 2023, but there are a number of Js based in Palma and we hope to establish a relationship with one or more of them to hook up for some tune-up sailing ahead of the 2024 season.”

Crichton says most of his key crew positions have already been allocated and he is talking to former crew from his supermaxi, Alfa Romeo, and others, including a number of Kiwi sailors.

“We definitely believe that with the refit work we are doing, the planned programme of training leading up to 2024 and with enough talent on board, we will be competitive,” he says. “I do like to race to win.”

The Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron is New Zealand’s leading yacht club, with an illustrious history dating back to our formation in 1871. The RNZYS is still the official home of the America’s Cup after Emirates Team New Zealand, representing the RNZYS, defended the oldest sporting trophy in the world at the 36th America’s Cup in Auckland in 2021. The RNZYS has a wide range of events taking place to mark this momentous occasion. With thousands of races per calendar year, many social events and a Members Bar open seven days a week, we invite you to join us and enjoy what we have to offer.

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Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron Inc 181 Westhaven Drive, Westhaven Marina, Auckland 1011, New Zealand (09) 360-6800

The 2022 season represents a strong foundation for the J Class future

November 1, 2022

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The 2022 season has seen the J Class gather considerable momentum. After five years marked by limited and sporadic racing at mixed fleet regattas, this season followed a consolidated, popular programme of class racing at three great events in the Caribbean and Europe. In many senses this season has been the perfect first steps on the course to 2024 when a very strong fleet of J Class yachts look set to muster in Barcelona to take centre stage at J Class World Championship during the 37 th America's Cup period.

New owners breathed new life into two J Class campaigns and were rewarded with regatta wins on their respective debuts. As class racing returned to the Saint Barth's Bucket in March where three boats enjoyed classic Caribbean trade winds conditions, Ranger, took the top award ahead of Hanuman and Velsheda.

For the new, younger generation owner of Ranger, for whom their first ever racing sailboat is the 2003 built J Class, a debut win might have been unexpected. It was, however, a well-earned result for a team which is full of talent, with offshore and ocean racing experience fired by great enthusiasm with America's Cup winners Ed Baird on the helm and John Kostecki as tactician.

The theme of debutant winners continued in June at the Superyacht Cup Palma where the J Class returned in numbers for the first time since 2014. During last winter a trio of well-known Swedish entrepreneurs - who are all accomplished and passionate sailors - acquired the Swedish designed Svea from the USA, looking to enjoy racing with the class under the Swedish flag for the first time.

Under J Class world champion tactician and round the world racing ace Bouwe Bekking, a Svea team comprising a mix of experienced offshore racers as well as young, inshore 40-footer racers - most of whom had never been on board a J Class yacht quickly transformed into a regatta winning outfit. In mainly light winds on the Bay of Palma, all the competing J Class teams Svea, Topaz, Ranger and Velsheda - won races, but the Swedish flagged crew prevailed.

All four J Class teams, Svea, Topaz, Ranger and Velsheda sought to raise their game and peak at September's weeklong Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup, widely known as the 'maxi worlds'. The annual Porto Cervo, Sardinia showcase saw a glittering, diverse turnout of top maxis and crews and all were delighted to see the J Class back racing as a group, with their own starts, on the beautiful Costa Smeralda waters. There was a good mix of light to fresh conditions over the course of the event, the highlights, as ever, being close, boat on boat racing in the La Maddalena archipelago and up and down 'bomb alley'.

With one of the owners steering, Svea proved a cut above. They won four races from the five starts, Velsheda winning the other, to clinch their second major regatta title of the season and lay down a marker for the 2023 season and beyond.

In Porto Cervo one of Svea's owners a past Maxi World Championship winner - enthused, "The word is majestic. These boats are 180 tons, and it is tight racing. It is so different. You need to get used to the anticipation and a few more turns on the wheel, you really have to work hard. We did not have expectations, this year was a learning curve, we just wanted to learn to sail the boat and so here we have overachieved."

Svea also won the Royal Northern & Clyde Yacht Club Corinthian Cup for the top owner-driver in the J Class at the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup.

By taking second place in Porto Cervo and winning the Saint Barth's Bucket Ranger lift the 2022 season title, the Kohler Cup, topping off an auspicious debut. The delighted Ranger owner remarked "It is an amazing accomplishment for a boat which I don't think people expected to do so well. It is really gratifying. And that is entirely down to the team."

The season of class racing was contested under the latest version of the updated J Class rule which has reached a proven level of reliability, in no small part because of the comprehensive number of races sailed and the volume of data processed and analysed by J Class Technical Director Chris Todter, who has worked hard to refine the rule to take account as many of the speed and stability inducing factors as possible.

Appointed in April, J Class Secretary Stuart Childerley quickly appraised the position of the class and got to know the owners and teams and their respective objectives for the short, medium and long term. He has taken on the initiative to develop a sustainable, long-term programme of events, taking account of the downturn after a peak at the 2017 J Class World Championships in Newport USA.

Childerley, an international race officer, two times Olympian, (Volvo) Ocean Race sailor and international keelboat champion, is positive about the future of the class, which is set to see more boats racing in 2023 and beyond. "We are pleased to know Rainbow is starting an extensive refit in Palma, likely ready to race in late summer 2023, while Svea is planning to continue cruising and racing in 2023. Lionheart and Velsheda have recently commenced deck replacement projects and hope to sail in June 2023. Hanuman is expected to continue cruising on the NE coast of the USA. Endeavour, based in Palma, is sailed regularly, Shamrock continues her refurbishment programme in the UK and owner Hugh Morrison is looking forward to racing her in 2024. "

Rainbow has been bought by passionate New Zealand racer Neville Crichton, and boat captain Matthew Sweetman reports, "We aim to have the boat out of the water at the end of November and do a full refit to bring her up to 2023 J Class racing standards. That will involve new teak decks, new paint, some work on the hydraulics. We aim to be on the water next year and we will see how we go before brining some new sails online. We want to do some training with some of the other boats before we go racing."

Sweetman expects Rainbow to be back in the water in July next year and reports that Erle Williams, who has a strong J Class track record previously on the helm of Ranger, will play a key role.

"We are looking forwards to getting the boat back racing, it is what they were designed to do. Everyone tells us Rainbow is a quick boat, but we will see. She has not really raced since Porto Cervo 2014 and we are eight, soon to be nine years down the line. Things have changed dramatically with the class since then, so we will see how we go when we are back in the water next year to see what else we need to do. We have a decent understanding of the class. Everyone is doing the same to make the boats faster and we need to see. With the America's Cup in Barcelona and Neville Crichton being a proud New Zealander, he wants to be there in a good position to compete at the front end of the fleet and Neville wants to fly the New Zealand flag."

The J Class programme for 2023 looks set to focus on the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup, September 2023, and the Ibiza JoySail regatta, 28 September 1 October.

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Neville Crichton Back at the Helm to Hobart

New Zealand-born businessman and sailor Neville Crichton, 72, will skipper this year’s Sydney to Hobart yacht race in perennial favourite and nine-time winner Wild Oats XI, the 2015 winner Comanche. Crichton, the founder of Alloy Yachts, has skipped the line honours winning yachts in the 2002 and 2009 ocean race.

Some 107 yachts, including a record 30 international entrants, will hit the starting lines of the bluewater classic this year, which begins with the cannon at 1.00pm on Boxing Day, 26 December.

Crichton returns to the race for the first time since his 2009 victory, when he vowed it would be his last Sydney-Hobart.

However, the millionaire car dealer confessed that he was unable to resist once Comanche’s owner, Jim Clark, made the boat available to him a month ago.

“The boat in any sort of breeze is clearly the fastest maxi in the world,” Crichton said.

“[Clark] and I were having a few wines in my trophy room at home and he said, ‘How do you get all these trophies?’ and I said, ‘Through a lot of work and a lot of racing’ and he said, ‘I want to have a trophy room’ … and that’s how it started, and he’s won a lot of trophies since he built the boat.

“I’ve been involved with Jim Clark all the way through, the boat was sitting here, it wasn’t going to be raced, so over a few glasses of wine and conversation we put a deal together to go racing.”

Crichton has not lost any of his combativeness during his eight-year absence from the race.

“It’s a challenge [to come back] and I want to win the race. We’ve got one of the best boats in the world, we’ve got as good a crew as you can put together. All we need is the right weather and a little bit of luck,” he said.

Original article by Nicole Jeffrey, The Australian , November 30, 2017.

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Owner of Feadship motor yacht COMO wins Baccarat SuperYachtWorld Trophy

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Written by Zuzana Bednarova

Feadship is pleased to announce that Sir Neville Crichton, the owner of the Feadship motor yacht Como , has been honoured with the Baccarat SuperYachtWorld Trophy . The prize was presented to Sir Neville on board the 46-metre superyacht Como, which is presently on display at the Monaco Yacht Show 2014.

Baccarat SuperYachtWorld Trophy for the Owner of Feadship super yacht Como - Sir Neville Crichton

The Baccarat SuperYachtWorld Trophy is bestowed on an owner who, through a career of ownership, has had the vision and passion to steer superyachting into new areas of technology and creativity. Sir Neville was one of a shortlist of well-known owners, which also included Eddie Jordan, John Staluppi and Shahid Khan.

“The fact that Sir Neville Crichton won the award against such prestigious competition speaks volumes for his services to superyachting and for his new Feadship Como,” comments Feadship’s director Henk de Vries, who joined a select audience of guests to witness the trophy being presented.

“At Feadship we are used to working with incredibly inventive clients to create incredible custom superyachts. The partnership with Sir Neville has been a fine example of how this works in practice, as an owner is given carte blanche to put our promise of perfection to the test. This award is further testimony to the success of the Como project.”

Luxury motor yacht Como on display at the 2014 Monaco Yacht Show

While Sir Neville is a highly experienced owner, luxury yacht Como was his first custom Feadship. The yacht features an innovative exterior profile, with an unprecedented use of glass panels all the way round the yacht and a radical mast design. Feadship’s craftsmanship can also be seen in her exterior metallic paint, praised by the class association for being unprecedented in its beauty.

Como superyacht has a ‘two-and-a-half deck’ layout. This incorporates Sir Neville’s specific request for a climate-controlled flybridge that serves the raised pilothouse lifestyle he so enjoys. The interior by Redman Whiteley Dixon features a masculine yet calming design based primarily on high-gloss Macassar ebony.

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Please contact CharterWorld - the luxury yacht charter specialist - for more on superyacht news item "Owner of Feadship motor yacht COMO wins Baccarat SuperYachtWorld Trophy".

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‘The Fish Rots From the Head’: How a Salmon Crisis Stoked Russian Protests

Plentiful salmon used to be one of the few perks for residents of Russia’s Far East. Then the fish vanished, and many local residents blamed President Putin.

Fishermen on the Amur River in Russia’s Far East. Credit...

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By Anton Troianovski

Photographs by Sergey Ponomarev

• Aug. 15, 2020

OZERPAKH, Russia — A row of stakes hundreds of feet long pokes out of the endless estuary of the Amur River on Russia’s Pacific coast, resembling the naked spine of a giant fish.

It is a piece of commercial fishing infrastructure reminding the people who still live here that nature’s wealth — in this case, millions of chum and pink salmon — belongs to the well-connected few.

“It’s as though they must exterminate these riches, mercilessly,” says Galina Sladkovskaya, 65, waiting in vain for a fish to bite at a levee about 20 miles upstream. “They only need money and nothing else. They don’t have a human soul.”

Along the Amur, one of Asia’s great waterways, Russians feel cheated, lied to and ignored. The wild salmon fishery that they once took for granted is gone, they say, because Moscow granted large concessions to enterprises that strung enormous nets across the river’s mouth.

People’s anger over their depleted fish stock is so widespread that it has been a driving force behind the anti-Kremlin protests that have been shaking the Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk, on the Amur, since early July.

“This was a gesture of people desperate to be heard,” Daniil Yermilov, a Khabarovsk political consultant, said of the protests. “People wanted to live how they used to live, so that they can catch fish again.”

The story of the Amur’s vanishing salmon also sheds light more broadly on why President Vladimir V. Putin’s popular support has fallen close to the lowest point of his 20-year rule.

Russians’ turn away from Mr. Putin revolves less around abstract concepts of freedom and geopolitics than the concrete instances of poverty and injustice they see in their daily lives — and the feeling that the country’s elite neither knows nor cares about their struggles.

On a dirt road recently near the Amur’s mouth, a green truck splashed by before Leonid, a fisherman, whistled the all-clear. Two boys, his sons, hustled out of their hiding spot in the reeds, dragging a sack of glistening salmon.

“We’re being forced to become poachers,” he said, cursing and refusing to give his last name because he was in the process of breaking the law. “What is Putin thinking?”

Residents say there is virtually no way for them to legally catch enough to eat of what little fish remains, amid ever-tightening regulations on recreational and Indigenous fishing.

The boards tied to the roof of Leonid’s aging blue hatchback were meant to provide an alibi — he was just out collecting wood scraps. His rear windshield carried the slogan of the Khabarovsk region’s summertime political awakening: “I Am/We Are Sergei Furgal.”

Sergei I. Furgal, a former scrap-metal trader, ran for governor of the sprawling Khabarovsk region in 2018 and beat the incumbent, a Kremlin ally, in a rare upset. He gained popularity with populist moves unusual in Russia’s top-down system of governance: He cut his salary, improved school lunches and held frequent listening tours, skipping the tie and posting copiously to Instagram.

By then, the Amur’s fish crisis was already brewing. Federal authorities had granted expansive salmon fishing rights to companies that installed huge, stationary nets in the estuary and at the river’s mouth.

In the fall, the legions of migrating salmon used to make it hundreds of miles upriver to Khabarovsk, filling apartment refrigerators with smoked fish and cheap salmon roe — a New Year’s Eve staple that Russians call red caviar — sold by the kilogram.

The catch topped out at 64,000 metric tons in 2016 but then dropped precipitously, to 21,500 metric tons in 2018, the World Wildlife Federation says. And few salmon made it to Khabarovsk or the spawning grounds on the Amur’s tributaries.

“People here right now can’t catch enough to put on the table, while commercial fishermen reap huge profits,” Mr. Furgal said soon after taking office. “We’re going to try to change this state of affairs.”

He called for new limits on commercial fishing, some of which were implemented, but the salmon have remained scarce. Then, early last month, a SWAT team from Moscow pulled Mr. Furgal out of his black S.U.V. and spirited him onto the eight-hour flight back to the capital.

He was accused of masterminding murders some 15 years ago, but Khabarovsk residents saw a naked Kremlin attempt to remove a maverick governor more loyal to his constituents than to Mr. Putin. Two days later they spilled into the streets in the tens of thousands in the biggest protests Russia’s regions had seen since the fall of the Soviet Union.

The protests, now in their second month, are driven by regional pride, economic frustration and fatigue with Mr. Putin. But their animating emotion, dozens of interviews across the region showed, was a sense of injustice, as encapsulated by the fish crisis: Salmon had been part of life here for generations, and now Moscow had taken it away and offered nothing in return.

“Putin only thinks about war and about his pockets,” said Andrei Peters, 53, a small-business man in the impoverished village of Takhta on the lower Amur. “No one thinks about the people.”

In the struggling fishing village of a few hundred people with no regular internet or road connection to the outside world, someone had printed out black-and-white Furgal posters on regular sheets of paper and affixed them to the wooden electricity poles. With their now ex-governor behind bars, residents said they feared they had lost the one person in power who heard their concerns.

Indeed, the few officials in the region who agreed to interview requests in the wake of Mr. Furgal’s arrest either dismissed their constituents’ fish-related anger or redirected the blame away from the Kremlin. In the Indigenous community of Sikachi-Alyan, an hour’s drive outside Khabarovsk, the village head, Nina Druzhinina, explained that “America is at fault for all of our sins.”

“The C.I.A. has inserted its services everywhere, and its spy network is probably highly developed,” Ms. Druzhinina said. Commercial fishermen were able to exploit the Amur River, she said, because of post-Soviet Russia’s American-inspired legal code.

In the regional parliament, the speaker, Irina Zikunova, said that many Khabarovsk residents “are guided by impulse, are guided by emotions, are guided by feelings” rather than by facts. She rejected the notion — heard virtually universally in interviews with residents along the Amur — that officials in Moscow had shaped fishing regulations to the benefit of well-connected businesspeople.

“In reality, this is a made-up problem,” she said.

One of the Amur’s main fishing magnates, Aleksandr Pozdnyakov, is chauffeured around Khabarovsk in a black Mercedes Maybach. He acknowledged in an interview in his tastefully dark-toned office that the Amur fishery is in crisis. But he said the problem was overfishing by local residents who preferred to “pay nothing and do nothing while catching as much as they want.”

Mr. Furgal, the Khabarovsk governor arrested last month, made things worse, he said, speaking “as though he’s doing everything for the people” and telling the public they had a right to the salmon in the Amur.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” Mr. Pozdnyakov said of the tens of thousands protesting in support of Mr. Furgal, “I am confident that practically 99 percent of those going out are slackers who don’t want to do anything.”

Experts say there is truth to the notion that poaching by local residents is part of the problem. Olga Cheblukova, who coordinates the World Wildlife Fund’s Amur River studies, said the environmental group’s researchers have seen hundreds of dead salmon scattered near their spawning grounds, their bellies sliced open and their roe removed.

The fundamental issue, she said, is poor federal oversight that failed to detect a natural decline in the wild salmon population after the large catch in 2016. In the years that followed, regulators granted fishing quotas exceeding the actual migrating population, allowing runs of salmon to be virtually exterminated before they managed to reproduce.

In the fall of 2018, W.W.F. researchers counted an average of about 0.1 chum salmon per 1,000 square feet of river at their spawning grounds, compared to a norm of about 50.

To Khabarovsk residents, that failure of governance means more expensive fish — a parable for all of Russia, where official mismanagement and corruption often translates to bad roads, crumbling hospitals and polluted wilderness .

The protests in Khabarovsk show how easily public anger over those failures can now boil over — as it did for Evgeny Kamyshev, 32, a protester who blamed the Kremlin for the scarcity of salmon.

“The fish rots from the head,” he said.

Oleg Matsnev contributed research from Moscow.

Anton Troianovski has been a Moscow correspondent for The New York Times since September 2019. He was previously Moscow bureau chief of The Washington Post and spent nine years with The Wall Street Journal in Berlin and New York. More about Anton Troianovski

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In Russian Far East city, discontent smolders amid election

Election posters and billboards are displayed Thursday, Sept. 9, 2021, in the Russian city of Khabarovsk, in the country’s Far East. The parliamentary and local elections will be closely watched to gauge how much anger against the Kremlin remains in the region, where its popular governor was arrested last year, causing mass protests. (AP Photo/Igor Volkov)

FILE - In this July 10, 2020, file photo, Sergei Furgal, governor of the Khabarovsk region in Russia’s Far East region, is escorted from a courtroom in Moscow, Russia. Furgal was arrested on charges of being involved in killings. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)

FILE - In this July 18, 2020, file photo, thousands of demonstrators turn out for an unsanctioned protest in the city of Khabarovsk, Russia, in the country’s Far East in support of Sergei Furgal, the governor of the region. The posters read, “Freedom for Sergei Furgal, I am, we are Sergei Furgal,” “Give us Furgal back, “Call Furgal home.” The demonstrators demanded his release after his arrest on charges of being involved in killings. (AP Photo/Igor Volkov, File)

FILE - In this July 30, 2020, file photo, acting governor Mikhail Degtyaryov, a former federal lawmaker from the Liberal Democratic Party, leads a meeting of local officials in the Russian city of Khabarovsk, in the country’s Far East. Degtyaryov is on the ballot for governor in the three days of regional voting that concludes Sunday, Sept. 19, 2021. (AP Photo/Igor Volkov, File)

An election poster with a portrait of Mikhail Degtyaryov, a member of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party and saying “Actions are more important than words,” is displayed in the Russian city of Khabarovsk in the country’s Far East, Thursday, Sept. 9, 2021. Degtyaryov is on the ballot for governor in the three days of regional voting that concludes Sunday, Sept. 19, 2021. (AP Photo/Igor Volkov)

Anton Furgal speaks in Khabarovsk, Russia, during an interview via video conference with The Associated Press on Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2021. Furgal is the son of the region’s former governor, Sergei Furgal, who was arrested last year on charges of being involved in killings, Anton Furgal says he was kept off the ballot for the national parliament in voting that concludes Sunday, Sept. 19, 2021. “There is an opinion that if my last name had been Ivanov, for example, I would likely be allowed to run,” he said. (AP Photo/Anna Frants)

Pyotr Perevezentsev, a candidate from the Communist Party, speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Khabarovsk, Russia, Monday, Sept. 13, 2021. Perevezentsev said municipal officials in some districts in the city had been told by their superiors whose nominating petitions to sign. “People representing the presidential administration curated these elections,” he said. (AP Photo/Sergei Demidov)

A police officer looks at a group of demonstrators in Khabarovsk, Russia, who had gathered in support of Sergei Furgal, the former governor of the region in the country’s Far East, on Saturday, Sept. 11, 2021. A few demonstrators gather in a persistent reminder of the larger protests last year demanding the release of the region’s former governor, Sergei Furgal. (AP Photo/Sergei Demidov)

Buildings stand near the Amur River in Khabarovsk, Russia, a city in the country’s Far East, Sunday, Sept. 12, 2021. The results of parliamentary and local elections that wrap up on Sunday, Sept. 19, 2021, will be closely watched to gauge how much anger against the Kremlin remains in the region, where its popular governor was arrested last year, causing mass protests. (AP Photo/Daniel Kozin)

A small group of demonstrators hold posters reading “Degtyaryov, go to the bathhouse!!!” and “I’m, we are Sergei Furgal” in Khabarovsk, Russia, in the country’s Far East, on Saturday, Sept. 11, 2021. A few demonstrators each evening gather in a persistent reminder of the mass protests last year demanding the release of Furgal, the region’s former governor, who was replaced by the Kremlin with Mikhail Degtyaryov. (AP Photo/Sergei Demidov)

Buildings line the Amur River in Khabarovsk, Russia, in the country’s Far East. Parliamentary and local elections that conclude on Sunday, Sept. 19, 2011, will be closely watched to gauge how much anger against the Kremlin remains in the region, where its popular governor was arrested and replaced last year, causing mass protests. (AP Photo/Daniel Kozin)

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KHABAROVSK, Russia (AP) — The handful of demonstrators gathering each evening in Khabarovsk are a shadow of the masses who took part in an unusually sustained wave of protests last year in the Russian Far Eastern city, but they are a chronic reminder of the political tensions that persist.

The demonstrators have been demanding the release of the region’s popular former governor, Sergei Furgal, who was arrested last year on charges of being involved in killings.

Now, his Kremlin-appointed replacement, Mikhail Degtyaryov, is on the ballot for governor in the three days of regional voting that concludes Sunday. The regional election is taking place at the same time that Russians are voting for members of the State Duma, the national parliament.

The race for governor is being closely watched to gauge how much anger remains in the region, located seven time zones and 6,100 kilometers (3,800 miles) east of Moscow.

“The region really worries the Kremlin because they don’t want a repeat of those incidents (last years’ protests) of course. Khabarovsk is now under close supervision,” said Andrei Kolesnikov of the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank.

Three other people are on the ballot for governor, but supporters of Furgal and others in the city of about 600,000 complain they are insignificant candidates who were allowed to run to give the appearance of a democratic and competitive race.

“Whoever posed even the smallest threat was barred from running, and they left only spoiler candidates,” said 64-year-old protester Zigmund Khudyakov.

Notably, United Russia — the country’s dominant political party and loyal backer of President Vladimir Putin — is not fielding a candidate for governor in Khabarovsk. Nor is Russia’s second-largest party, the Communists.

Degtyaryov, a member of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, is widely believed to be backed by the Kremlin with both advice and money.

The man who wanted to run on the Communist ticket was kept off the ballot because he was unable to get enough signatures from officials. That aspiring candidate, Pyotr Perevezentsev, told The Associated Press that municipal authorities in some districts had been told by their superiors whose nominating petitions to sign.

“People representing the presidential administration curated these elections,” he said.

Separately, Furgal’s son Anton says he was kept off the ballot for the national parliament. “There is an opinion that if my last name had been Ivanov, for example, I would likely be allowed to run,” he said.

Degtyaryov rejects such claims.

“As head of the Khabarovsk regional government, I am obligated to ensure transparent, legal, free and fair elections, and we are following all of these provisions,” he said on a recent televised question-and-answer session with residents.

The weeks of protests that arose after Sergei Furgal’s arrest in July 2020 appeared to catch authorities by surprise. Unlike in Moscow, where police usually move quickly to disperse unsanctioned rallies, authorities didn’t interfere with the unauthorized demonstrations in Khabarovsk, apparently expecting them to fizzle out.

A Liberal Democratic Party member, Furgal won the 2018 regional gubernatorial election even though he had refrained from campaigning and publicly supported his Kremlin-backed rival.

His victory was a humiliating setback for United Russia, which also lost its control over the regional legislature.

While in office, Furgal earned a reputation as a “people’s governor,” cutting his own salary, ordering the sale of an expensive yacht bought by the previous administration, and offering new benefits to residents.

His arrest, which was shown on Russian TV stations, came after the Investigative Committee, the nation’s top criminal investigation agency, said he was accused of involvement in the murders of several businessmen in the region and nearby territories in 2004 and 2005. During interrogation in Moscow, Furgal denied the charges, according to the Tass news agency.

Ultranationalist lawmaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a veteran politician with a reputation for outspoken comments and also a member of the Liberal Democrats, once called Furgal “the best governor the region ever had.”

Furgal’s arrest brought hundreds, and then thousands, of people into the streets of Khabarovsk in a regular Saturday protest. A year later, the rallies — albeit much smaller — continue.

Local activists say that’s because of sustained pressure from authorities interested in ensuring Degtyaryov wins the election.

Under new rules enforced by police who monitor and film the protests, the rallies are restricted to 10 people at most. Officers disperse anything larger.

The protesters say they are pressured at work and at university, with some adding that they lost their jobs after being seen at the demonstrations.

Many wear T-shirts with the face of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny, while others carry signs depicting Furgal or denouncing the new governor.

“We constantly live in fear because any day we can be arrested,” said Denis Pedyash, a 47-year-old education worker who says he now comes to protests with a packed bag of essentials in case he is detained.

“It’s difficult. But people have hope and faith and are actively fighting the lawlessness of the authorities and the lawlessness of the elections, which are a laughingstock for the world to see,” Pedyash said.

Anna Frants and Olga Tregubova in Moscow contributed reporting.

This story has been corrected to show that the last name of the protester in the final two paragraphs is Pedyash, not Pedish.