elena bloody bay yacht owner

By SuperyachtNews 12 Aug 2014

'Elena' delivered to owner

Heesen's 47m 'elena', formerly project margarita, has been delivered to her owner.….

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How spec-built superyacht Elena became a winner

Photography by Emilio Bianchi

Heesen superyacht Elena is the outcome of one brave yard, one keen owner and one World Superyacht Award win for best displacement motor yacht of below 500Gt and above 40m .

Shipyards take their chances when starting a speculative build. Get it right and owners are lured by short waiting times and attractive pricing, since most of these boats are built on standard platforms; get it wrong and you’re left with a finished, yet unsold boat, ageing by the day and losing value. In this instance, Heesen got it right – but it was close.

In April 2014, the 47 metre hull known then as Project Margarita was just weeks away from completion at the yard’s facility in Oss, The Netherlands. She wasn’t named because she didn’t have an owner, but then a customer visited the yard.

“He was looking for a 37 or a 40 metre,” Heesen’s sales director Mark Cavendish recalls. “But we also showed him Project Margarita, and explained that she was available and nearly ready. He had a look, then said he’d take her.”

Elena’s quick delivery

The agreement was signed in May 2014 , and by July the yacht was cruising in Norwegian waters with her new owner and his young family. August was spent in the Mediterranean , and in September she took her place at the Quai des États-Unis for the Monaco Yacht Show. She had a name: Elena .

The 10th in Heesen’s successful 47 metre displacement class, Elena is a five-cabin yacht with berths for up to 12 guests and 10 crew. A pair of hefty, 4,000-series MTUs give her a maximum speed of 15 knots, and with a 60-tonne fuel capacity her cruising range is said to be 4,000 nautical miles. She is built for going places.

Her captain, Mario Merl, an Austrian veteran of some 14 years’ service on superyachts, both sail and power, from Italy, The Netherlands and Scandinavia, is full of praise for the yacht. On the foredeck he points to the excellent layout, deep, secure bulwarks and the vast stowage area in the fo’c’s’le, complete with workbench: “The guys (crew) really like that,” he says.

Down in the beautifully engineered machinery space he singles out the power management system, while forward on the lower deck he remarks on how spacious and comfortable the new MLC 2006 regulations have made the crew accommodation.

Designing a yacht built on spec

In spite of the last-minute sale, building such a large and expensive yacht – Elena ’s asking price was €28 million – is not the gamble it might seem, according to Cavendish: “It’s something we do quite regularly,” he says. “Clients who might be wary of embarking on a three-year build programme, starting with nothing, are often prepared to come in with a year to go, when the yacht is well on towards completion. It’s the shipyard taking the risk instead of the customer.”

In Elena ’s case that risk extended into an area the yard doesn’t usually have to worry about: interior design and finishing. “There is always the possibility of getting it wrong,” Mark Cavendish admits, “and producing an interior which might be too modern for the style of yacht, or too traditional.” He cites the example of the fast 50 metre Monaco Wolf , also exhibited at last year’s Monaco show, as a yacht that suited a modern, minimalist interior. For the steel-hulled Elena it was felt that something more traditional was in order. Heesen entrusted the project to Frank Laupman’s Omega Architects .

“Having no owner to talk to definitely makes the job harder,” says Laupman. “There was no detailed brief. So we set out to create a relaxing environment, with traditional forms and materials, in a contemporary ambiance.” The studio’s well-known use of a visual “horizon” came into play: dark tones like stained walnut and emperador marble below the line, and above it the brighter hues of light-stained oak, cream or off-white leathers and fabrics, and travertine.

Having no owner to talk to definitely makes the job harder. There was no detailed brief. So we set out to create a relaxing environment, with traditional forms and materials, in a contemporary ambiance.

Frank Laupman

Acutely conscious of the fact that he was designing a boat not for one owner but for dozens of potential owners, Frank Laupman knew his team could get so caught up in creating an interior with the broadest possible appeal that they’d end up with something bland. “Of course we worried about being too safe,” he says. “So we tried to follow the shipyard style, but also to make it 20 to 30 per cent different. You can’t just drive down the middle of the road – sometimes you have to go out to the edge. And we talked a lot amongst the design team, listening to all different points of view to arrive at a balance.”

There might have been no owner to lend his personality to the project, but according to Laupman the character of Heesen was itself a source of inspiration: “Heesen has its own style, and attracts people who know that style,” he suggests. “Once you work with two or three customers it becomes intuitive.”

Elena wins a World Superyacht Award

This gave confidence to the final design – enough certainly to impress our World Superyacht Awards judges, who awarded _Elena _a Neptune in Amsterdam in May (for Displacement Motor Yachts of below 500GT – 44 metres and above).

Areas of the accommodation are strongly themed: the dining area is a forest; the owner’s suite is inspired by the idea of a pond; and the earth tones of the guest suites contrast with the warmth and vibrancy of coloured upholstery and accessories. Furnishings have been selected from suppliers such as German firms Bergers and Pehl, with lighting fixtures by Cantalupi and Porta Romana, among others. There are numerous fabric designs from the likes of Fadini Borghi, Rubelli and Zimmer + Rohde. Engaging details lend the yacht a personality of her own: LED “starlight” in the upper saloon deckhead, for example, occasional tables of twig-like design, and the “tree of life” symbolism in the owner’s bathroom.

Elena ’s owner clocks up 5,600 miles in her first season

Elena ’s sea trials took place in a stern North Sea, her captain recalls, and gave him not a moment’s concern. She operates purely as a private yacht and even though she is her owner’s first, racked up an impressive 5,600 miles of cruising in her first season.

Many owners enjoy the process of building their yacht, meeting engineers and designers and thriving on the pressures of decision-making. Some even admit to becoming serial yacht-builders, selling on completed projects to get started on the next one. But Elena ’s owner is clearly more interested in using his yacht than building one, cruising widely, visiting far-flung anchorages and putting her to work doing exactly the job she’s designed for. Far from being a speculative venture, you might almost imagine she was built specially for him.

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"elena" was modeled on a historic sailing yacht of the same name that was built in 1910., julia zaltzman, julia zaltzman's most recent stories.

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Herreshoff made a name for himself designing several notable America’s Cup contenders. When Westward launched in 1910 she was the largest yacht built under the International Rule of 1908. She carried more canvas than her competitors and displayed a faster speed to windward than any other schooner. Herreshoff designed Elena as a sistership to Westward but fitted her with a fuller keel which lowered her center of ballast and amended the dimension of her rigs to further improve her windward ability. Unsurprisingly, she left the cream of the American schooner fleet in her wake, including Westward . Fast forward to 2009, McLaren, former captain of Westward ’s 2002 replica Eleonora , set out to repeat history and build another Elena that could wipe out all the competition. It took four years of meticulous craftsmanship to execute the original plans he had located at the MIT Museum in Massachusetts (with handwritten annotations), but the hard work paid off. Under her current ownership, Elena has competed in and won a clutch of regattas, including the Voiles de St Tropez, the Royal Regatta Cannes, and the St Barths Bucket. She’s crossed the Atlantic 16 times and covered 150,000 nautical miles.

Robb Report stepped aboard the yacht while docked in Monaco’s Port Hercules to see the fruits of McLaren’s labor. While her towering wooden masts, 39-foot bowsprit, and extensive sail plan are exact replicas, McLaren curated the interior spaces himself, from the original Frank Beken photographs that adorn the solid mahogany, Georgian raised paneled walls to the ruby red leather upholstery and vintage fittings. “All the fixtures, from the lights to the hinges, were acquired before I even started building the yacht,” he told Robb Report . “They’re a bit wonky and rattly, but they’re all original items that I sourced in London and then gold plated to cut down on maintenance.”

The job of varnishing the exterior woodwork is never ending—“The day you finish is the day you need to start again,” jokes McLaren—but the 15-year-old interior remains as fresh as the day it came out of the yard, despite regular charters and a few rowdy guests. The main mast descends through the center of the boat in a show of force, but the real design feature is the cantilevered skylight in the main salon and dining area. It was originally conceived to lift off during a racing environment to allow the sails to be fed from the main deck down to the packing crew below. Today, the only elements passing through are a cooling sea breeze and plenty of natural light.

“ Elena is fared like a race boat to the bottom of the keel, which gives her a slippery hull and means she can easily sail in a five-knot breeze,” he says. “It would be difficult for a modern carbon fiber boat to sail in those conditions, but Elena is 225 tons of steel, with a wooden mast, Dacron sails, and wire rigging, and can do it easily.” “I sailed her sistership, Eleonora , and knew what to expect, but you don’t know what you have until you go neck and neck,” he adds. “When we beat them in our first regatta in Monaco in 2009 it was an amazing feeling. Sailing on Elena is an almost balletic experience.” For McLaren, the love affair will never end, but for Elena ’s owner, it’s a different story. The yacht, which is listed for charter and sale with Y.CO , now awaits a new sailing enthusiast looking to recreate the rivalry and camaraderie that crisscrossed the oceans in the roaring 1920s.

Click here to see all the photos of Elena.

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ELENA yacht NOT for charter*

46.7m  /  153'3 | heesen | 2014.

Owner & Guests

Cabin Configuration

• Previous Yacht

Special Features:

• Impressive 4,000nm range
• Lloyds Register ✠100A1 SSC YACHT classification
• Award winning
• Interior design from Omega Architects
• Sleeps 10 overnight

The award winning 46.7m/153'3" motor yacht 'Elena' was built by Heesen in the Netherlands at their Oss shipyard. Her interior is styled by Dutch designer design house Omega Architects and she was delivered to her owner in June 2014. This luxury vessel's exterior design is the work of Omega Architects.

Guest Accommodation

Elena has been designed to comfortably accommodate up to 10 guests in 5 suites. She is also capable of carrying up to 9 crew onboard to ensure a relaxed luxury yacht experience.

Onboard Comfort & Entertainment

Her features include deck jacuzzi and air conditioning.

Range & Performance

Elena is built with a steel hull and aluminium superstructure, with teak decks. Powered by twin diesel MTU (8V 4000 M63) 1,340hp engines, she comfortably cruises at 12 knots, reaches a maximum speed of 14 knots with a range of up to 4,000 nautical miles from her 60,000 litre fuel tanks at 12 knots. Elena features at-anchor stabilizers providing exceptional comfort levels. Her water tanks store around 20,000 Litres of fresh water. She was built to Lloyds Register ✠100A1 SSC YACHT classification society rules, and is MCA LY2 Compliant.

*Charter Elena Motor Yacht

Motor yacht Elena is currently not believed to be available for private Charter. To view similar yachts for charter , or contact your Yacht Charter Broker for information about renting a luxury charter yacht.

Elena Yacht Owner, Captain or marketing company

'Yacht Charter Fleet' is a free information service, if your yacht is available for charter please contact us with details and photos and we will update our records.

Elena Photos

Elena Awards & Nominations

• The World Superyacht Awards 2015 Displacement Motor Yachts of below 500GT – 43m and above Winner
• International Superyacht Society Awards 2015 Best Power 40m - 65m Nomination
• Asia Boating Award 2015 Best Worldwide Semi Custom Built Yacht (25m and above) Finalist

NOTE to U.S. Customs & Border Protection

Specification

M/Y Elena

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