From Performance to Opulence
Malcolm Cole is a marine engineer who has worked on a number of historic, high-performance motoryachts. At one time he supplied most of the British powerboat industry with virtually unbreakable fuel tanks for racing and fast pleasure craft...…
Malcolm Cole is a marine engineer who has worked on a number of historic, high-performance motoryachts. At one time he supplied most of the British powerboat industry with virtually unbreakable fuel tanks for racing and fast pleasure craft. He continues to run his companies Timeless Furniture and Timeless Tube. In this potted history of fast yachts, he laments the decline of speed in favour of more sedate cruising.
MC: I started my career in the boating industry in the late 1960s with a traditional south-coast boatyard that for decades had built motorboats in wood to traditional designs by Cox & Haswell. By the early 1970s the same yard was building a Bernard Olesinski design. The hull was moulded by Halmatic and at 65 feet it was probably the largest fibreglass motoryacht of its time. As a contract engineer, I helped sea trial the first V12 production high-speed MTU’s 1100hp diesels. We achieved 34 knots with a 40-ton boat, which was quite a breakthrough at the time.
The mid-70s took me to Florida where 70-100 foot boats, some pre-war and mostly still built in wood, were the order of the day. Bertram and Hatteras were building smaller craft in fibreglass with large capacity, petrol V8 engines. Denison’s yard was making the larger motoryachts and moving into aluminium. In the smaller vessels the innovation of inboard/outboard drives was probably the most significant development for small, planing day cruisers. A key figure during this era was the designer and racer Don Aronow. The ‘powerboat’ with sleek, beautiful lines combined with total performance had been born: boundaries were being pushed and Magnum, Donzi and Cigarette were the image makers of the day.
Meanwhile, across the pond, the UK had Don Shead, also a powerboat racer and designer who pioneered aluminium construction in the UK and followed on from the incredibly clever hull and propulsion engineering guru, Soni Levi. Enfield Marine’s 32-foot Miss Enfield II designed by Shead won the 1970 Cowes-Torquay Race. The gas turbine-powered Miss Embassy followed and although not successful in racing terms, I’m sure her use of turbines influenced a commission from King Juan Carlos of Spain to produce the first performance superyacht (although the term was not used until 20 years later): the gas turbine-powered Fortuna built in 1979 at Palmer Johnson’s Sturgeon Bay facility. At 90 feet long and with a top speed of 50 knots, it represented a quantum leap for the marine industry. Shead, a strong advocate of jet drives, influenced the Sunseeker range that continues today and other designers, such as the innovative Paolo Caliari, who gave us many of the Baglietto yachts.
In the early 1980s there was another breakthrough in performance from the American Howard Arneson, whose early claim to fame was the automatic swimming pool cleaner. He came up with a surface drive that bolted to the transom of a powerboat and moved on a universal joint to enable the boat to be steered and trimmed with just the lower half of the propeller blades in the water. Britain’s Cougar Marine quickly seized upon the Arneson drive to win powerboat races around the world, which led to the large monohull builders such as Magnum, Sunseeker and Mangusta using Arneson surface drives attached to high-performance diesel engines and occasionally gas turbines.
Meanwhile, the ‘gentleman’s yacht’, soon to become the superyacht, was about to receive a radical change. Concentrating on grace and modern lines far removed from traditional steel boat construction, Jon Bannenberg’s Carinthia VI and the Khashoggi-owned Nabila were ground-breaking yachts that set the standard for others to aspire to. Twenty years later, Carinthia was the yacht that inspired the American Lesley Wexner to commission Bannenberg and Lurssen to build the 93-metre Limitless. But on the performance front, Martin Francis’ Eco was the one to beat and it crossed the Atlantic with its own fuelling vessel in some very quick times. Another performance vessel, a triumph for Bannenberg’s Western Australian yard Oceanfast, was Thunder A, which was an exercise in pushing the boundaries in construction and performance. At 160 feet and 200 tons, built entirely of composite, I personally saw it hit 39.5 knots during sea trials. At 22 knots they engaged the Cincinnati-geared turbine and the acceleration was tremendous.
Frank Mulder has designed a succession of fast planning hulls for John Staluppi, such as Moonraker and The World Is Not Enough. But together with Luca Bassani’s 118 WallyPower powered by three gas turbines generating 16,000hp for a top speed of almost 60 knots, these have largely failed to grab the imagination of superyacht owners, who seem to have chosen more sedate and glamorous cruising yachts with a ‘mine is bigger than yours’ mentality. The shift has gone from performance to opulence with fine art in the cabins rather than horsepower in the engine room.
A memory which will always stick in my mind is watching The World is Not Enough pull out of Monaco with its turbines winding up. As it left the harbour, I think I was the only person to be literally transfixed by this sight and sound. I count myself privileged to have had the pleasure to work for the small group of performance superyacht owners who have certainly kept the best for themselves.
Related Links:
Timeless Furniture - company profile | company website
Timeless Tube - company profile | company website
MC: I started my career in the boating industry in the late 1960s with a traditional south-coast boatyard that for decades had built motorboats in wood to traditional designs by Cox & Haswell. By the early 1970s the same yard was building a Bernard Olesinski design. The hull was moulded by Halmatic and at 65 feet it was probably the largest fibreglass motoryacht of its time. As a contract engineer, I helped sea trial the first V12 production high-speed MTU’s 1100hp diesels. We achieved 34 knots with a 40-ton boat, which was quite a breakthrough at the time.
The mid-70s took me to Florida where 70-100 foot boats, some pre-war and mostly still built in wood, were the order of the day. Bertram and Hatteras were building smaller craft in fibreglass with large capacity, petrol V8 engines. Denison’s yard was making the larger motoryachts and moving into aluminium. In the smaller vessels the innovation of inboard/outboard drives was probably the most significant development for small, planing day cruisers. A key figure during this era was the designer and racer Don Aronow. The ‘powerboat’ with sleek, beautiful lines combined with total performance had been born: boundaries were being pushed and Magnum, Donzi and Cigarette were the image makers of the day.
Meanwhile, across the pond, the UK had Don Shead, also a powerboat racer and designer who pioneered aluminium construction in the UK and followed on from the incredibly clever hull and propulsion engineering guru, Soni Levi. Enfield Marine’s 32-foot Miss Enfield II designed by Shead won the 1970 Cowes-Torquay Race. The gas turbine-powered Miss Embassy followed and although not successful in racing terms, I’m sure her use of turbines influenced a commission from King Juan Carlos of Spain to produce the first performance superyacht (although the term was not used until 20 years later): the gas turbine-powered Fortuna built in 1979 at Palmer Johnson’s Sturgeon Bay facility. At 90 feet long and with a top speed of 50 knots, it represented a quantum leap for the marine industry. Shead, a strong advocate of jet drives, influenced the Sunseeker range that continues today and other designers, such as the innovative Paolo Caliari, who gave us many of the Baglietto yachts.
In the early 1980s there was another breakthrough in performance from the American Howard Arneson, whose early claim to fame was the automatic swimming pool cleaner. He came up with a surface drive that bolted to the transom of a powerboat and moved on a universal joint to enable the boat to be steered and trimmed with just the lower half of the propeller blades in the water. Britain’s Cougar Marine quickly seized upon the Arneson drive to win powerboat races around the world, which led to the large monohull builders such as Magnum, Sunseeker and Mangusta using Arneson surface drives attached to high-performance diesel engines and occasionally gas turbines.
Meanwhile, the ‘gentleman’s yacht’, soon to become the superyacht, was about to receive a radical change. Concentrating on grace and modern lines far removed from traditional steel boat construction, Jon Bannenberg’s Carinthia VI and the Khashoggi-owned Nabila were ground-breaking yachts that set the standard for others to aspire to. Twenty years later, Carinthia was the yacht that inspired the American Lesley Wexner to commission Bannenberg and Lurssen to build the 93-metre Limitless. But on the performance front, Martin Francis’ Eco was the one to beat and it crossed the Atlantic with its own fuelling vessel in some very quick times. Another performance vessel, a triumph for Bannenberg’s Western Australian yard Oceanfast, was Thunder A, which was an exercise in pushing the boundaries in construction and performance. At 160 feet and 200 tons, built entirely of composite, I personally saw it hit 39.5 knots during sea trials. At 22 knots they engaged the Cincinnati-geared turbine and the acceleration was tremendous.
Frank Mulder has designed a succession of fast planning hulls for John Staluppi, such as Moonraker and The World Is Not Enough. But together with Luca Bassani’s 118 WallyPower powered by three gas turbines generating 16,000hp for a top speed of almost 60 knots, these have largely failed to grab the imagination of superyacht owners, who seem to have chosen more sedate and glamorous cruising yachts with a ‘mine is bigger than yours’ mentality. The shift has gone from performance to opulence with fine art in the cabins rather than horsepower in the engine room.
A memory which will always stick in my mind is watching The World is Not Enough pull out of Monaco with its turbines winding up. As it left the harbour, I think I was the only person to be literally transfixed by this sight and sound. I count myself privileged to have had the pleasure to work for the small group of performance superyacht owners who have certainly kept the best for themselves.
Related Links:
Timeless Furniture - company profile | company website
Timeless Tube - company profile | company website
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