The Wally way

Wally yachts, whether sail or power, stir up a gamut of emotions in owners. There are the traditionalists who look askance at the radical styling and minimalist interiors, and the enthusiasts who regard Luca Bassani as a saviour put on this Earth to shake up the ‘white boat’ school of yacht design. The truth lies somewhere in between, but one thing is certain: nearly 20 years after he established the brand, it is difficult to imagine a world without Wally Yachts.

When talking with Luca Bassani it is almost impossible to separate the owner from the designer and the builder. A hugely experienced yachtsman who has sailed all his life, the first boat he helped to design was a 96ft sloop built for his industrialist father by Camper & Nicholsons in the late 1970s and inspired by Gianni Agnelli’s Agneta. Bassani’s evident passion for sailing and commitment to what he does means he is a man who dislikes compromises, while his focus on innovation has led to ups and downs in the company’s finances.



In recent years Wally has been through a string of equity investors and would-be partners, including the Camuzzi Group, Zurich-based Solidus Asset Management, Hermés and, latterly, Archimedia. (Headed by Englishman John Hunt, Archimedia retains a minority interest in the Monaco-based holding company, but has opted not to increase that stake through a convertible loan agreement). A new investor is expected to be announced shortly, but for the time being Bassani is back in the driving seat, where most people think he belongs.

As if to demonstrate this renewed commitment and following the recent launches of the Wally 50m megasailer and Hamilton, the first high-performance WallyCento, the maverick yachtbuilder and owner was on hand during the media presentation of Kanga, the first 26m semi-custom WallyAce, in Italy earlier this summer, where The Superyacht Owner got a chance to spend some time with the man behind the brand.



By his own admission, Bassani is something of an extremist. In the wake of the gargantuan Wally Why and Wally Island concepts and the equally diminutive Wally Nano, the full-displacement pocket superyacht represents a new departure for the company and a coming-down-to-earth for its uncompromising founder and CEO that probably reflects the changing sensitivities of the market.

“The displacement option was a fundamental decision,” says Bassani. “We have seen the economic and social status quo change dramatically in the past few years and to my mind a motoryacht has to reflect these new conditions in terms of fuel performance. A displacement hull also means a wider beam, which translates into more interior and exterior volume and added comfort.”

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“I would like to think my legacy to the industry is that we’re no longer shackled by tradition.” – Luca Bassani.

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Bassani describes the motoryacht’s fuel consumption as “simply phenomenal” with a range that varies from 3,000nm (5lt/nm) at 12 knots to a remarkable 10,000nm (1.5lt/nm) at eight knots. This is quite a turnaround for the former owner of the gas-guzzling, 60-knot WallyPower 118, which was finally sold to a Chinese-American owner last year who uses it as a chase boat when chartering in the Med. As a man who has never taken much notice of what others in the yachting industry say or do, this is precisely the kind of dichotomy that Bassani revels in, but one that also reflects his changing notions of what yacht ownership is all about.



Today he owns a 47ft WallyTender, but the launch of Wallygator (now Neriida) in 1991 marked the beginning of his love affair with advanced composites and easy handling in order to make sailing a faster and more comfortable experience. His dissatisfaction with the lack of innovation in yacht design ultimately led to him setting up Wally Yachts three years later.

“I saw Rising Sun off Portofino a while back and it dwarfed the other yachts nearby, although they were 80 or 90 metres in length,” he explains. “All owners to some degree are guilty of vanity when it comes to the size of their yachts, but with so many big boats around it’s difficult to find anywhere on the water to be alone any more. So my new ideal is not to have a bigger yacht, but a series of them, a mini fleet if you like. A WallyAce, for example, perhaps combined with a fast 80-footer like Highland Fling and a WallyTender. A small fleet like that offers fun and flexibility and might even cost less than a bigger boat.”

Bassani claims that nowadays almost every performance sailing boat has a bit of Wally in it. “Take swept-back spreaders; we didn’t invent them, but they were tried and abandoned on cruising yachts before we reintroduced them over 10 years ago. The same goes for the small jib when everyone thought an overlapping jib was the only way to go. Canting keels, bomb-bay anchoring systems, flush decks, using the foredeck as an exterior living space – the list goes on. We were determined to prove the worth of these ideas and carried on virtually alone for years.”



“I’ve always built boats because it’s something I love doing,” he says. “Making money out of it is more difficult, and getting harder all the time. The world has changed since I started out. The big-name manufacturers have induced people to buy boats much as they do cars. The result is more owners, but they have less experience or yachting culture. On the other hand, I think designers, naval architects and shipyards feel they have more freedom to experiment, which wasn’t the case before Wally appeared on the scene when all yacht exteriors and interiors looked the same. I would like to think my legacy to the industry is that we’re no longer shackled by tradition.”

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