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Make sure you MIX business w/ Pleasure!

March 13, 2008

lurssen-kismet-main.jpg At 223 feet LOA with a beam of 42 feet and towering 66 feet to the top of her radars, she turned heads from the 17th Street Causeway during last year’s Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show. At the behest of Peter Lürssen, whose yard built the $130-million yacht in 2006, journalists were allowed to inspect Kismet, whose name means destiny—maybe doubly so for anyone with the means to either buy or charter her. What I found, as I made my way through all six decks, was a vessel finished with extraordinary detail and care, which explains, for instance, why the gold- and silver-leaf murals of the New York skyline in the dining room had to be redone twice. But there was more.

As I slipped on my protective booties and entered the main saloon, smooth jazz trickled off the baby grand Steinway player piano in the aft-starboard corner. The room’s soft-toned linen walls are accented with floral designs in pearl embroidery, while the couches and chairs are arranged like a box in the center of the cream carpet. A forward partition can block off the lounge for family movie screenings, but with the push of a button, its center lowers, tucking away the projection screen and opening up the saloon to accommodate the flow of large parties. Beside the lounge, two Portuguese-made, man-size alabaster vases stand as sentries to the more private interior.

lurssen-kismet-main2.jpg As the saloon indicates, the owner can use this yacht for any occasion, whether it be a family gathering or a large corporate meeting. This dual-purpose design philosophy emanates throughout Kismet, from her formal but welcoming decor to her thoughtful engineering. Rooms like the disco—with its massive round skylight centered over the dance floor—are constructed to meet the demands of versatilty. It’s just the right size to feel full with ten or 12 friends milling about, but with the addition of a bar in the back and glass doors opening onto the large sundeck, it’s just as capable of being the dance floor at a crowded black-tie function.
When it’s time relax, guests can take the midships glass elevator down to the massage room on the yacht’s lowest level. Grouped around it are four identical, 323-square-foot guest staterooms, where the main points of interest are not so much the gold-embossed moldings as the engineering. With the push of a button, the king berth in each stateroom splits in half and slides apart on a track to become two berths. Another button turns on the TV embedded in the mirror in the head, so a guest can brush his or her teeth while watching CNBC or SpongeBob Square Pants. And instead of a “Do Not Disturb” placard that dangles from the square golden doorknob, he or she can depress yet another button, and the staff is alerted to the request for solitude.

lurssen-kismet-main3.jpg Perhaps the only area on the vessel that doesn’t cater to dual use is the master suite—it’s devoted strictly to personal luxury. After retiring past a door that resembles a bank vault, the owner can doze off in the king-size centerline bed, where instead of counting sheep, he may be inclined to count impalas, like those painted above the headboard (the VIP on the deck above has cheetahs).

lurssen-kismet-main4.jpg Forward, the full-beam bath has a centerline tub carved from a single block of marble. (It reportedly took the designers three tries to locate the perfect block.) The owner can also walk around the peacock feathers painted on frosted glass and Grecian pillars to the shower, then grab a robe and sit for breakfast on either the port or starboard private terrace.

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For eating with company he can walk up one deck (which holds the bridge, VIP suite, and disco) to the nearly full-beam walnut dining table with mahogany veneer, an imposing piece of furniture. Comfortably seating 14 and set behind the two New York City tableaus, the dining space has a certain gravitas, like that of a company boardroom—you could just as easily imagine briefcases in lieu of plates on the table.

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But dealmakers and family aren’t the only ones who dine well aboard this yacht: The crew area on Kismet is worth noting. Unlike the cramped quarters sometimes reserved for people who make their lives upon a vessel, the crew mess on Kismet is a first-rate setup. To port a series of dining tables allow for 18-person lunches or movie-watching on the plasma TV. On the wall over the buffet sits another plasma TV; anyone who needs a snack can access the private, U-shape galley with adjoining private pantry. And for loading food onto the vessel, the crew has it easy. Instead of carrying it all through the interior, a large port-side door allows for the provisions to be loaded in en masse.

The thoughtful construction of spaces that most visitors won’t see continues with the engine room. In this two-deck space, the observational catwalk girding the perimeter looks down onto air-started twin Caterpillar 3512s painted in Signal White. They’re rated to run at 100-percent continuous output and push the vessel to a cruising speed of around 16 knots, at which speed her range is an estimated 5,000 nautical miles. Mounted above are the exhaust silencers, silver canisters each larger than a Chevy Suburban, while aft of them are three Caterpillar C18 gensets and a backup C9 genset rated at 289 kW. And all are housed not in aluminum soundshields but inside soundproofed rooms that help reduce engine-room sound levels and keep all nearby guest areas quiet as well.
But the most interesting aspect of Kismet’s electrical system is another way to silence her gensets: minimizing their use while she’s in port by running shore power through a special Atlas power converter setup. A custom touchscreen allows Kismet’s engineers to place a maximun draw limit on the shore power. If the yacht requires more power than is available from landside hookups, the Atlas will automatically start up one of Kismet’s gensets, all without any loss of electricity. This means that items like guests’ computers won’t blink—whether they’re preparing a PowerPoint or uploading vacation photos.

Aft of the catwalk, the control room to starboard has a German Stein & Sohn monitoring system that digitizes and tracks almost all engine-room systems, including the level, pressure, and temperature of every tank. The resulting data can be graphically displayed to create a trend chart, day by day or minute by minute, to see where the wear and tear is occurring and fix a problem before it starts. All valves are automated, so that with a mouse click, the engineer can prep the vessel for bunkering, shift freshwater ballast, or blast more cool air to the skylounge on the top deck. In case of an emergency, controls for most main systems, including door locks, the fire-suppression system, and intrusion alarms, are duplicated on the bridge.

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Written by UniqueMP · Filed Under Yachts 

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