Design Insight
Personal taste
When experienced sailors define their own perfect yacht they often find others have been thinking the same thing. If you have a lifetime of experience in the industry you’re better placed than most to pull it off...
When Michael Schmidt wanted a large yacht to go off cruising with his wife, he found nothing on the market – new or second-hand – that came near to meeting his rather exacting requirements. Most people in that position would explain their ideas to a designer and commission a full custom shipyard to build the boat they want, but Schmidt went much further than that and founded a whole new shipyard to ensure that he had total control over every aspect of the build. Unsurprisingly, given Schmidt’s entrepreneurial spirit and keen nose for such things, it turned out that there was a gap in the market for the sort of yacht he had in mind and six years on, his Y Yachts shipyard continues to thrive. It must be said that Schmidt is neither a typical yacht buyer nor an average sailor. One of Europe’s major yachtbroking networks bears his name; his Yachtwerft Wedel produced some of the fastest IOR racers of the 1980s – boats such as Pinta, Düsselboot, Outsider and Container – and he personally won the Admiral’s Cup for Germany in 1985 as skipper of Rubin. When the Berlin Wall came down he moved swiftly to the former East Germany, founded Hanse Yachts in the historic Hanseatic League port of Greifswald in 1990 and grew it to become the world’s second-largest producer of sailing yachts (and a major-league
76 SEAHORSE
player in the motorboat market too) before selling the business in 2011. The fundamental problem that Schmidt perceived with all of the yachts he looked at in 2012 was that they were unnecessarily complicated. ‘The real challenge is to reduce a yacht to its essentials,’ he says. ‘Our credo is: the simpler the boat, the purer the sailing experience and the greater the pleasure. Our goal is clear and simple: use the best technology available to simplify sailing and put the joy back into it. This is why our yachts are made to emphasise the essentials of sailing: easy handling, alone or with company, anywhere in the world.’
One of Schmidt’s most successful innovations during his tenure at the helm of Hanse Yachts was to insist that all yachts produced by the yard, no matter what size, had a cockpit layout that made it easy to sail them singlehanded. Looking back, this might seem like a bit of a nobrainer but at the time it was a real game- changer for the boatbuilding industry. At Y Yachts, that concept has been taken a long way further, with yachts up to 90ft (27m) long that are designed to be sailed solo or by a couple. The standard fit-out for all models includes quarters for a professional skipper and crew, separate from the owner's and guests’ accommodation, but quite unlike most yachts of similar size,
Above: ʻThe real challenge is to reduce a yacht to its essentials... the simpler the boat, the purer the experience and the
greater the pleasure.ʼ The 22m (70ft) Y7 takes Michael Schmidtʼs philosophy to its logical conclusion. Itʼs rare for a yacht of this size, power and performance potential to be easy enough to handle that an owner with average skills and fitness levels can confidently sail it
singlehanded
Y Yachts are engineered to give their owners the option of cruising without any paid hands on board whenever they wish to do so.
Simplicity aside, two more key parameters for Schmidt’s own yacht and for the shipyard that followed were light displacement and a remarkable turn of speed: ‘Fast hull designs, the latest materials, perfect engineering and outstanding craftsmanship make our yachts suitable for occasional racing as well as for relaxed afternoons at sea.’ Light displacement means carbon fibre and hi-tech composite construction throughout. But for Schmidt, what’s left out is as important as what goes in: ‘The ideal cruiser is the opposite of a heavy yacht overloaded with all possible features. Sailing fun is made possible by a simple boat that is reduced to the bare essentials without sacrificing comfort.’ Performance in light airs is a particularly important part of Schmidt’s overall vision: ‘A Y Yacht must be able to run at a reasonable speed even in the lightest wind without starting the engine. Once you have experienced this, you don’t want to sail any other yacht.’ The final key component of the Y Yachts formula is a strong, original and enduring sense of style, at once timeless and state-of-the-art: ‘A yacht needs her own aesthetic.
NICO KRAUSS
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