F
rom the outside Rock.It looks hip and modern but,
at the same time, classy and without any on-trend
aggressive angularity. In car design vernacular,
the 60.35 metre motor yacht is a little more
McLaren 675, a little less Lamborghini Aventador.
The bow is sharply raked and moderately flared
but its raised, bevelled bulwarks and absence of a teak cap rail
speak to the 21st century. A curved fashion plate at the main
deck and a single angle shared by superstructure and mast
above support the illusion of power. Portlights and windows
are simple, efective squares and rectangles that, paired with
polished stainless louvres and grilles, bring a nuance of
industrial chic. The interior is a diferent melody, played with the
most traditional materials: bookmatched flame mahogany, steel
and stone. Rather than a disconnect, it is a conversation about
classic materials used in surprisingly modern ways.
The project began around the 40 metre mark but grew
during development to incorporate not
only plenty of space for entertaining but
also to support a lot of culinary creativity
with a large main deck galley. The Feadship
De Voogt/Sinot Exclusive Yacht Design
pairing has occurred before on other
contemporary Feadships such as Musashi
and Fountainhead, coincidentally also
built for American clients.
Sinot was founded back in the late 1990s,
not in yacht décor but in industrial design
and transportation, such as trains and
airplanes. This interest in the machine and
how things work and fit together is a hallmark of the company’s
work just as much as its preference for clean lines and light
woods, says the project’s lead designer, Zlatko Imamovic. And
therein rose an interesting challenge.
The owners’ original brief, divulged Feadship, began with
a reference to a yacht that looked “fast on the outside but cosy
on the inside”. In the owners’ minds, “cosy” meant dark woods.
Rock.It’s owners are Jimmy John and Leslie Liautaud from
Illinois, him the founder of the well-known Jimmy John’sThere are 30 custom-made pieces of furniture
on board Rock.It, all courtesy of Pollaro, the
New Jersey-based manufacturersandwich chain. With their three children, they enjoy water
sports, entertaining, food and music, not necessarily in that
order. After owning several Sea Rays, the Liautauds became
interested in sport fishing and bought a 26 metre Merritt
sportfisher called III Amigos. Rock.It is the family’s first large
yacht, although they have chartered before, which is what, the
owner says, led him to Feadship. “It’s the best of the best,” he says.
The exterior settled, Liautaud solicited proposals for the
interior, including one from Sinot that interpreted “cosy”
with various shades of walnut. While he liked the look, he told
Sinot he would like it a lot better if it was
mahogany with beamed overheads like one
of his favourite restaurants in Chicago and
several US-built yachts he had seen.
Sinot’s next proposal featured a
combination of straight grain and flame
mahogany, and lots of it, with fielded
bookmatched panels as a nod to tradition,
mixed with modern gloss joinery on the
staircase and in the furniture, with a little
marquetry to showcase craftsmanship
and copious backlit onyx. Henk de Vries,
Feadship’s CEO, admits that the amount
of flame mahogany in the design nearly scuttled the project
because the builder and joinery company had such diiculty
in finding enough timber sections of similar size and grain.
At first the specs called for all the mahogany to be finished
in gloss lacquer. “I worried about that,” says De Vries. “I started
to think that it might look too much like the interior of an
expensive car.” A matt finish, on the other hand, looked too
vintage. “We stopped the work and made seven panels one
metre square with seven diferent finishes, from flat matt to
high gloss, for him to choose,” says De Vries. “He picked the
one right in the middle.”
As well as a family boat, Rock.It is designed to entertain. She
sports a total of three bars, one of which anchors the yacht’sThe owners’
original brief was
for a yacht that
looked “fast on the
outside but cosy
on the inside”
122