never understand that,” says Cor D
Rover, designer of Benetti’s (very)
custom 67 metre Seasense. The
subject of his bemusement is
superyacht design that stacks big
volume interiors on to the world’s
finest vehicles for appreciating the
outdoors. “This is a client in real
estate in New York. He spends his weekdays in air-conditioned
skyscrapers; finally you go out at sea for the weekend and you’re
going to sit inside again in an air-conditioned environment?”
Absolutely not, was the answer from this particular owner,
Charles C Cohen, whose portfolio of real estate, fashion, film and
wine businesses makes him amply qualified to comment on
matters of lifestyle. “I wasn’t interested in a ship that had a lot of
enclosed living areas with low ceilings and dark wood,” he says.
“I wanted it to be light, I wanted it to be airy, I wanted to have
ceiling height. I wanted to celebrate the outdoors.”
This synergy of purpose between owner and designer has
resulted in a yacht that doesn’t simply maximise exterior spaces
- it uses them as a starting point for the entire design. The project
was sparked five years ago when Benetti asked a selection of top
designers to pen concepts for the Italian yard, presented with
fanfare at the 2012 Monaco Yacht Show. These became a book – a fantastical
brochure for Benetti clients – and when Cohen leafed through its pages,
Cor D Rover’s pool-centric drawing stood out. “You see a lot of swimming
pools,” says Rover, “but some of them are even in the lower deck, which
means you are swimming without any ray of sun, which I think is sad.”
Cohen, who has owned three Rivas and appreciates feeling the elements
while at sea, was entirely on board with this idea. In fact he wanted no
obstacles at all to sunlight glinting off his aft deck water feature. “Originally
part of the pool was under the overhang of the deck above it,” he says, “and
I worked with Benetti on pulling that out from the shadow into the sunlight,
which resulted in the boat being stretched in the rear.”
The proportions of the pool itself also necessitated that lengthening.
“We started with a six by three metre pool, but the owner wanted it bigger,”
says Rover. At 10 by 3.6 metres, with a depth of 1.2 metres at its deepest
point, the result feels exceptionally large. Consider this: Oceanco’s 2007
Alfa Nero is 15 metres longer, but that yacht’s famous pool (the first of its
kind) is only 1.6 metres longer than Seasense’s, and is almost the same width.
Supporting 27,000 litres of water was another task facing Benetti. While
project engineer Marco Coiatelli plays down the difficulty – “we are not
building rockets” – the scale of this feature did require beefing up its
surrounds. “That swimming pool is part of the hull, so it is made of steel;
it’s not something inserted in the structure of the hull,” says Coiatelli. “We
had to strengthen the bottom of the pool to withstand the forces coming“I
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