The owner of Aviva pushed his design team
to build a yacht around a tennis court, and the result was a 98m, 4,966GT yacht that was
launched just three years later. Let's get this out of the way: she's huge. When Abeking & Rasmussen delivered Aviva in
2017, she became the 46th longest yacht in the world, and there are few boats of her
length that can match her volume. Her 17.24-meter beam is so large that the
designers had to build side decks to the bridge deck superstructure to improve crew circulation
and refine the profile because "we really didn't need that much beam." They were right. Today we will tell you about the $150 Million
Superyacht, Aviva. Before we start go ahead and subscribe to
the channel and share our videos with your friends. Without any further delay. Let us start. The spaces on board are gloriously expansive,
from guest suites the size of a master suite on a 50-meter yacht to an owner's wardrobe
that is "larger than my house in France," as designer Andrew Langton puts it. The fact that scale is not near the top of
Aviva's list of exceptional characteristics speaks to the project's inventiveness and
belief-defying ambition. The third Aviva boat has been delivered to
Joe Lewis, a British billionaire and key shareholder in Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. The first, a 62-meter Winch design, was built
at Feadship in the Netherlands, while the second, a 68-meter Reymond Langton design,
was built at Abeking & Rasmussen in Lemwerder, near Bremen, on the banks of the Weser River. Lewis returned to Abeking for his most ambitious
effort yet. “Surprisingly, they were far less conservative
than other folks. Maybe it's because of the military stuff they
do,” says Toby Silverton, the project's head of design, who worked with Reymond Langton
on Lewis's two prior projects. The yard's largest project had been the 82.48-meter
Secret, but in order to compete with Aviva, it expanded its construction shed to accept
yachts up to 125 meters, a brave leap into a higher size category. Its bravery didn't stop there. “I guess the major brief was to build a
huge boat around a paddle tennis court,” Andreas Hering, the yard's project manager,
explains with great understatement. “In three years,” she says. Even if the yard already had a shed large
enough for the purpose, a project of this magnitude could easily take five years. And this was a project that was out of the
ordinary. The intricate interior was completed in six
months, when they had hoped for a year, and the outside was completed in just one month,
when it could have easily taken six. Knowing this only adds to the elegance of
Aviva's profile. Langton explains, “There was a lot of work
to break up the mass using facets.” “We also attempted to maintain the lines
as long as possible, so the sheer line is rather long and jumps up with a crisp line.” To hide the scale, they also reduced the size
of the details that serve as size cues. Rub rails have been removed, stanchions have
been replaced with glass, crew quarters windows have been clustered to create long lines of
glazing, and even the anchor pocket has been stretched and hidden, lest a glittering square
of stainless steal the show. The silver superstructure's upright parts
were additionally highlighted in a darker tone. “They fade a little, making the boat's slope
more raked,” as Langton explains. The long bow contributes to the appearance,
but the aesthetic is a result of a practical decision: this boat will travel far, and the
long covered bow makes it more likely to survive rogue waves like those that have devastated
a few cruise ships in the past. Silverton explains “I spoke with the captain
of the QE2 who had gone through a wave, and what happened was that all the wheelhouse
glass shattered, they had four feet of water, you lose all your instruments, and you have
no ability to manage the boat, communicate, or navigate,”. He built more waterproof doors and protected
the two forward VIP staterooms and luxury wheelhouse to strengthen Aviva so that they
could be sealed off to save the boat. He claims that even if you lose everything
on the bridge, you can still maneuver and manage the boat from the engine room. The major goal of naval architecture, aside
from safety, was stability. Silverton was frustrated by a lack of research
on how rolling motion affects passengers before building Lewis's second Aviva, so he put 36
individuals in a motion simulator for three days. He explains, "There are two things: one is
the duration of roll, and the second is the way it rolls." “The 62 meter's usual roll time is roughly
7.5-7.8 seconds, which is one of two roll periods that people were very angry about. And we discovered that people were considerably
more tolerant of it if it was a soft stop followed by a soft moving away.” The second boat's design addressed these issues,
and the new Aviva's hull is a development of that design. It has a nipped-in "waist" that bulges out
beneath the waterline. The roll is both slowed and softened as a
result of this. Her near-vertical bow and short sailing-boat-like
stern (which helps prevent pitching) also contribute to her efficiency. So much so that they were able to reduce the
engine size by two from the original specification (she now has two MTU 16V4000 M73L engines
that each produce 2,880kW) and still hit 20.3 knots in sea testing. Despite an official cruising speed of 14 knots,
Silverton claims that she is most comfortable at a lively 16.5 knots. MAGLift stabilizers aft and one set of fin
stabilizers forward provide further firmness, while supplemental electric motors provide
smooth handling and silent 11 knot operating at night. However, it is the paddle tennis court that
is at the core of this project, both literally and metaphorically. Lewis' prior yacht travels had been limited
to areas with courts, so this high-intensity squash-tennis hybrid is a daily habit for
him. Langton explains, “The original idea I had
was to install it on the aft end main deck with folding panels and sliding walls.” “Because it's so enormous, it never occurred
to me to put it inside.” Not only would putting the court in the back
have resulted in a profile that Langton compares to that of a pick-up truck, but the court
would not have been playable at main-deck level, according to Silverton. “You're way above the roll center, so it's
going sideways — people can't deal with sideways ground movement,” Silverton explains. “As a result, we considered putting it as
low as possible.” It took a lot of engineering to get such a
wide area in that location, but the results are stunning. Its dimensions confound spatial perception;
it appears unlikely that this towering 6.65-metre-tall room could fit into Aviva's profile. The ethos in terms of interior styling was
"love it or lose it" - at least visibly. “When this door is closed, it disappears
and becomes part of the wall,” Langton explains as he swings it to the latch, where its undulations
perfectly match those on the wall. “You can either make a door a focal point,
or you can make it disappear.” Handles on wardrobes are undetectable, while
those on cabin doors are twisted and textured, embedded into a fractured bronze plate that
looks "like desert mud." Costly materials such as sunset-toned onyx,
vanilla marble, shagreen, and glistening leathers complement a neutral palette. Alex Turco's glossy panels dripping with resin
and acrylic can be found in the foyer, and Sabina Fay Braxton's velvet panels speckled
with gold can be found over guest bedrooms. Staircases are works of art, with one having
floating treads that look like turbine blades and another spiraling up from the floor in
leather and glass. That is all for today folks! Hope you enjoyed!
