When the modern mega sailboat era started in 1988 with the launch of the Ed Dubois designed Aquel, for the most part the boats were ungainly, hard to manage, and very slow. This started to change a decade later as owners who were sailors began to demand more performance. One of the benchmark designs  was the Ron Holland designed, Huisman build, Juliet.

As we have seen in Palma the performance end is these days well covered with very high performance designs. Now there is a new trend, energy efficiency. The 87m/190 foot ketch shown above, another Holland/Huisman collaboration, is a lovely looking cruising yacht into which great effort has been put to make her efficient. We suspect she represents a new benchmark in the field of design and construction. Juliet provided the inspiration for this project.

We were fortunate to be invited aboard for a tour.

The first thing that strikes you is the scale of the gear. The loads are huge, and it takes a very experience crew, with sea sense, to prudently deal with a yacht like this.

How is this for a cap shroud!

The hull is aluminum, and they are using alloy tangs, hard anodized, with stainless inserts for the pin bearing surfaces.

One of the handling keys are these captive reel winches, all Huisman designed and built. The winches trim and ease.

The interior was covered, in boat yard mode, when we had our tour so we will concentrate on the engine room. Both engines live inside of sound shields.

The engineering station, with ship’s manuals, a 30″ Apple Cinema display, and office desk.

The systems are similar to what we do in many respects, just on a massive scale.  Thrusters are electric and very quiet. She has a massive lithium iron phosphate battery bank, 400kW of capacity!

There are remote temperature sensors fitted to various components, here in the exhaust system.

The temperature and a multitude of other items report on the shipwide computer system.

A very clever detail. This is a compressed air inlet, valve, and gauge, used to evacuate the sea chest.

The galley and crew quarters are forward.

Typical fiddle detail.

The ship’s library has an interesting stainless fiddle detail.

On passage this yacht typically sails at 10 to 12 knots, motors at 11, and occasionally reaches at 14 with a brisk breeze. With a full crew, being pushed, she will be much quicker, but then the risks escalate and mistakes will be costly. If you are concerned with a black cloud on a small yacht, imagine the stress for skipper and crew here as they ponder the potential loads and whether to reef ahead of the cloud or wait it out.

Now some history. We first met Ron Holland about 1976. He was a brash young designer, setting the racing world on its ear with a series of very hot new designs. He wore workboots in the land of topsiders. Very cool. Ron’s image is now more refined, his design portfolio amazing, and he is still designing good looking, quick boats.

Likewise, the Huisman yard has had an amazing maturation process. We met Walter Huisman at the Annapolis boat show aboard our Intermezzo ll about 1982. He came to have a look at a new style of yacht. A the time, his Flyer build was a state of the art racing machine, with a somewhat rough interior and crude systems (by our then standards). The distance they have traveled in terms of quality, engineering, and project management is astonishing.

This ketch and we are headed west. Perhaps we will see them sailing along the way. That would be a treat.