IT’S OH SO QUIET...

Speak to any yacht builder, or designer, and the story’s the same. “A term we’re hearing more and more from owners’ representatives is that their client is ‘allergic to noise’,” says Willem Jan van Cappellen. He’s the co-founder of Van Cappellen Consultancy, which works with independent clients as well as the likes of Feadship, Lürssen and Oceanco on sound projects for particularly large yachts. “At first, noise was just part of the building specs. It was a case of ‘let’s put some numbers in there that sound reasonable, that will give us a reasonably quiet boat’,” he says. “But in some of today’s projects, it’s one of the most important parameters.”

In fact, the company has worked on several yachts in the past year and a half, “all incredibly large, two of which were Feadships”, that Van Cappellen would consider “right at the limit of what’s actually possible”. One of them was a 110 metre which ended up with decibel levels measuring around the 30s or 40s – even directly above the engine room.

Often, this fixation on noise stems from owners who’ve been burned in the past: poor experiences on charter yachts, for example, or a current yacht with less sophisticated technology that’s been grating on them for the best part of a decade. “One particular owner came to us with his 15-year-old boat and said: ‘1 can hear exactly