Ela is a strikingyacht, with a chic plumb bow and a lightness to her profile thanks to large expanses of glass. Parked on the comer of the prominent Pier 66 Marina in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, she is the reason why Heesen director of sales Thom Conboy’s phone has been ringing off the hook recently. But this is no one-off custom creation. Instead, she’s identical on the outside to three other Heesens that came before her.
It’s safe to say that the Dutch shipyard has managed to corner this market of 50-to 55-metre yachts available practically on demand. “Our business model of spec building has led Heesen to wild success in the last 20 years, ” Conboy says.
The builder duplicates a fashionable exterior design, popular general arrangement and proven mechanical platform to turn out impeccably engineered and eminently liveable yachts. But at this super-size range, nobody wants a production yacht. That’s where interior designers like Cristiano Gatto come in. The Italian has built a symbiotic relationship with the yard since he worked on the interior of the fully custom yacht Crazy Me, the Gary Grant-designed 50-metre launched in 2013.
“We started to see that the Italian way and the Dutch so far.
