Diane M. Byrne

The Hatteras M90 Panacera is a different kind of entry-level superyacht.

The 7 weirdest requests made of yacht designers—and yes, it was a real pony

With its new 125, Westport Shipyards listened to customers and surprised them as well.

The Lumière makes yacht walls and ceilings part of the landscape.

Yachts International presents the 10 largest yachts launched in the past year.

Topaz, which spent time in Barcelona this past April, is another yacht cloaked in secrecy. While Terence Disdale created her interior, there are no details on her décor.

Twenty years ago, Boston Whalers and RIBs were as popular with large-yacht buyers as they were with boaters who owned just these craft. They served as occasional toys or were used for utilitarian purposes by the mothership’s crew, and sometimes both. The more yachts grew in size, though, the more time they started spending at anchor. Suddenly, owners found themselves needing a better way of getting to and from shore.

VSY launched its largest yacht so far, Stella Maris, in July 2012. She anchored off Port Hercule in Monaco for invitation-only visits during the Monaco Yacht Show with the owner’s blessing, even though not everything was fully in place yet.

Part of a multi-yacht contract signed by the former HDW shipyard in Germany, the public saw Odessa II on sea trials in April of this year. Some reports suggest the deal stipulated that the yard build upward of six yachts under that contract.

By now, the world knows that the late Steve Jobs commissioned Venus and died before her completion. That much was revealed in his biography and verified by designer Philippe Starck.

The largest yacht built by Italy-based CRN splashed in January, to great fanfare. The owner’s family attended along with 3,000 others, including every craftsperson who worked on her and their families, residents of CRN’s home base of Ancona and even the Chinese ambassador to Italy.

Jim Harris, of the interior-design firm J.W. Harris, has worked with the owners of Secret on more than a dozen homes and on a previous yacht, so he was a natural choice for this project.

While under construction, Oceanco referred to St. Princess Olga simply as Y708, her hull number. The late designer Alberto Pinto took her on as one of his last projects.

“Quattroelle” refers to what the owner considers the four most important Ls: Love, Life, Liberty and Luxury. You can even spy four Ls, grouped into two sets of interlocking letters, painted on her bow and mast.

Madame Gu, built under the project name Dream, is the largest Feadship thus far and the largest yacht built in Holland. You’ll have no trouble picking her out on the horizon due to her striking turquoise hull.

Azzam officially launched in April of this year, but Lürssen first floated her out of the build shed in late May of 2012 and towed her to another, longer shed to complete her bow section and uppermost superstructure.

When Sunreef introduced the 82 Double Deck as a more fuel-efficient alternative to a motoryacht, little did the company executives imagine the first buyers would be a couple dissatisfied with their own powerboat—or that they would take the catamaran, christened Houbara, around the world.

AB Yachts, part of the Fipa Group of Italian shipyards, has been specializing in swift, slender-looking open yachts for some time. The AB 116 is the second largest model in the lineup, mixing familiar features with unexpected ones.