Top 100

Nuvolari-Lenard reveals new details about 456-foot project currently in build at Lürssen

Germany and the Netherlands rule with all 10 new launches in Yachts International's annual review of the top 100 largest yachts in the world.

Mario Pedol, designer of the largest yacht in the world, Lurssen AZZAM, reflects on the influences that have shaped his career.

The owner of the Feadship SAVANNAH reaches outside the mainstream to reset the bar on superyacht interior design.

Triple Deuce to become the world's first and largest billion dollar yacht at 728 feet (222 meters)

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.

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.

Four years in the making, Feadship’s 324-foot-10-inch (99-meter) yacht, project name Dream, recently was launched in Makkum in the Netherlands. The Andrew Winch–designed Dream is the largest yacht built to date by Feadship.

A boat lover from a young age, this superstar and prolific designer usually lives on a boat or near the water where he can easily hop onto one of seven craft of all persuasions that he owns. Surprisingly, though the ocean is central to his life, he has only designed a handful of boats and yachts to date.

This past year saw the launch of a vessel that will likely unseat the current queen of the Top 100, Eclipse. Currently under lock and key at German builder Lürssen’s yard, speculations on ownership of this 591-foot (180-meter) yacht abound, but this wasn’t Lürssen’s only marquee moment.

Mario Pedol is a soft-spoken man not normally given to exclamations of flash and wow. But the recent news that Nauta Yachts was the designer of the 590-foot (180-meter) yacht Azzam, currently under construction at Lürssen, generated quite a buzz. Azzam, a long-time secret project, is believed to be 57 feet 4 inches (17.5 meters) longer than Eclipse, currently the world’s largest yacht.

After the Great Depression, designers “cleaned up” Art Déco. Pure lines suggesting motion and speed upstaged embellishments in architecture. The new style was known as Streamline Moderne, which perfectly defines Smeralda.

Lürssen has floated what is believed will be the largest yacht in the world. The German builder in May slid the partially completed hull of what is being called Project Azzam from its build shed and towed it to a drydock for completion.

Nuvolari-Lenard designed the largest yacht yet launched at CRN, the superyacht builder based in Ancona. Azteca’s classic appearance and huge open sun deck embody today’s new luxury, according to her designers. The design team had already worked with the shipyard on the commissioning owner’s previous boat, named Clarena.

Coral Island, a Jon Bannenberg design built in 1994, is notable, in part, because of her perfect proportions. She was quite large at the time of her launch especially, but she is harmonious and, to this day, does not look out of fashion. It is said that interior photography has never been allowed, possibly a security precaution in the aftermath of the theft of a $6 million Picasso in 1999.