After more than 30 years of serious sailing, during which he owned several large cruising sailboats, Mark Grosvenor found himself at the Vripack booth during the 2000 Fort Lauderdale boat show, succumbing to the solid lines and rugged promise of a Doggersbank Offshore design. A few weeks later, he was in Holland committing to build a custom 96-footer he would ultimately christen Patriot.
 
He admits that many of his friends were surprised at the change to a motor yacht. He says he’s an example of the age-old trend for sailors to one day switch to a motor vessel. A sailboat spends a lot of time motoring or waiting for the wind and takes more crew to operate than a motor yacht, he explains. Moreover, he adds, “Your day-to-day living is a little bit grander on a motor yacht.”

Patriot was conceived by Grosvenor to take his family around the world, and also to fulfill, “a quiet ambition to have a Dutch yacht of my own,”  he says. He hoped that building at Bloemsma & van Breemen would fulfill the dream that began in 1968 when, as an exchange student in Holland, he was impressed by the quality of yachts he saw at the Royal Huisman and Jongert shipyards.

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As an experienced bluewater sailor, Grosvenor knew he had chosen the right design, but he also realized the success of the project would lie in the details. In conceiving of his dream yacht, he developed a wish list 1,000 items long. Moreover, his offshore experience created an overriding condition for the project: “Everything had to be the best,” he says.

Many of the ideas he brought to Patriot were inspired by his father, Judson, who used the money he would have otherwise spent on cigarettes to buy his first boat, a wooden 12-footer. Unfortunately, his dad passed away halfway through Patriot’s build, but Grosvenor says his yacht’s name and spirit are tributes to him.

At first glance, Patriot looks like any other solid Doggersbank. Closer inspection shows a dramatic array of beautifully finished stainless steel details, most custom-built for the yacht. The three-stateroom interior requires no second look to appreciate the quality. The woodwork throughout is American cherry, contrasted with imported fabrics and Brazilian blue or Madura gold granite counters in the service areas and rosso damasco marble in the baths. Damian Tuggey was interior designer for the project.Grosvenor values his crew, so he saw that their quarters were finished to the same standards as his own stateroom. Dry storage is located under the sole, where a pair of refrigerator/freezers and plastic storage trays, kept in place by fiddle boards, keep stores to feed 10 people for three months – much more time than Patriot’s 5,000-mile-range at nine knots will keep her at sea. Equally important is a “cellar” under the waterline to keep vintage wines cool.

The wheelhouse was lengthened by 14 inches from the original Vripack design, displacing a bench on the Portuguese bridge. The observer’s table – a work of art trimmed in teak and black walnut inlaid with rosewood continents and maple oceans – was raised to accommodate book storage below. The dayhead was relocated from the wheelhouse to the galley, making room for a navigation table.

Patriot’s crew consists of Capt. Ron LePard and his wife, Monica, a Cordon Bleu-trained chef. Despite Monica’s credentials, there are times she gets to rest. “My wife likes to cook,” Grosvenor says. “Occasionally we’ll have a family evening and she’ll cook in the main galley.” The galley’s large windows give it an open feel and there is ample space for two chefs. Elegantly curved sliding doors close it off from the dining room.

The salon and dining area are divided by a hand-built, 1:75-scale model of Soleil Royal, a 17th century French battleship. It was a gift to Grosvenor, a major philanthropist, who received it from a Philippine-based children’s charity to which he had made a large donation.  Grosvenor is also chairman of the International SeaKeepers Society.
 
Other ornamental items aboard Patriot include a walrus tusk on the salon wall that Grosvenor picked up in a Parisian flea market. It is engraved with elaborate scrimshaw depicting the story of the whaler Catalpa, which clandestinely rescued political prisoners from Australia in 1875. “We pick up one-of-a-kind items from our travels, so the collection will grow during our cruising,” he says.

While the interior is an elegant personal statement, the flybridge quietly hints at Grosvenor’s love of the outdoors. Two Nautica tenders and a pair of WaveRunners are stored alongside the hot tub, granite-topped barbecue and wet bar. The crane tucks away in its own garage behind the hot tub. It also holds up the center of the sun awning that streams from the radar arch, creating a “big top” effect.Although the hull and superstructure are Lloyd’s-classed, the number of bow stringers was doubled and two-and-a-half tons of additional steel were added to the original design. Grosvenor says, “The steel is thicker than the design scantlings. We doubled the thickness of the plates at the waterline.”
He didn’t want to deal with storm boards and so insisted that Patriot be able to withstand a complete rollover. To that end, all the windows are made of three- and five-layer glass laminates with insulating air spaces between them. LePard jokes, “If someone is shooting at the boat, stand behind the glass, not the aluminum!”

With a pair of modest 385-hp 3196 DI-TA Caterpillar diesels and two Northern Lights generators, there is plenty of room left over in the engine room for servicing the equipment. The temperature in the machinery space is controlled to be 10 degrees warmer than the outside water temperature.
A copious lazarette houses a dive compressor and the yacht’s exercise room. “It’s the same gym equipment used on nuclear submarines,” Grosvenor says. An LCD TV and stereo system provide entertainment during workouts. The watermakers, usually found in the lazarette, are located amidships in the cofferdam.

In retrospect, Grosvenor says he regrets signing with a smaller and relatively inexperienced shipyard. He says the yacht was delivered late and substantially over budget. Most bothersome, he says, was that his new boat suffered several critical mechanical failures shortly after delivery, resulting in a series of delays that significantly added to the final cost and resulted in altering his cruising schedule. Despite these problems, Patriot already has two Atlantic crossings to her credit, including one with Grosvenor’s 83-year-old mother, Rachel, aboard.
 
The boat cost more than he expected, he says, and took longer to finish. “The good news, though, is that Patriot is in many ways a much better boat now. We were lucky in a way that all these problems surfaced together, so we could make the boat perfect.”

In the process, Grosvenor says, he has learned several lessons, which he will apply to building his next yacht. First, he will only contract at a yard with a proven track record of building to his expected level of quality. His second lesson, he says, stems from the fact that when the failures on Patriot began occurring, the builder’s contracts with its suppliers prohibited him from dealing directly with the yard’s subcontractors. He had made the mistake of taking delivery of his yacht without full systems documentation, he says, so when things became contentious between himself and the builder, he found himself painted into a corner with neither access to the original suppliers nor the documentation new companies needed to make repairs. “I’ll never let myself get put in that position again,” he says.Nico van Breemen of Bloemsma & van Breemen says he is still uncertain how his company’s relationship with his client unraveled after delivery. He acknowledges that problems surfaced on the yacht after it left the yard, but attributes a number of them to operator error rather than faulty construction. Despite the issues, he says he remains extremely proud of Patriot.

For all the difficulties, Grosvenor, too, is proud of his achievement in conceiving and building Patriot. “I put a lot of personal thought and effort into this boat,” he said. “I don’t think there’s ever been a prettier, more sophisticated hundred-footer ever built than my boat, and I know my dad would be as happy and proud as I am.”

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