Marilyn Mower
11/01/2004
For Atlanta residents Steve and Tina Bostic, weekends meant escaping to Lake
Lanier, enjoying the water aboard a succession of express cruisers. When they
decided to move up in size, these former owners of an education business
assigned themselves plenty of homework. “I think we attended every boat show in
the country for three years, climbing literally on hundreds of boats,” said
Tina.
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Steve and Tina Bostic aboard Best N Show with dogs Max and Sassy. If their
kennel keeps producing winners, they joke that the next boat will be called
Westminster. (Click on image to enlarge)The Bostics’ plan for retirement included a boat large enough for extended cruising. But they elected to take it in stages. “We decided to buy a production boat to give us some time to learn more and to see if we liked the lifestyle,” said Steve. “Even though our brand-new sixty-three-footer had some bugs, and even though we lost about fifty percent of our original investment on that boat, we learned we liked the lifestyle a lot. We also learned that to be satisfied, we needed a custom boat.”
Enter Patrick Knowles, who had designed the interior of a Fort Lauderdale apartment for the Bostics. “Patrick helped us organize our ideas and define a set of requirements. Chief among those were plenty of space, a length of less than one hundred feet for easy operation in the Bahamas and along the East Coast, and a boat that could be operated by four crew,” Steve said, adding that after owning a number of fiberglass boats, he was interested in experiencing an aluminum hull.
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The Bostics’ analysis of current yacht designs led them to realize that the features of the typical raised pilothouse yacht were lost on them. “The pilothouse commandeers a huge space on the main deck, we didn’t need two helm stations and we don’t spend a lot of time in the sun, so the flying bridge wasn’t important,” said Steve. When he saw Lazzara’s approach to a third deck on its 94-footer, he knew they were on the right track. When Steve began taking his ideas to various shipyards, he was surprised how few builders seemed interested in building a custom yacht of this size. Burger Boat, however, found the project a worthy follow-up to its 2002 spec boat, Wimil.With an LOA of 94 feet and a beam of 21 feet, Best N Show is slimly proportioned. While the Bostics could have pushed the salon superstructure to full beam amidships, they had other plans for the space. Dogs are among the Bostics’ passions. Their Port O’ Call Kennel has produced several champion boxers, including one that took Best of Breed at New York’s Westminster show. “The wide, enclosed side decks came about because the poor dogs kept falling off the other boat,” said Tina. “We had
to train them to head for the swimstep.” While the yacht’s unbroken bulwarks are a stylistic match to the abutted, vertical windows forward on both decks, their real purpose is to provide a safe exercise run around the main deck for boxers Sassy and Max.
But a dog-friendly deck was only the beginning of the owners’ plans for Best N Show, according to Knowles. “The look of the boat is very much their vision,” he said. “Burger prepared a design to Steve’s concept and he and I finessed it.”
The Bostics’ conceptual approach was straightforward. “We picked out the things we liked and adapted them to our boat. For example, I think Gallant Lady is one of the most beautiful boats ever,” said Steve. “I wanted to emulate her contemporary look and curved vertical windows forward. Our ceiling detail comes from the classically styled Inevitable.”
The Bostic twist on collected design elements resulted in a boat that is a pure original. From a vantage point at the aft end of the salon, it is possible to see all the way forward, through the country kitchen, to the bow. Yet it is equally possible to divide the main deck into separate areas with varying degrees of formality. “We wanted an open plan, but the salon is thirty -three feet long; we didn’t want it to look like a house trailer,” Steve said. Pocket doors close the galley from the dining area and sheer drapes can be used to separate the dining area from the salon. It’s a brilliant concept that eliminates the need for bulky room dividers.
“The concept comes from their home”, said Knowles. “Originally, we were going to just have a single transverse curtain, but it seemed more interesting to wrap the space. I think the drape covers about two hundred-seventy degrees.” The sheers can be pulled around the dining area while guests gather for cocktails in the salon. Down lights outside the curtain cause the gossamer drapes to become nearly opaque, obscuring the crew’s final preparations for dinner and creating intrigue. Altering the lighting scene or swirling the curtains aside reveals the dining setup.The multifunction-room concept extends to the upper deck as well, where the pilothouse and skylounge are one in the same. Dark ziricote joinery creates a serene space. “I call it the womb room,” said Steve. At night, when the boat is at anchor or docked, the lounge becomes the owners’ den. “In the morning, we have breakfast in the country kitchen and talk about plans for the day with the crew. From dinner on we shut the doors to the country kitchen and that becomes the crew lounge,” he said.
Below, Best N Show features two generous VIP cabins in addition to the owners’ suite. The Bostics believe six is the right number of passengers for the size of boat and crew. From the lower lobby, curved pocket doors open at the touch of a button revealing the lush owners’ cabin. The Bostics collect contemporary art, and here several media are pulled together to interesting effect. “We realized that because of the yacht’s design, we had nowhere to hang paintings. So we looked at other ways to bring art aboard. David Hostetler’s sculpture “The Elegant Lady” in the salon is one of them. We made several visits to his studio and photographed the beautiful landscapes of his farm,” said Steve. “Then, as we were thinking about paintings for the shutters, artist Garth Witcoski suggested carving Hostetler’s landscapes into the shutters, rendering the four sets as the four seasons. He also created the art-glass bathroom doors, which are his two-dimensional impression of the sculpture upstairs. We love how it all ties together.”
As much as he enjoyed the process of building Best N Show and the sense of teamwork he felt with Knowles and Burger’s craftsmen, Steve notes he is enjoying the fruits of the process even more. “We planned to spend six or seven months a year on board and we are well on our way. The interesting thing is that there is nothing we’d change.
| Click here to read related article Glass Bridge. |
| Yacht Name: | Best N Show |
| Yacht Year: | 2003 |
| Yacht Type: | Motor Yacht |
| Builder: | Burger Boat Company |
| Interior Design: | Patrick Knowles Design |
| Draft: | 5' 1" (1.55m) |
| LOA (Actual length): | 94' 3" (28.73m) |
| LWL (Length of water line): | 82' 10" (25.25m) |
| Displacement: | 118 tons |
| Power: | Caterpillar |
| Max Speed: | 19 kts |
| Cruise Speed: | 17 kts |
| Range: | 1500 nm @ 12 kts |
| Beam: | 21' 2" (6.45m) |
| Architecture: | Burger Design Team |
| Hull Material: | aluminum |
| Superstructure Material: | aluminum |
| Fuel Capacity: | 5000g (18,927.06L) |
| Water Capacity: | 1300g (4,921.04L) |
| Engines: | Caterpillar |
| Generators: | Kilo-Pak |
| Engine Room ventilation: | Delta T Systems |
| Air conditioning: | Marine Air Systems |
| Watermarker: | Matrix Utilities |
| Bow thruster: | Quantum Marine Engineering |
| Paint: | Awlgrip |
| Deck Windlass: | Maxwell Marine |
| Tenders: | Nautica |
| Black Water Treatment: | Hamann Wassertechnik |
| Toilet: | Headhunter |
| Radar: | Furuno |
| Autopilot: | Litton Marine Systems |
| GPS: | Northstar Technologies |
| SSB: | Icom |
| SatCom: | KVH, Thrane & Thrane |
| Depth Sounder: | B&G |
| Wind Instruments: | B&G |
| Sat TV: | Sea Tel |
| Sat TV receiver: | Sea Tel |