| Christensen 157 |  |
For the past decade, Christensen Yachts has developed its
157-foot (47.85-meter) motor yacht series into a highly respected brand with an
increasingly sophisticated clientele, customers whose experience in the yachting
world draws them to the company’s beautifully finished, value-oriented products.
The attractive pricing of Christensen boats is the result of the streamlining
that is inherent in the semi-custom construction process the company adopted
several years before moving toward manufacturing its boats on speculation. While
costly and somewhat risky, building yachts on spec has a number of benefits, and
if the design of the product is attractive to potential customers, as the
Christensen yachts have proven to be, the program will allow a builder to plan
its workflow and cashflow better than any custom builder might.
 Photograph by Scott Pearson. (Click image to enlarge)
But as any yacht builder will attest, yacht buyers are not a
group that tends to possess a cookie-cutter mentality. Just as the attraction of
a streamlined process with its attendant lower delivery times and costs catches
their collective eye, the idea that their boat might not be tailored to their
personal requirements creates another set of challenges for the builder’s sales
team.
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Despite a reluctance to return to its custom building roots,
Christensen has, in recent years, developed a measured response to requests from
its customers for more individualized boats. What has evolved is the Custom
Series, a line that allows customers a certain freedom of design within the
parameters of the boat’s predetermined limits, which are set by the placement of
the structural bulkheads and some of the main joiner bulkheads. It is this
latitude that attracted Denise Rich, the owner of the company’s latest delivery,
Lady Joy.
Lady Joy’s interior execution is textbook Christensen: beautifully built and
flawlessly finished. The décor is residential in style. The neutral tones of the
carpet and other soft goods allow the owner’s art to take center
stage. (Click images to enlarge)
Carol Williamson, whose design firm was responsible for the
boat’s interior, noted that Lady Joy is unique compared to Christensen’s
recent launches. "I think that in the initial meetings with Denise, the whole
approach was that she wanted it elegant, feminine, but very inviting…and very
warm, and gracious…and, from the beginning, she talked about her private art
collection, and that it would be a central part of the design.
"One of the things that we were really excited about, as a
team, was that it made the boat very, very personal. And that there was an
extensive collection of art that she was bringing onto the boat."
There were several requirements that Rich brought to the table.
Two of them, explained Williamson, were for additional storage and for the
capability of handling large numbers of people.
"It was very important to Denise that the exterior space for
entertaining was maximized, especially on the boat and aft decks for large
dinner parties. And so, on the boat deck…we can seat 50, using the main table
and four others that set up around the perimeter of the deck.
Top: Elegant, yet understated, the salon has a
cozy feel. Bottom: The custom dining table blends seamlessly with the joinery,
done in-house. (Click images to enlarge)
"And we built in storage wherever we could. For example, all of
the leather and wood ottomans that went under the custom coffee tables, all of
those are lidded for additional storage. This was very important. After all, the
boat carries six complete sets of china and crystal for 50 people."
The need for stowage drove other modifications as well. In the
owner’s suite, the arrangement remains fundamentally the same as all of the
boat’s sisterships, but custom joinery—a modified desk in the study, a
full-height armoire and an additional desk in the stateroom, and increased
clothes storage—was added that makes the spaces more functional.
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