| Lürssen 197 |  |
Building a custom yacht is not an exercise for the faint of heart. It takes vision,
determination, patience, organization, knowledge and more than a little good
humor. It is little wonder then that many yacht owners opt for semi-production
boats or brokerage boats already proven on the high seas. Doug and Linda Von
Allmen, however, are not like "many yacht owners." Last fall they took delivery
of two new and very different yachts, simultaneously, and they are still smi
ling and, by all
accounts, quite sane. What is their secret?
| Click on the Spec tab at top to see complete list of resources. |
Decorative wine vaults (top) add pizzazz to the foyer (bottom), ablaze in alabaster and Cristallo and Nuvolato
onyx. Photography by Jim Raycroft. (Click images to enlarge)
"Well, it wasn’t supposed to happen like that," Linda Von
Allmen said of the simultaneous deliveries last September in the Bahamas.
"Lady Linda would have been finished a year ago if it hadn’t been for
Hurricane Katrina. Believe me, I would never have planned to finish two
yachts at the same time, not to mention redoing our apartment in New
York." This tongue-twisting story of Lady Linda and
Linda Lou needs a scorecard. Linda Lou is a 197-foot (60-meter)
full-displacement Lürssen styled by Espen Øino with an interior by French
designer François Zuretti. Lady Linda, the couple’s fourth yacht to carry
this name, is a 157-foot »(47.9-meter) semi-displacement Trinity with
an interior by American-born Evan Marshall, who now resides in London. The
Trinity, their second, is a tri-deck. The Lürssen, their first, has four decks.
The Trinity has a flag-blue hull and a classic dark mahogany interior; the
Lürssen is all white and features more contemporary styling and light woods. If
it seems these boats are like night and day—that’s precisely the idea. They
perfectly match their owners’ varied tastes and enable different cruising
options.
A low bar (top) featuring Jim
Thompson bar armchairs and a decorative pear-and-bubinga floor connects the main
salon (bottom) and dining room. Photography by Jim Raycroft. (Click images to enlarge)
"Originally I contracted with Lürssen for a fifty-meter
semi-displacement yacht," explained Doug Von Allmen. "By the time we finished
the engineering, the dollar had weakened substantially against the euro, and I
was thinking I was going to own a very expensive semi-displacement yacht that I
could likely only re-sell in America. But I was OK with that; that is until I
saw Capri at the 2003 Fort Lauderdale boat show. That was the boat I
wanted. I came home from the show and said, ‘Hi honey, I bought another boat.’"
What Doug makes sound so simple was an agreement worked out
quickly in principal to transfer his contract to a 60-meter build. Because the
60-meter would be a near sister to Capri, Lürssen agreed to essentially
transfer the engineering fees he had already paid for the semi-displacement
yacht to the new project. Sticking to the same basic specifications made for an
easy start-up on the yard’s part.
The full-beam master suite has a generous sitting area to
starboard. Lacquered lacewood furnishings harmonize with peach-colored Ambra
onyx. Photography by Jim Raycroft. (Click images to enlarge)
There was only one problem: As the couple got to talking about
the boat, they realized how much Linda likes boating in Florida and the Bahamas.
The Lürssen’s draft posed a barrier to trips to Florida’s Key Largo Ocean Reef
Club, the slip behind the couple’s Fort Lauderdale home and most of the islands
they frequented. Doug went back to the boat show.
The Von Allmen’s last Lady Linda had been a Trinity, the
150-foot ex-Bellini. The product and the people were a known entity.
The bridge-deck lounge (top and middle) incorporates lots of
seating and a dance floor. The top-deck panorama lounge (bottom) is finished
in Spinneybeck leather and teak. Photography by Jim Raycroft. (Click images to enlarge)
"Doug came to the stand, and the first thing I did was show him
a list of thirty-five improvements we had made to our standard package since
Bellini launched in 1999," said John Dane III, Trinity’s president and
CEO. "Then I showed him those things in what was then our new boat, Seahawk."
The improvements list included important technical upgrades such as boosting
the bow thruster from 90 to 150 horsepower, improving house power with
auto-paralleling switchboards and Atlas ShorPOWER converters, adding a
gray-water holding tank for cruising in zero-discharge areas, switching to
S-class props and giving a nine-ton boost to the air-conditioning system.
The Von Allmens signed a contract for a new shallow-draft cruiser at the
ShowBoats International Rendezvous at Fisher Island, benefiting the Boys and
Girls Clubs of Broward County, a week after the Fort Lauderdale show.
|
; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc();)
; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc();)
; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc();)
; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc();)
; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc();)
; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc();)
; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc();)
; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc();)
; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc();)
Email This
Printer Friendly Version
Reprints & Permissions
Most Popular Searches