Cassiopeia is a watershed project for Holland Jachtbouw, the first motor yacht to be built by the 15-year-old shipyard. Prior to her construction, the yard focused on semi-production and custom sailing yachts ranging from the Truly Classic 56 to the 152-foot schooner Windrose.

"What particularly impressed the owners was when they looked at some sailboat engine rooms [Holland Jachtbouw] had done. They had really done a nice job. It wasn’t really a big leap of faith for the customers," says designer Bill Langan.

In many ways, Cassiopeia’s large engine room was easier to build than one in a comparable-sized sailboat, due to the motor yacht’s more generous dimensions. Still, designing the compartment posed some challenges for the shipyard, according to Managing Director Tako van Ineveld. The in-house engineering team, "started off in 3-D, but we needed to put in so much time, we moved back into 2-D," he says.

Van Ineveld sent the yard’s engine installers to MTU for a briefing on the 16V engines. "These MTUs are so high-performance, they are walking on their tails most of the time," he says. The big engines required oversized cooling pipes and additional ventilation. Large air inlets were designed into the flybridge superstructure leading to ducts running down through the salon to the engine room. "They are very well hidden," he says. Indeed, the sacrificed interior space is not evident in Cassiopeia’s very comfortable living quarters.

All in all, the experience of building a motor yacht was a positive one for Holland Jachtbouw. "We’d love to build another one," van Ineveld says.