Last night I attended the premiere party for Lazzara’s new LSX 92. The sleek superyacht shares some features with her smaller sister, the LSX 75, such as an atrium-like galley and an articulating helm. She has plenty of other high-tech features, which I’ll share in a full “Megayacht News Onboard” story in the coming weeks, but for now, I’d like to focus on another incredible craft from Lazzara. While some people are calling it the “boat show barge,” since it’s the platform the yard is using to welcome visitors to its display, Dick Lazzara, who with his brother Brad run the Florida-based yard, calls it a sales showcase. I call it a great idea.
Why? It’s hard to tell in the photo above, which I took last evening, but the building behind the 92 is actually a 90-foot by 40-foot, self-sufficient craft, equipped with engines, gensets, even a galley and two staterooms, all below deck, with a reception area on the main deck and private offices one level up. Dick designed it, the Lazzara team built it; it even meets the hurricane codes that state glass should withstand 150-mph winds. The Lazzara team literally drove it from the Gulf Coast, where the yard is located, across the state to Fort Lauderdale at a 4-knot pace over the past few days. The idea is to use it for each local boat show, even the annual Lazzara rendezvous, and eventually build a fleet of “baby brothers,” as Dick phrased it, to introduce clients to Lazzara’s yachts and philosophy.
That latter point is important. My poor photo here notwithstanding, the TV you see embedded in the vertical wall panel–which, by the way, is a waterfall, one of a handful around the main deck of the craft–is an interactive Apple television. There are several more of these touchscreens on the opposite side of the deck, unseen here. The idea is that when clients enter, they can walk over to any of the TVs and scroll through various menus to learn about the builder’s boats, even how it designs and engineers them. They can also learn about a program called Lazzara Yacht University, in which owners and crew get hands-on learning about the yachts’ operating systems.
Trust me when I say the barge/sales showcase is turning heads: It grabbed the attention of at least one Italian boatbuilder whose display is directly across the dock. (I noticed him peeking over the crowd’s shoulders last night as Dick spoke.)
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