When Big Fish debuted last year, there was a buzz that could be heard around the world. Despite her 45-meter (148-foot) length, she was dramatically different than any other yacht of her length afloat. In fact, she was dramatically different than any other yacht afloat, period, regardless of size. Every corner, every room sprang from the imagination of her owner, Richard Beattie, a Hong Kong resident who owned a variety of yachts over the years. In this Megayacht News Leadership Series, he describes how his great dissatisfaction with previous yachts, both ones he owned and chartered, led him to assemble the team that designed and built Big Fish, a team which became the yacht-building company Aquos Yachts.
Q: Many people have interesting stories about how they got into boating and yacht ownership. What’s your back story, and what convinced you to step up into superyacht territory?
A: I bought my first boat, a small runabout, with some school chums while I was still a teenager and have loved being on the water ever since. I enjoy the sea, and also love being in remote places, so yachting was a perfectly logical step forward for me. When my resources permitted it, I began chartering large yachts, and eventually purchased a large Azimut and kept her in Southeast Asia for ease of quick holidays from my home base in Hong Kong. It didn’t take me long, however, to begin encountering the challenges of off-the-shelf yachts, and how difficult it can be to synch one’s personal preferences with the right yacht. On my Azimut, the biggest limitation was the vessel’s inability to cruise for long distances without running out of fuel. This frustration was compounded by the relatively scarce number of refueling stations in the remote islands I preferred to visit. My skipper at the time took the time to educate me on the kind of full-displacement yacht and the types of systems I would need to acquire in order to be more successful with long-range, off-the-beaten-path cruising.
Q: You’ve spoken previously about how, before you commissioned Big Fish, you couldn’t find anything on the market that fit your needs. What were you looking for, and why do you think it didn’t exist?
A: After I sold my Azimut, I took the list of characteristics my skipper and I decided I needed and began traveling to yacht shows. Surely, I thought, I would walk down the dock in Monaco or Fort Lauderdale and come across a boat that suited my needs both physically and esthetically, and I would be able to say, ‘there, I want this boat, or one just like it.’ After six months of searching I didn’t find a single used boat that even vaguely resembled what I wanted. There were a number of expedition-style boats whose performance matched my criterion, but the ones that fulfilled the functionality I wanted looked like tugs, workboats or fishing trawlers – both inside and out! Just because I wanted to be in a remote location didn’t mean I wanted to forego the styling, or the creature comforts, luxury, and service I had experienced on the charter yachts I had previously enjoyed.
Another critical element for me was I wanted a yacht that was also capable of carrying a large, safe, stable, and extremely comfortable tender (see photo). What I learned while chartering, is that while the main yacht – in the evenings — offered all the attributes of a fantastic luxury hotel, my days were spent bouncing around uncomfortably in a small inflatable tender. I would return back to the mother yacht each afternoon after a fishing, diving, or snorkeling outing, sunburned, bruised from getting hit by bouncing tanks, wet from spray, and badly needing a bathroom. While the yacht may have been a five-star experience, the time my family spent on the water – the most important reason for our passion for yachting – was one-star, at best.Looking around at numerous boats, the ones capable of carrying the kind of tender I wanted on my boat were way, way too large for both my budget and my cruising needs.
For these reasons, I decided I had build my yacht from scratch.
(story continues next page — click Page 2 link below Related Posts)
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