
The Feadship Como was seen in Gibraltar a few days ago. While her metallic paint and highly stylized lines get your attention, it’s her use of glass that deserves equal attention.
Como launched from Feadship’s Aalsmeer facility in January. She’s the pride of Neville Crichton, a founder of Alloy Yachts in New Zealand, an avid yacht racer, and an equally avid megayacht buyer. Crichton has had a number of custom motoryachts over the years. The Feadship Como is his first with the Dutch builder and first project overall in Holland. He commissioned Dubois Naval Architects to give the megayacht a vertical bow and what’s called a whaleback sheer. The latter is often seen on sportfishing boats. Como also has quite the stylish arch, as the close-up photo here reveals. It’s in keeping with the overall streamlined, sporty styling. It’s further in keeping with Crichton’s background with racecars and sports cars.

The Feadship Como close-up also shows her extensive use of glass. And we do mean extensive. There’s a growing trend in yachting to have floor-to-ceiling windows, but Como takes it to a higher technical level. With many megayachts, the glass is nestled within either the fiberglass or metal superstructure. Here, the glass is not set into the aluminum superstructure. Rather, it actually supports the deck atop it.
If it sounds crazy, it’s not. Land-based architects have been practicing similar methods for many years. In fact, that’s where the trend in yachting came from. Skyscrapers and homes alike feature floor-to-ceiling windows that bear structural loads. Feadship first experimented with the idea in 2006, with the Future Feadship Concept X-Stream. The concept project featured a superstructure made entirely of glass. The naval-architecture team had researched how glass could withstand certain loads. It continued to research glass’ strength principles. The first real-world use of large panes on a Feadship was Musashi in 2010. There’s even a large underwater viewing port aboard Hampshire II, delivered in 2012. And, of course, Venus, launched that same year, took floor-to-ceiling glass further. Feadship says some of her glass panels measure nearly 33 feet by eight feet (10 meters by 2.4 meters).
Aboard the Feadship Como, the main-deck glass particularly benefits the master suite. The panels essentially form a continuous pane. The ones in the hull are also quite large. They’re larger than what Lloyd’s classification standards usually allow. Feadship says it proved to the classification society that the glass would indeed hold.
What’s next for glass technology? Just the boundaries of imagination and science. In the meantime, look for our onboard feature about Como later this year.
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