Divergent Yachting is a new yacht-management company, with a twist. Sure, it can handle the same needs as other yacht managers, from owner representation to safety and security compliance and to financial services. Derek Munro (above), the founder and director, was the owner’s rep for Black Pearl (below), the 350-foot (106.7-meter) sailing superyacht. He has three decades of experience as a captain and engineer under his belt, too. Similarly, the Divergent Yachting team has extensive experience, with 14 new-builds as well as in the cruise-ship industry. The difference is, it plans to represent just 10 to 12 yachts. Furthermore, and more remarkable, Divergent Yachting is decidedly focused on a “green” approach.
“We strongly believe in an overall adoption of a sustainable future in yachting,” Munro says. “We’re seeing a new, younger generation of millionaires and billionaires getting into yachting,” he continues. “Their kind of yachting is different than what we’ve been experiencing over the past 30 years….They want to see the environment. They want to experience new things and clean things.” We spoke with Munro about Divergent Yachting’s vision and how owners and crew can become more environmentally minded.
MegayachtNews.com: Where did the environmental idea come from—to zero in on such a specific niche?
Derek Munro: I was involved in the production and build of the sailing yacht Black Pearl, which is an incredibly green vessel. (Editor’s note: See “10 Benefits of Black Pearl’s Hybrid Solution.”) So for us, it was quite easy to take a step into management—educating crew, working with crew to make sure the equipment and systems they use onboard are really green, the items they bring on and off the boat are really green, or as much as possible in today’s environment. And to get the crew into the whole ethos of thinking more about the environment and the future of the planet, as opposed to, “This is the easiest product for me to buy right now, so that’s what I’m going to get and that’s what I’m going to use.” It’s been quite easy to take that step with that crew. We’ve developed some in-house operations, procedures, and such that we’re lining up for future boats as well, so we can give them guidance and guidelines on how they operate, to make all of them a bit greener. Everyone knows the whole plastics issue is hitting the headlines right now, and we need it to.
MegayachtNews.com: How do you execute some of these procedures? Aren’t plastic containers just a small part of what a yacht can do? What are some of the other things you’re helping them to understand and roll out onboard?
Derek Munro: We sit down with the crew and have meetings. We go into all the departments and speak to all the departments about where they can potentially see opportunities for using better products. We now have a lot of crew voluntarily using bamboo toothbrushes. Generally speaking, they’re changing their whole habits—how they live. We’ve had crew get the stainless steel drink bottles that allow multiple uses. We’ve had crew do beach cleanups in Spain, go down for an hour or two each month. Things like that to get the crew right into it and visible. The yacht industry doesn’t have a great reputation with people who are not in it, so to make them see actually we do care and want to get other people to do more. What we found in Spain was that the crew did their beach cleanup, and the next thing you know, the locals were joining in, realizing “Why are all these foreign people cleaning our beaches?” So, they started doing more and more themselves. It has a knock-on effect with other people….I know it’s just a little bit, but a little bit has quite a big influence on other people around.
MegayachtNews.com: There’ve been a couple of inquiries so far. Are they coming from crew, other captains, or even the owners?
Derek Munro: Owners and their technical teams are inquiring about how to make their boats greener. A lot of that comes from the technology we’ve used with Black Pearl. We still haven’t released all of the technology from that yacht yet, because the client wants to build another one and some of the technology we didn’t have time to put on this boat. But, we’ve pretty much found a way to make a boat not require fossil fuels at all. Probably it would work better with a sailboat, but it could also apply to large motoryachts. I think the future is looking really, really interesting for the industry to become a lot more green.
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