Audacious explorer
Two nightclubs, a Land Rover, a motorbike and a penthouse looking out 15 metres above the sea: an impressive array of attractions for the latest explorer yacht to come out of Cantiere delle Marche.
16 January 2019
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In Ancona, Cantiere delle Marche has launched M/Y Audace, a new explorer yacht measuring just shy of 42.8 metres in length and 9.4 in the beam. She was designed by Floating Life Co-Founder Andrea Pezzini and architect Mauro Sculli of Studio Sculli (Sarzana, La Spezia). Floating Life is a boutique nautical services company, founded in 2002, which offers yacht design, chartering, management and sales. The entire design team also worked very closely with the owner, who was actively involved throughout the project.
M/Y Audace is the fruit of former Indesit chairman Andrea Merloni’s desire for a new yacht he could treat as a floating home as he explores all the world’s seas. An expert sailor and experienced superyacht owner, he intends to venture beyond the Mediterranean and Caribbean cruising grounds as far afield as South America, Panama and the Suez Canal.
Merloni was proactive in the design of his floating home, and found in Andrea Pezzini both a skilled yacht designer capable of interpreting his requirements, and an able project manager supervising the physical evolution of the yacht from start to finish.
Audace’s owner used the functional K-Series as the platform to customise according to his requirements. His specifications included an entire deck devoted to his private apartment, in addition to stowage capacity for a Jeep and a motorbike for short shore excursions as well as for two tenders, one of which is a 10-metre. He also asked for the yacht to have a very social ambience to enable him to host events and parties aboard.
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Aside from a private penthouse-type apartment complete with saloon and compact galley, standing 15 metres above the sea in place of the usual sun deck, he specified two further zones to be fitted out as discotheques (one highly soundproofed and the other in a semi-open area). He also specified a light, removable mezzanine-style structure to allow jet skis to be stowed above theLand Rover Defender, BMW GS 1200 motorbike and service tender. The aforementioned are all launched or set ashore and retrieved using a crane with a 2.22-tonne capacity. There are also four large guest staterooms aboard, two on the main deck and two on the lower.
“Audace is a yacht with a very strong personality. She is the result of excellent teamwork that involved a determined owner with very clear ideas, a tightknit design team and a highly skilled professional yard,” said Floating Life’s Andrea Pezzini.
“It is hugely emotional for me to see this 42-metre from K-Series I designed with Studio Sculli, become a reality. She encapsulates all of the skills we have built up in over 35 years in this profession. Most importantly, she is an endorsement of the K-Series concept, which allows us to offer a superb degree of personalisation, meet owners’ desires and produce unique boats,” he continued
Architect Mauro Sculli of Studio Sculli commented, “She’s a yacht you have to see inside and out to really understand her. She expresses her potential to the fullest aboard because she has unimaginably large volumes, comparable to a 60-metre.
“This was a fantastic challenge for us, at times complicated in terms of the development of the interiors where functionality prevailed over décor, and in which the owner’s specific, or should I say audacious, requests made the design and construction processes extremely stimulating. We poured every ounce of energy we had into the project. My studio and Andrea Pezzini are both delighted to have been able to turn even the owner’s more bizarre ideas into reality whilst still retaining the efficiency of the boat and a hull that is also a very positive product of skills acquired in the sailing arena.”
Yacht Design and naval architecture: Andrea Pezzini (Floating Life), Mauro Sculli (Studio Sculli) + the Owner
Naval architecture: Studio Sculli
Interior design: architect Alessandra Negrato of Studio Sculli + the Owner
Engineering: Hydro Tec
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