Hello and welcome to the yacht channel.. We're going to delve into what is
now the largest new yacht in the world which is REV and it's a very interesting vessel. However
I just wanted to make note of this moniker of having the "largest yacht in the world".
Every couple of years certain monarchs and royals from the middle east or
oligarchs decide that they must build the largest yacht in the world. I'm not sure why they do this,
but it it just happens again and again and there's always a lot of speculation, a lot of fanfare,
about the largest yacht in the world and then there's pushback from the brokers and
the shipyards saying - "oh no, no we can't talk about it. We're all under privacy restrictions
and NDA's. Which then leads to the question of - why did you build the largest yacht in
the world if you thought that you were just going to sneak around with all your wives
and girlfriends and nobody would ever notice? In any case this is currently
or let's say, as of last year, this was the largest yacht in the world AZZAM,
592 feet. I don't know what you do on a vessel that size. I've been on one over 400 feet and you
can get lost on that. But presumably you can have a lot of helicopters and a lot of crew Typically
these yachts will have about 80 crew to 100 crew and probably 20 or 30 of them are crew taking care
of the crew so it's a bit of a rat race. And the other question that comes up with these vessels is
where can you go? You cannot really pull into most of the interesting ports in the world in
a 600 foot yacht. You're going to be sent over to the cruise ship terminal or the commercial port,
which may not be the kind of place you want to hang out. So there's the big Lurssen,
this one is kind of an old dog now. Here's Eclipse which is now number three, about to be number
four and that's a beautiful vessel. In any case, the one that we're going to talk about today REV
is a full eight feet longer than AZZAM which makes it 600 feet.
But what's most interesting about REV and is very interesting, in fact, is it is a
yacht that was built with a purpose. And we'll get into that with the designer Espen Øino,
who also happens to have designed Paul Allen's yacht OCTOPUS, which is another very, very
interesting yacht that was built with a specific mission and not just to hang out and party.
So I want to get right into REV and review that vessel. The name REV
is an acronym for "research expedition vessel" so that is a big indicator.It is built for a purpose
and we'll get into that in some detail. It's 183 meters, 600 feet as i mentioned it is built in
Norway at the Vard shipyard at a cost estimated at 350 million dollars and that is about half
the price of what the Lurssen AZZAM, the other, now eight foot smaller yacht cost at Lurssen.
As i mentioned the designer of REV is Espen Øino, who also is Norwegian
and he was a principal designer for OCTOPUS and OCTOPUS is obviously another expedition
research and exploration vessel and probably stands out as the largest one that was built
prior to this one. It is one of the most interesting and capable yachts in the world.
So first, let's talk with Espen a little bit about OCTOPUS and then jump right into REV.
It's OCTOPUS - a very ambitious program, unusual program. I think it was really one of the first
big explorations that were designed and built with an array of toys and tenders and helicopters
and initially we also had an amphibious plane on board in the drawing stage, but that was
replaced with a second helicopter before the boat was delivered. So that was an extremely
interesting project as well, with very complex and also a completely different approach
to the whole project management and the and the interaction with the owner which was
completely different - big teams of IT people, who were involved from the outset. And
it was a very, very advanced vessel in many respects; particularly with regard to the layout,
with all the tenders and helicopters and submarines and ROVs, but also in terms of the IT
infrastructure. At the time, I still remember the figure of 54 tons of AV equipment on board.Which
seemed monumental at the time and still By today's standardS I think is pretty monumental.
The technological breakthroughs on OCTOPUS were in the IT sector more than the ship itself.
We had a huge IT room on the lower deck and local equipment rooms on each deck.
But each cabin had something like 64 connections to the AV system
through artwork where there were touch screens that you could just go in and
check who the artists were and everything. It was amazing. It was so far ahead of its time.
The basic architecture of the vessel, with the big stern dock - because one of the requirements from
the client was for all of the toys and tenders and helicopters to be out of view when stowed. So all
the tenders had to be basically hidden. So the whole half of the ship, basically after midship,
is about storage of tenders on either side coming up with the unique layout for the big stern dock,
which is over 35 meters long, where you can store the big tender inside and the sub and the travel
lift and everything. Quite complex engineering and I must say that the shipyard did an amazing
job in actually engineering this. Fast forward again to REV, which is another big explorer.
The biggest of them all, yes, the mother of all explorers is this for now. Again, diesel electric.
Again with shaft lines and props and rudders and stern thrusters. Interestingly enough, we
could have adopted pods here, but one of the one of the many considerations that were made was the
electromagnetic fields that are created around the pods. Because of the basic azipods,
the electric motor is actually in the pod in the water and this was the kind of a concern that,
to be very frank with you, I had not personally considered before. But it was brought up
at an earlier stage and it was felt that it would be better to go with shaft lines
and props driven by two electric motors. So we have a diesel electric system as in OCTOPUS,
but we also we're also hybrid so we have a big battery back
which will enable us to go at reduced speed for a certain amount of time or stay stationary
and catering for all the hotel loads with batteries, so as to be so as to comply with
new rules and regulations coming in to force in 2025. That part aside there are
many many other interesting aspects of REV which has made it an extremely interesting project to
work on. First of all, the owner, who really has a vision as to what he would like to do from day
one. And working with him and his team, he's built up a formidable team, back home in Norway, with
great specialists from all around the world and who are working closely with different
scientific communities and colleagues who actually are already operating research vessels.
The idea is to have a collaborative approach and sharing experiences and also sharing the data
that will be collected on this vessel during its lifetime. So one of the conditions for actually
getting access to REV will be that you'll have to share the data with the scientific community
and that's another pillar in in this whole approach. It's an ocean data center.
All this is an effort to combat climate change, acidification of the waters, overfishing,
climate change in general, but of course higher temperatures and and general pollution. So
the vessel has incredible facilities for scientific work, including many labs - wet
labs and dry labs, media labs, facilities for trolling down to 6000 meters a submarine. ROV',
AUV's autonomous underwater vehicles
and also classrooms and facilities for bringing local people on board when she's visiting
part of the world so that children in particular and students can contribute to
and actually learn from the experiences of REV and create awareness in local populations which
may not be that well informed about what's going on
at the global level. So it's a very, very interesting project. A combination of
science exploration and yachting, which I think never seen at this level before.
And i'm assuming because of its size, that it must have endurance to go
anywhere for as long as it needs to. Yes, we can really go around the world at the equator
on one full tank, so to say, at the cruising speed or reduce cruising speed.
We can go out for months and months. That's part of the of the mission,
of course, because of the campaign. We can be in Antarctica or in Arctic waters.
We also have great cranage facilities on board for bringing even more supplies or
more mission specific equipment in containers that we can load on to
the deck. Having a massive um massive 25 ton crane - big boy we call it,
that's the mother of all cranes, exactly. And that was a little project within the project. Our
in-house project manager Andrea took great pride in working on it to make it look really special.
A super exciting project i'm so happy to be part of it. I have a great model here in the office.
Next time you're in Monaco you'll have to come by and i'll show it to you . Obviously its mission
is the the primary thing, rather than any sort of breakthrough. Of course we try to make her
as sustainable as possible within the given parameters of being able to basically travel the
world and spend long periods of time unassisted in remote areas. We have optimized the hull for
low resistance. We are operating at a fairly low number, which means that in
relation to the length of the vessel, we're operating the relatively modest speed,
which makes a huge difference in your detailed design of the bulbous bow is very particular
shipyard was optimizing that to make sure there will be no interference with the sonars. So,
watch his space! Please subscribe to our channel if you like these reports
and I look forward to seeing you here again soon on another topic.