Hello. Paul Madden at THE YACHT CHANNEL- and today I'm doing a review of a
new Benetti i've been reading about this boat for a while. It's called Luminosity. They
launched it last year. I saw it in the shed being built in Livorno a couple of years ag. It looked
like a nice hull and the reason I'm doing a Vessel Review is that it has been touted as
being a "hybrid yacht" and having all kinds of unique features that make it eco-friendly and
different, maybe superior, to other yacht. It has a couple of
features that I'm still trying to get my arms around - one is a decorative
18-meter high interactive LED video wall that runs down five decks on a stairwell and it
changes from day to night, very nice. It features a flower "motion-wall" with 264 flowers that will
open and close as somebody walks by. Sort of reminds me of Hogwarts. And there's also a
spinning settee which i i can't comment on because I don't quite understand it. What I want to do is
dive into the specs and the GA and examine what this vessel is all about. It is built by Benetti,
the largest yacht builder in the world. They definitely know what they're doing.
They decided a couple of years ago that they would get into the large yacht game and go toe-to-toe
with with Oceanco and Lurssen and they've launched two vessels over 100 meters now. I don't know what
they have in the works, but probably more. Looking at the specs- the first thing that
caught my attention is how many designers are attributed to this vessel. It starts to look like
a Hollywood movie here - four or five designers. That's very unusual. Usually you don't see more
than one interior or one exterior designer and that may explain some of the odd things that I
found looking into the vessel. In terms of the main characteristics of the vessel, I mentioned
it's 107 meters that's 353 feet. It's got a healthy beam of 55 feet /17 meters but it's not
overly beamy like some of these boats. The maximum draft is 14 feet which is pretty good 4.5 meters.
She cruises at a top speed of 16 knots with a half load. She's got an 8 000 nautical mile range
at 10-knots and half the hotel load and that's very healthy. That puts her into
the expedition category certainly. There is an entire owner's deck and then there are 11
staterooms. So it will take up to a total of 27 guests. In terms of crew there are accommodations
on board for 37 crew - so that gives you an indicator of what you need to run the boat.
So let's get right into what is unique about this vessel and makes it stand out. It's got all the
usual trimmings of a mega yacht. So it's got a hospital, helipad, beach club- giant beach club,
it's got just a ton of water toys, it's also got a passenger van and an SUV car and a 24 foot Melges
sailboat up on the top deck. And it's got the helipad with the refueling and the fire
protection and all that. So not only does it have a diesel electric propulsion system,
but it's got a battery system that they claim is the largest one found on any yacht today.
This allows the vessel to operate silently under battery power for up to 12 hours without using any
generators and this will become important in some environmentally protected areas, like up in the
fjords and in the ice in different places. This allows the vessel to be called a hybrid, which
is a highly touted moniker on yachts. But frankly, I just I don't get it, because here they are using
their batteries for six or twelve hours to go in and out of a fjord or an ice flow. Then when they
get out of the ice, they're going to have to fire up the generators and recharge those batteries.
So, what is the net benefit to the environment - other than a little noise and vibration
protection for the penguins and the narwhals . In the comments, I hope somebody could tell us
why this is some sort of a breakthrough environmentally. Another capability being
touted is the heat recovery system that takes heat from the diesel generators and uses it to heat
other systems on board, such as a swimming pool. I'm not sure why this is touted because this is
not a new idea and again I see very little net benefit to the environment. This vessel has got
floor to ceiling windows and in some spaces you've got nine feet of headroom. 811 square
meters or 8,800 square feet worth of a very high strength glass. The glass weighs 120 tons. These
boats spend a lot of time in a marina and when you're in a marina - it would be like being in a
housing development where your neighbor's house is 20 or 30 feet away. I'm not sure that you want
every room in the house to have these big glass windows, including the bedrooms,
Hopefully the bathrooms are not open to these glass windows. but perhaps they are.
In any case, the point is that while you can see out everybody else can see in.
And talk about living in a fishbowl!. You see it there, so that that's one thing that that
I found a bit odd in this vessel. A little bit of big glass is great,
but to set up something - looks like an office block, I just don't know. But I'm sure in the
comments, somebody could explain to me the benefits of that. Another thing about having
that much glass is that when you're in a tropical environment you're basically got a solar heating
thing unless you have big shades or some other way of tinting or reflecting off of this glass.
You're basically going to be superheating the interior of the vessel and this speaks to the
environmental considerations. You're going to have to have a lot more air conditioning and it's
going to be working very hard. That's going to put your six big caterpillar diesel generators to work
doing something that probably is not so great for the environment. That's my thought on the glass.
The other aspect of this boat that caught my attention, is the amount of teak that they used.
They've got teak everywhere- including, it looks like, in the tender garage
and also on the foredeck. These are places that guests don't normally hang out and I'm not sure
that I see their reason to have teak all the way up on the bow. In summary, Luminosity certainly is
state-of-the-art in many respects. It's built by a very credible builder, and the designers
are accomplished. I've injected some of my own thoughts and critiques of this vessel in the hopes
that it will bring some interesting comments and some contributions from our subscribers
who may also have insights and thoughts about this vessel and about, in general, what the large yacht
industry is doing in this area of "hybrid" and trying to become more environmentally friendly.
If you would like to see more of these reports- please SUBSCRIBE and by all means COMMENT and
I'll put some links in the details below so you can check it out. See you next time.