Hat-trick of Neptunes for Feadship at World Superyacht Awards
Feadship has been presented with no less than three trophies at the prestigious World Superyachts Award gala evening in Amsterdam on May the 3rd. The monumental 99m Feadship Madame GU won the award for best ‘Displacement Motor Yacht of 2,000GT and above’, while the sensational 62m Feadship Sea Owl took home the Neptune for best ‘Displacement Motor Yacht of 1,300GT to 1,999GT’. To cap off a splendid evening for Feadship, Madame GU was presented with the most coveted prize of all: ‘Superyacht of the Year 2014’.
The World Superyacht Awards already had a special allure for Feadship and the other leading Dutch yards, as this was the first time that the annual ceremony was held in the Netherlands. The recently renovated National Maritime Museum in Amsterdam (where Sea Owl’s owners held their launch party last year) made a phenomenal backdrop to the ‘Oscars of the superyacht world’, and the three awards were a triumph for Feadship and the pioneering owners with whom it created these entirely custom motoryachts.
Big is beautiful
With an interior and exterior designed by Andrew Winch, Madame GU is the largest yacht built in the Netherlands to date. Despite her length of 99m, she can reach 25 knots thanks to her quadruple 3,600kW MTU engines. Among the many features that earned her the Superyacht of the Year award were a fully enclosed helicopter hangar (first pioneered on the Feadship Ecstasea), fibreglass domes for the satcom/navigation gear, and an exceptionally elaborate interior.
“It was a privilege to work with such a groundbreaking owner on Madame GU and to enjoy a delightful cooperation with Andrew Winch,” comments Feadship director Henk de Vries. “The client pushed us to our limits by demanding the most complicated interior ever on the largest Feadship ever. Onboard Madame GU we created things that resemble the Palace of Versailles, except the technology we applied and the finesse and craftsmanship were unavailable at the time that chateau was created.”
Extraordinary detail
The equally sophisticated Feadship Sea Owl was built for experienced owners who are exceptionally private. Her distinctive jade mist green and oyster white exterior contains an interior (also designed by Andrew Winch) with an extraordinarily detailed selection of hand carved pieces, sculptures, petrified wood items and marbles. One of the countless highlights is a sensational stairwell carving of the tree of life: From the depiction of the canopy on the sun deck to the ‘roots’ in the floor of the guest suites in the lower deck aft, the tree takes up the entire wall.
“Sea Owl is the most refined boat built by the industry to date,” says Feadship director Dick van Lent. “From the interior to the exterior, from the tenders to the onboard systems, from the wood carvings to the murals, she is a truly extraordinary bespoke achievement. It was a magical adventure to work with the owners of Sea Owl on a family-oriented super yacht that captures the essence of the highly individual Feadship building experience.”