LEADING BY DESIGN

When John Charnley approached us in the Ron Holland office back in 1998 with an idea for the perfect blue water cruiser, he had a clear vision. He wanted a boat that could be easily handled by a husband and wife team, that could go anywhere, and was as safe as houses.
At that time we were just starting Mirabella V, the world’s largest sailing superyacht. We were at the cutting edge – no one had done a boat of that size. Mirabella was design number 388, and the first DISCOVERY was 387, so they were stablemates.

What does your superyacht experience bring?

I think that was the secret sauce, we were bringing a lot of our knowledge from superyachts and trickling that down into the smaller boats. That and not copying – that’s one of our strong suits here, we’re used to turning over rocks and finding new ways of doing things with new materials and new thinking.

A dream yacht has to look the part too…

Absolutely. Ron was fanatical about the sheer line, the bow angle and how the boat sat on the water. He used to make me draw the sheer line so many times it’s ingrained in me. It’s only if you draw by hand that you get this. You want your owner seeing the sheer line and thinking: ‘That’s perfect. I’m glad I got that boat.’ The owners are precious and making their dreams come true is everything. Ron was a very good seat-of-the-pants designer. He knew what worked and he had a very keen, sharp eye, which has rubbed off on me. I am standing on the shoulders of a giant.

The design hours on the DISCOVERY 55 were unprecedented…

I think I drew the interior about 40 times, and the same with the deck, John was so fanatical! An immense amount of design time went into it – nearly double what was usual back then. You can really see that in the boat. Everything just works. From the placement of the wheel, to how you get down below. The raised pilot house gives a sense that you’re inside, but whoever’s on deck has still got a good connection down below. It allowed the boat to have a very good flow, there was real magic with it.

How does a new design start for you?

I have a boat in my head that’s bouncing around, dying to start. It starts with sketches. It’s pen in hand, and you draw and draw and draw. Something will emerge from the paper, it will merge with the computer. You start loving the design and it starts going the right direction. We start with levels and hull shape. We start with those fundamentals and then try to get the level so you can get in and out of the deck with ease into a nice, spacious cockpit. Good home stations, good visibility, but good protection… there’s always a voyage of compromise along the way.

What will we see in the new DISCOVERY designs?

DISCOVERY has a very strong DNA with regards to blue water cruising – you’re in a safe pair of hands. The boat is dead easy to sail, but also incredibly rewarding. You see that DNA in the 55’s raised deckhouse, the raised internal nav station with its 360-degree view, although all everyone seemed to want to talk about at the time was the bathtub! You see it in the bow angle, the sheer line and behind it all, the idea that as a husband and wife team, you can take your kids around the world in safety. We put a lot of effort into the hull design so the boat has its lovely tracking tendency. It’s beautifully balanced – you can let go of the wheel. It’s also got a great ability to displace waves in a bad head sea – because it’s not all pretty picture stuff, these boats do hit some horrible weather. With the new boats, it’s about holding onto that heritage, but bringing a fresher look to it. Holding on to the unique things that work so well is key. Then making the boat as strong, but light as possible, using the least amount of materials. Simplicity is always the best; when everything integrates beautifully and the boat looks clean and crisp – that’s great design. We’re predominantly super yacht designers, and when you go back into the smaller boats, you bring that quality and all the knowledge you get from that. When I’m drawing boats, I’m just head down until it’s perfect. We aim for perfection – nobody gets there, even with unlimited budgets, but we’re excited to be making the next jumps, we can’t wait to unveil the next DISCOVERY wow factor.

What about sustainability?

We’ve been doing a lot of that for 20 years on superyachts, so that’s a great example of trickle-down technology. If you can sit on your boat knowing that you’re using solar and you’ve got a big battery bank, and the generator kicks in and it’s more efficient, it’s all going in the right direction. You touch base with a manufacturer of some gear and we can incorporate that into the boat. Or you give them a challenge and they rise to it and find that actually, we can do it better, we can make it lighter, faster or simpler.

So collaboration is key?

The perfect boat needs great input from a lot of different sources. It’s not just a designer, you need owners, you need the feedback from on the water. So it’s a team effort. You get all these different influences coming in and it’s like baking, out pops the beautiful cake at the end of it. When the 55 went out, there was nothing more we could do. It was the best we could pop out at that stage. You have a lot more pride when you know that you left nothing, you’ve turned over all the rocks. Now I’ve loved turning over more new rocks – enjoying what we’ve discovered on our voyage of exploration with the new designs.