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Step on board the 162.5m Eclipse - the second largest superyacht in the world

Designer Terry Disdale talks us through the four and a half years, nine decks and 162.5 metres of the world’s second largest superyacht.

Terry Disdale didn’t set out to design the biggest superyacht in the world. “No one ever said to me, ‘I want a 160 metre boat’,” he says over breakfast near his office in Richmond, London. “When the yacht was still on the drawing board, there was a rumour going round that someone was building an even bigger boat, and the owner was asked if he knew about it. He said he didn’t, and that he didn’t care. Breaking records was the farthest thing from his mind.”

What he did care about was helicopters – he wanted to carry more than one; and the pool – it had to be big. There were also some early discussions about low bulwarks and big windows, and that was the totality of the brief for what would become Eclipse . “To be given free rein is actually a dreadful thing,” says Disdale.  “I asked myself what I wanted: something timeless. How do you design something timeless that’s still going to look good and not be anaemic? It’s so easy to get carried away, but you’ve got to be able to look at it in 20 years and decide it still looks OK.” But that’s the trick, isn’t it? And the measure of a designer.

• The 25 largest yachts in the world

At least Disdale had some hooks on which to hang the design. “Part of what creates the yacht looking like that is you’ve got to land this huge helicopter on the front, so the superstructure is pushed back. The formation of the boat is built around helicopter usage. And we didn’t want the boat to look unbalanced when the helicopter is on the foredeck. Some boats have a foredeck that looks wrong whenever a helicopter sits there.”

The lines of the boat were dictated by another prerequisite: the two significant lifeboats demanded by Solas. The sheerline runs straight aft from the bow and steps up amidships, the high freeboard created giving visual support to the lifeboats. “If you’d had a different sheerline, the lifeboats wouldn’t have looked comfortable,” the designer says. This, plus the addition of a 15 metre pool aft on the main deck, meant that the overall length of Eclipse – 162.5 metres – was defined not by ego but by practicality.

“Everyone thinks that a boat starts with a sketch, some glamorous visual of the outside of the boat. But that’s not how things work in my office – we start with a plan, a general arrangement.” The project, from this first design stage to the boat’s launch at Blohm+Voss ’s Hamburg yard in 2009, took four and a half years – a remarkable achievement given the scale of the yacht, which was only overtaken as the world’s biggest in 2013 with the launch of 180 metre Azzam . 

Up to 20 engineers from Blue Ocean Yacht Management were present on site throughout the build, whipping it along to meet the aggressive delivery schedule. Disdale doesn’t recall any sleepless nights – “at least, no more than usual!” he laughs. The pressure of designing what was then the world’s top yacht – both inside and out – did obviously register, though. “It’s a huge responsibility building something of that magnitude, which is going to be under everyone’s magnifying glass. It’s not just ‘doing a job’, this thing is going to be scrutinised and analysed by everyone. There’s a responsibility to yourself as a designer.”

A decade from delivery, and more than 15 years from the moment Disdale first put pen to paper, he says he wouldn’t change a thing – and nor has the owner, who has kept Disdale’s designs largely unchanged. “For me, it’s more a clean piece of architecture than it is a piece of styling. The fact that you have a helipad on the front creates the superstructure to bow dimension, which is beautiful. If it wasn’t there, you wouldn’t have that length. And then when you get to the back of the boat, the swimming pool is dictating another piece of the story. I don’t know what I would change now. I don’t sit around saying, ‘I wish I did this or that’. Maybe I’d make the rear end look a bit more inviting, the way the staircases lead into the boat, but anti-piracy was a concern, plus there are a load of services and facilities back there. There’s a full-size pantry to serve the beach club, which very few boats have, and gull-wing doors with a pullout barbecue and pizza oven. There’s a lot you don’t see.”

Disdale’s long experience in the business means he is able to resist the temptation to force designs, or slavishly follow trends that flare and fade, leaving boats looking old before their time. “ Eclipse is a handsome boat, and it looks like a boat. It doesn’t make any pretence,” he says. “The key word is elegance. Very few boats can make that claim any more. Modern boats are purposeful, aggressive, macho, which has led to them all having snub noses. They look angry. You could paint them grey and stick a cannon on the front and it wouldn’t upset their stance at all. Eclipse is not like that.” It’s a familiar sermon from Disdale, who famously posts his 10 “design commandments” up round his office. “One of  the most important tools in your box is restraint. I can have complete freedom when designing a superstructure, but restraint is actually the most important thing – knowing when to stop gilding the lily. Don’t gild it! Use silver leaf.”

• Inside the Surrey home of legendary superyacht designer Terence Disdale  

The obvious benefit of a single designer being responsible for the interior and exterior of a yacht is a seamless flow between the two, and that is absolutely true of Eclipse , whose interior conforms to another one of Disdale’s mantras: “ beach house not penthouse ”. “If you’ve got a dining room with satin on the chairs and gold braid around them, but you live in a T-shirt and shorts, then you’re not comfortable,” he says. 

The pool is a vast entertaining space, with 3.2 metre overheads and a retracting glass sunroof. “The ambience of the pool is as important as how it looks. You’ve got to want to sit by it.” Or dance on it: the blue granite bottom of the pool rises up to sit flush with the deck. It can also be lowered a touch to create a paddling pool.

The interior of any boat should be about “pure relaxation”, says Disdale. “People are on vacation, people are chilled.” He relates one story of an Arab client in the 1980s, who he dissuaded from fitting gold taps to his superyacht. “I told him he already had a 65 metre on the quay – he had already made his statement. It was a process of trying to quieten his ostentation.” You get the feeling no such effort was needed with the owner of Eclipse . “He had already owned three yachts to our design, so consequently was very familiar with my way of working and the habitat I create.” It’s impossible to miss the very deliberate warmth of that habitat and a design miracle that, despite using broadly the same colour palette throughout, nowhere do you tire of the ochre-like shades. 

This uniformity wasn’t applied to the lobbies between decks: different artists were tasked with creating unique works to give each lobby a flavour, so there is no confusion about what deck you’re on – a problem when you have nine. One of these pieces is a wooden sculpture made up of seven pieces, the design for which was hand drawn by Disdale and sent to Japan for manufacture. It’s a stunning work and symptomatic of the detail shown throughout – even in more mundane pieces, like the sideboards in the cabins that were designed in Europe and crafted in Chile.

With no clear-cut brief on the yacht’s layout, Disdale was forced to second-guess, “but that’s my job”, he says. “You have to work out how people will move around the boat.” The benefit of an LOA like Eclipse ’s is the owner can swallow serious acreage without impacting the guest experience. It’s not about avoiding guests, but being able to operate independently of them.

It would be easy to mistake the guest suites for the owner’s own quarters, such is their footprint. There are 18 guest cabins in total, served by 100 crew. From the moment the guests arrive by chopper, mainly on the top helideck, they’re absorbed in the comfort of the boat and have access to the main stairwell and elevator. It’s a transition of which Disdale is particularly proud. “It came from understanding how a boat is used. When you get out of the helicopter, you’re blown to pieces, and then where do you go?” The answer is an intimate lounge, where you can freshen up before entering the interior proper. It also gives pilots somewhere to conduct safety briefings, he points out. Eclipse is able to travel with multiple helicopters on board because one can be housed in the forward hangar, one above it on the retractable platform and another on the sundeck.

At the other extremity of the boat, the convenience continues with a huge bathing platform and staircases that fold down into the water for easy boarding – even for those wearing full dive gear. The beach club wasn’t maxed out, with a comfortable lounge along the centreline preferred to a big open area that is harder to secure. Beyond, though, the lower deck opens up into a huge 77 square metre gym and spa area, complete with massage room, beauty salon, sauna, shower areas and the yacht’s second plunge pool. Visual interest is added by banks of portholes with views into the swimming pool, which dapple light across this whole space. Choosing somewhere to relax on deck is slightly harder – where do you start? The options are endless but special mention has to be made of the wood-burning fire pit on the upper deck – perfect for nights on deck under the stars.

Disdale and his team were present in June 2009 when the boat appeared from the giant drydock in Hamburg. No butterflies – he claims to have been pretty zen about seeing her free of scaffolding and plastic. “Although you design every part of it and you see it being built, nothing prepares you for the feeling you get when you actually see it in the flesh. The tug pulled it out and there was the thickness of a mattress between the wing stations and the shed walls. Literally – they tied mattresses to the stations. When it appeared I was gobsmacked.” As was the owner, pleasingly for the man who’d dedicated nearly five years to the project.

“It’s like cars,” explains the car fanatic. “I was talking about Lamborghinis the other day. They used to have the Miura, a beautiful car. But they replaced it with the Countach, which looks like it was carved from cheese. One is ageless and one looks stuck in time. Elegance is the most important thing. The Miura is elegant, the Jaguar E-Type is elegant.” He’s too modest to say but Eclipse belongs in that league – beautiful for ever.

First published in the April 2016 edition of BOAT International. Get this magazine sent straight to your door, or subscribe and never miss an issue.

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Roman Abramovich just spent a mind-boggling $2.2 million to fuel up his $600 million superyacht – Longer than 5 football fields, the Eclipse has anti-missile systems, a laser shield, two helipads, and its very own submarine.

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Take a closer look at Russian oligarch's $700 million superyacht that is one of the largest in the world

• Roman Abramovich had seemingly scrambled to avoid sanctions from the UK by moving his superyachts.
• One of those is The Eclipse, which cost $700 million to build and was once the biggest in the world.
• That yacht was once in New York City and we took some photos.

Like other Russian oligarchs, Roman Abramovich had seemingly scrambled to avoid sanctions and that included quickly moving his superyachts to more friendly waters.

Many of the 55-year-old billionaire's assets — such as the Chelsea Football Club and several homes — have been sold or frozen since Russia launched an unprovoked war on Ukraine, Bloomberg reported . 

While Abramovich couldn't move the Premier League football club Chelsea FC and sold the $3 billion club , his yachts are another matter. 

Abramovich's 553-foot-long flagship is The Eclipse, estimated to have cost $700 million when built. After sanctions were initially dropped by the UK against Abramovich, his second "smaller" $600 million superyacht, Solaris, left Barcelona, Spain, and moved to friendlier waters in Turkey.

Solaris was joined in Turkey by The Eclipse, which arrived from the Caribbean .

While the superyacht Eclipse was photographed in Turkish waters in early August , it was once docked at Manhattan's Pier 90, and Robert Johnson was able to get some pictures. Take a tour of the superyacht below. 

Robert Johnson contributed to this post.

Just south of this public parking lot on the roof of the Pier 90 terminal in New York City sat Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich's flagship yacht, the "Eclipse."

536-feet long and styled after military vessels.

The 2010 Eclipse cost $700 million and was the world's largest yacht when built.

The vessel has amenities to rival any ship on the sea — like its own mini submersible, perhaps similar to this— able to dive down 150-feet.

The Eclipse has two helipads.

Bulletproof glass and armor plates wrap the length of Roman's master suite and the bridge.

And a German-built missile defense system.

The ship's also supposed to have a laser defense against paparazzi trying to photograph the yacht's guests, but saw no evidence of the device when we were there.

The Eclipse has three launch boats.

That looked to be stocked with medical supplies and a variety of handheld radios.

From the cruise ship parking lot it felt like we were almost on the Eclipse itself.

But with little chance we'd be invited aboard through the ship's door here ...

... We hoped to find one of the 70 crew members required to sail the Eclipse and see if they'd tell us what ship life was like.

But we found no one interested in talking.

But we certainly didn't feel like paparazzi, or that we'd be lasered, when we were in the parking lot tourists use when they arrive to board their cruise.

From up here, the ship was simply stunning and the amount of work required to keep her that way apparent.

The Yacht Report says owning a superyacht costs about 20% of the ship's initial value every year.

But experts believe that Roman probably pays $75 million a year to run the private cruise ship with 24-guest suites.

Looking at the layout of the ship gets us talking about the two swimming pools inside, the disco, cinema, hair salon, and restaurant.

The billionaire's guests would use this door to enter any fore part of the deck.

Perhaps noting where the life rings were as they made their way about the ship.

At 13,000 gross tons, the Eclipse was, at the time, the largest vessel to use a special stabilization system to keep it calm in rough waters while anchored or moving slowly through the sea.

Roman faced a $150,000 tab for parking the Eclipse in New York City while possibly visiting his daughter and her new baby — about $2,000 a day.

A large yacht like the Eclipse can hold over 100,000 gallons of fuel.

Depending on the current price of fuel, a five-hour cruise each way could cost about $30,000.

None of those numbers are likely to concern Roman Abramovich, however, who has an estimated net worth of nearly $8 billion.

Source: Forbes

Here is some drone footage of the superyacht.

You can see interior photos of the luxury yacht at Boat International

Step on board the 162.5m Eclipse - the second largest superyacht in the world

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Eclipse – The World’s Most Expensive Private Yacht

In the world of soccer, Roman Abramovich is a popular figure as he owns the leading English club, Chelsea. The Russian businessman helped the Blues become a big spender in the transfer market, bringing brilliant players like Arjen Robben, Didier Drogba, Fernando Torres, etc. to offer the beautiful game to club supporters across the world.

In addition to the Chelsea football team, which is a beauty on soccer fields, Abramovich owns another marvel: a private yacht named Eclipse.

The 162.5m-long beauty Eclipse is the world’s second-largest and one of the most expensive superyachts. Its estimated cost is 590 million (€340 million), and its current owner has owned it since December 2010.

A synonym for luxury, this superyacht is best suited for all adventure and water sports activities and provides splendid trips to cultural and historical destinations.

Built by renowned German shipbuilder Blohm + Voss, the Eclipse was launched in June 2009 after five years of design, development, and testing. Before its final delivery, several sea trials were conducted starting in May 2009 at Kristiansand, Norway.

When delivered, Eclipse won the spot for the largest superyacht in the world, beating the 162m-long M/Y Dubai of Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates. Eclipse retained the title until the arrival of the 180m-long Azzam, UAE President Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan’s private yacht in 2013. Currently managed by Blue Ocean Yacht Management, Eclipse was selected as the Motor Yacht of the Year in 2011 at the World Superyacht Awards.

Specifications of Eclipse Yacht

As mentioned earlier, this tremendous superyacht measures 162.5m (533’1″ft) in length, 22.00m (72’2″ft) in width and 5.90m (19’4″ft) in the draft, offering a vast area for luxurious leisure activities. The Bermuda-flagged Lloyds Register class yacht has a Gross Tonnage of 13000 tonnes.

Eclipse is powered by a diesel-electric, dual propulsion system with four MTU 20V 1163 TB93 marine diesel engines, offering the latest propulsion technology for maximum speed performance. These engines power the rotating Azipod drives, giving the yacht a maximum speed of 25 knots and a cruise speed of 22. Featuring 1,000,000 litres of fuel tanks, Eclipse can travel up to 6,000 nautical miles at 21 knots before refuelling. The boat also can store about 150,000 litres of freshwater abroad.

Interior and Exterior Design

While Blohm + Voss provided the naval architecture, Terence Disdale Design carried out the superstructure design of the Eclipse. The UK-based award-winning firm was also responsible for interior design, deck layouts, and construction supervision.

Incidentally, the vessel’s construction was performed with great secrecy, and due to this reason, the project was named Project Luxury Yacht M 147 throughout the construction period. However, the details of the technical design and construction of the yacht have not been revealed to the public; the design and layout are available for people to marvel at.

Divided into nine decks, the top deck of Eclipse is taken up by the helicopters and garage. The swimming pool and sundeck go on level eight, while level seven features a pool, atrium and an open deck. The salon, main dining hall and a 40ft X 60ft full-beam loggia are located on the sixth level, and the fourth floor features the main entrance of the yacht. While the next level of the yacht divides the cabins and suites of the owner, guests and crew, the second deck of the vessel acts as a docking port for the submarine. Level one accommodates the engine room, machinery, and a small disco club.

The superyacht with a displacement steel hull has an aluminium superstructure, while its decks become magnificent, featuring teak woods. To offer a smooth cruising experience, the yacht features an ultra-modern stabilization system that minimises the roll motion effect and is equipped with ‘at anchor stabilisers’ to increase comfort when the boat is stationary. Featuring the Art Deco interior design, with an innovative, technology-rich environment and the use of soft metallic fabrics, Eclipse offers a splendid living experience for its owner. With diverse facilities across the decks, the yacht meets the optimum standard of offering a leisure time platform.

The entire yacht has been bejewelled with features to make it more luxurious. Spread across many decks, Eclipse facilities abroad include a gym, dance floor, underwater lights, beach club, wifi connection, beauty salon, tender, garage, deck jacuzzi, etc. Further, the Eclipse holds two helipads and a 16 m swimming pool that can be converted into a dance floor. This motor yacht can accommodate three helicopters, two on both helipads and the third one in a storage hangar below the foredeck. Moreover, Eclipse also flaunts internal lifts, six tenders and an exterior fireplace on-board. The boat also features a place for a three-person private submarine that can go up to a depth of 160ft.

Eclipse is also one of the most technologically advanced yachts around the world.  The boat boasts the latest technology safety features, including motion sensors, bulletproof glass and antiballistic missile defence.  In fact, each cabin in the yacht comes with a private 6ft home cinema screen, a Jacuzzi, a spa and specialized security systems. According to reports, Eclipse has an anti-paparazzi system that detects the use of digital cameras to click photographs of the boat. Using lasers, the system detects digital cameras and disrupts a potential picture of the yacht, as those infrared lights can make it unstable.

Accommodation

The yacht has 11 staterooms and suites, totalling 6000 square feet. With this facility, Eclipse can house 30 guests and a 92-member staff crew abroad. The master suite, located on level five of the yacht, is 5000 square feet alone. In addition, the boat also has a pilothouse on level seven.

With all these facilities incorporated, maintaining the Eclipse is not a less expensive matter. An annual expense of over $60 million is reportedly required to maintain this luxury boat. According to media reports, Abramovich charges its customers around £ 175,000 to rent the vessel for a day.

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About Author

Raunek Kantharia is a marine engineer turned maritime writer and entrepreneur. After a brief stint at the sea, he founded Marine Insight in 2010. Apart from managing Marine Insight, he also writes for a number of maritime magazines and websites.

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Motor Yacht

Motor yacht Eclipse, completed at the end of 2010 at the Blohm + Voss Hamburg shipyard, features interiors by Terence Disdale Design and is the world’s second largest superyacht.

At  her launch in 2010 the 164m Eclipse’s unprecedented size had ensured her construction had been shrouded in secrecy, and as such, subject to much rumour and speculation from both the international press and superyacht enthusiasts.

Although details of the luxury megayacht are being extremely well hidden, it is known that her interiors feature designs by the renowned London-based team at Terence Disdale Design.

Russian Billionaire Roman Abramovich is the owner of this giant yacht which is believed to accommodate 36 guests in 18 cabins and also cater for a staggering 70 crew members.

Amongst the armada of lavish extras thought to be onboard are a three-man leisure submarine, two swimming pools, one of which is 16-metres long with an adjustable depth feature that allows it to be converted into a dance floor. Other extras include an exterior fireplace and six tenders as well as accommodation for three helicopters.

• Yacht Builder Blohm + Voss No profile available
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• Exterior Designer Terence Disdale View profile
• Interior Designer Terence Disdale View profile

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