THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN.
To say that Tim Heywood designs boats is akin to crediting Edward Lutyens with the erection of the occassional, home-counties conservatory.
Only the very, very rich indeed visit Tim’s Thames-side studio when they feel a floating, weekend retreat coming on. So, if you’ve just won the national lottery, forget it; “It couldn’t possibly be you.” Tim’s clients are rarely seen aboard anything shorter than 65 metres, with 150 metre long -that’s about one and a half football pitches in real money- offerings considered far from ostentatious these days. Now, at a gently conservative budget estimate of, say, £1,000,000 per metre, you’ll quickly be able to calculate that your £8 million jackpot is going to leave you with something of a short fall on the staterooms, swimming pool and helicopter pad front. this sort of vessel requires that you write, for heavens sake, a cheque for £2000 just to start the engines… And, let’s face it, you’re going to feel something of a Charlie skulling into Monte Carlo harbour of a Grand Prix weekend in your best blazer and scrambled-egg cap, behind the helm of an 8 metre, gold-leaf gunwaled rowing skiff.
“We try to find out how the client (no names, it’s written into the contract) lives before finalising any designs” explains Tim. “Sometimes, though, we don’t get any information and just have to get on with it ourselves; that makes it pretty unnerving when the customer walks on board for the first time.” A huge proportion of the design work Tim now tackles with the aid of computer systems but, finalising the design encompasses absolutely everything; “Even down to selecting the toothbrushes. No, really.”
Tim lists some of the foibles of the fantastically rich: A yacht’s name in gold plated, brass letters, with gold leaf on wood spares to be used when the owner’s away. A giant desk mounted on a naval gun-turret turntable, in case he gets bored with the view. The most complex electronics yet found on any yacht, with touch screen technology and five F16 fighter joysticks to steer the thing. “And, of course” adds Tim, “if he doesn’t like it, he’ll just refuse to take delivery.”
But cheer up you lottery winning paupers for, nestling deep within the hulls of these crowning glories of highest tech’, computer generated tax avoidance lurk the plausibly affordable, real jewels of the piece; the exquisite trinket at the heart of a Faberge egg. Please open your wallets, then, for the discerning superyacht owner’s must have accessory; the solid mahogany, hand built, rare as hen’s teeth, Cantiere Motonautico Serenella motor launch.
Don’t bother, next time you’re out sploshing about in the Avon infaltable, to train your telescope on one of these aquatic mansions as it surges by; the Serenella tender will be there, but you won’t see it. Nothing so vulgar as lifeboat style davits for the modern superyacht; a distant cousin of the up-and-over, suburban garage door keeps the tender snug deep with the yacht’s hull.
Or should I say two tenders; that’s the norm… One with a lid on for swishing Mr. and Mrs. Filthy-Rich ashore in their casino couture, the other open, for the more flying-fish-in-the-teeth aquatic pursuits.
It seems, moreover, that there’s something of the sheep in superyacht owners. There aren’t, as you can imagine, all that many around, and they all know each other. So, when, some 5 years ago, Tim began to commision tenders from Serenella, there followed a sudden and pronounced overloading of the bandwagon.
Your best chance of glimpsing one of these glorious marine biffabouts is in Venice. For glass isn’t the only example of traditional craftsmanship to be exported from the most famous of Venice’s 179, lagoon ensnared islands: Murano. We popped in on the Serenella boatyard to find out just what it is that makes these launches such an irresistible lure to the terminallly rich…
Ah, Venice. of which some incurable romantic once wrote -and I believe it was me- “God this place stinks in the summer…” Mercifully, on the coldest, wettest, greyest day of the year, the only thing that stinks is the cost of a water taxi from the airport; caveat emptor. Our route across a lagoon the colour of the soft underbelly of a Second World War Spitfire, to Murano, is marked with street lamps, each sporting a bored Cormorant. Our taxi driver averts his gaze from a West Indies holiday brochure just long enough to dump us unceremoniously ashore at a boatyard so tatty that I’m convinced we’re in the wrong place. How could such masterpieces in mahogany ever emminate from a yard that appears to have cornered the market in rusty corrugated iron?
But then, we had no idea what to expect… My Italian is good for little save “Beer, please” and “I’ll have the fish of indeterminate origin”, and no one at Serenella speaks a note of English: ‘You let me know when you come in Venice’ the fax had said, ‘I don’t writing weell in English’. So it’s via a hastily press-ganged interpreter that Andrea Salvagno, son and heir to the Serenella legacy, starts the ball rolling with a little, light history lesson.
Andrea’s father, Elio, has like his grandfather, been building boats all his life. They worked at The Celli boatyard, one of the most famous in Venice, until 1974, when they decided to go it alone. Since then they’ve developed an unparalleled reputation for craftsmanship and perfection; there is simply no more desireable a tender afloat.
“All the rich men want this type of launch now” explains Andrea. “We usually supply two types to the superyachts: One is sports; all open seating and the other, with a cabin, is for ship to shore transport (keeps the salt stains off the poodle and the Gucci loafers)… They often have one of each. It takes 6 months to build one boat” he continues. “This kind of boat is a classic; it takes time. It should only take 4 months” he confides, “but the owners always turn up and say ‘I want this or that, and I want that changed’, so we say 6.”
“We don’t want to build more than 10 boats a year” Andrea confides, “in order to be able to continue doing things the traditional way using traditional techniques. We have no desire to become a factory because we like to keep things at the level of artisan. Naturally” he smiles, “this also promotes a high degree of exclusivity which appeals to the superyacht owners… So, including the members of the family, we only have a workforce of 15, and use an apprentice system to employ new staff.”
“There’s no such thing as a standard Serenella” explains Andrea as we stroll towards the mahogany store. “The look, the design, is modifying all the time with each new boat, but the style is always the same. Each yacht is built to a specific measurement to fit the yacht in question. The great thing about working in wood is that there’s no problem with size changes. 9 metres is about the standard length, but anything between 8 and 10 is fine. We construct the boat as the captain wants.” Er, the captain? “Yes, sometimes it’s the owner, but the captain of the yacht has responsibility for the tender we’re building now.”
The mahogany store smells glorious. Down the length of one wall lie plank after plank of rough cut, inexorably slowly maturing timber. “It’s becoming really hard to find 10 metre lengths now” bemoans Andrea, “which, because the hull is constructed of unbroken planks, is about the minimum length we can use. They tend to cut the trunks shorter than that to fit them into the ships. So I have buyers in Borneo, Brazil and Malaysia looking out for suitable trees for me.” Once Andrea has his tree, it’s cut into planks for him in a nearby town on the mainland and deliverd to his yard where, the ultimate couch potato, it does absolutely nothing for at least two years. “Only properly seasoned wood will do” he explains. “It’s laborious, and expensive.”
Those raw planks are then thinned down to a final thickness of 14mm -50% goes to waste- before being bonded onto the solid mahogany keel and ribs of the hull. No machines; every element of construction is carried out painstakingly, by hand. The finished hull is a thing of rare beauty. Thanks to an American chemical wood bonding process there aren’t even any screw holes to interrupt the sweeps of untarnished timber curving seamlessly from stem to stern.
Because of the complexity of some of the hull’s curves, particularly at the stern, certain shapes have to be fashioned out of solid blocks of mahogany of considerable stature. As I watch, a walnut faced 136 year old shunts one such lump around on a massive bandsaw following, with astonishingly delicate dexterity, rough pencil guidelines he has set himself. Then he’ll offer this chunk up to the hull, come back to the saw, work at it some more… And so on, for hour after hour, until he has a perfect fit. Then he’ll spend most of the rest of his life planing and sanding his work into a fit state to recieve varnish: “All varnishing is done by brush” lectures Andrea. “We never spray…”
“We make everything ourselves” glows Andrea. “Metalwork, cleats, windows and frames, all leatherwork starting with the basic hides; the lot. About the only thing we don’t do is the chroming of the metalwork; the Murano glass factories are very good at that so we let them do it for us.” Indeed, every corner of every shed we enter is occupied by the fierce concentration of craftsmanship, honing, drilling, cutting sanding and painting every concievable material into a state of perfection. 6 months? They’ll never get it done…
Serenella usually use Volvo-Penta drive to power their aquatic pearls and, as with so much of the boat, the final decision on top speed is up to you and the number of engines you chose to shoehorn aboard. Anything between 36 and 46 knots is the norm, though Serenella have built a powerboat for one of the richest men in Italy which went a deal quicker. He managed second place the Touring Class of the Venice-Monte Carlo race. Seeing a large trophy in
Andrea’s office, I ask him if he too goes powerboat racing? “No” he chuckles, “I used to play football; I won this against an English team…”
The cost of a Serenella also falls under the length-of-a-piece-of-string category. But for an open, sports model you’ll need to find a mere £88,000 or so. Whilst a 10 metre tender with leather and carpet everything, electric roof and windows, refrigerator and air-conditioning, will set you back a cool £172,000. Hah, a mere bagatelle… Start the engines of your superyacht just 86 fewer times this year, and you’ll have saved enough to buy one.
By way of a reminder that these boats are an absolute pleasure in their own right, rather than simply seeing service as the tender to the SS Idle Rich, Andrea beckons us aboard the company’s own boat for the trip back to the airport. The speed limit on the lagoon is just 8kph but, anxious for us to experience the joys of 6 months hard labour in full cry, Andrea rams open the throttles with a derisory snort. “Quicker to swim” he mutters as we surge between the channel marker posts at an effortless 40 knots…