M/Y Virgen del Mar VI: a word from her designers

Following delivery to her owner in early July, the 31-metre pocket superyacht immediately started to enjoy a glorious summer between Spain and Turkey.

Built of steel and aluminium for global cruising with an impressive range. At 235 gross tons M/Y Virgen del Mar VI has equally remarkable volume for her size.

“There are plenty of 30-metre yachts out there, but most are production boats and none of them offer quite the same volume and degree of customization or bespoke design features, ”says Alia President Gökhan Çelik. “There’s nothing quite like her in her size on the market.”

To date Alia Yachts has focused on custom production, but Virgen del Mar VI’s enthusiastic reception by owners and brokers has convinced the shipyard to expand the technical platform into a semi-customseries. With hull number 2 already in production, the company fully expects to announce further deliveries in the near future:

“Virgen del Mar VI started as a one-off project, but we have great interest to build further units with fully customisable interiors,” says Gökhan Çelik. “We’re also developing a 37-metre and 50-metre version based on the same platform.”

DESIGN  UPDATE

Frank Laupman, Principal at Omega Architects, on the exterior design At Omega Architects, we gave Virgen del Mar VI(ex.  Project  Nozomi) a distinctive raised pilothouse profile and dressed her in strong horizontal and vertical lines to emphasise her length and reflect her sturdy, resolute character.

Our signature style with sleek, flowing lines can be recognised in the yacht’s softly angled overhangs aft and forward, providing elegance as well as functionality.

We also optimised the waterline length with a plumb bow and a narrow entry for more efficiency at higher displacement speeds for an impressive cruising range of 4,500  nm.

The client’s brief was to create a yacht with larger than anticipated proportions in every space, using all available means to achieve that goal. This meant optimizing technical spaces, using efficient joinery detailing and storage, maximizing the layout,  and making the best use of light and space to simply give the impression of a bigger  yacht.

Five generous guest cabins, including a master suite with a private owner’s deck, a large salon and dining room, coupled with big open deck areas and a highly specified bridge – all within a compact 30 metres and a sleek but ‘go-anywhere’ exterior – make Virgen del Mar VI very special indeed.

The layout of the dining saloon makes perfect use of the full-height glass for extended views of the sea, while maintaining a level of storage and service required onboard with long, freestanding buffet counters on each side. Convivial and relaxed seating forward allows for comfortable entertaining.

While providing for formal entertaining, the principal feeling needed to be of relaxed living for family and friends using a palette of light oak and muted colours that have been architecturally ‘lifted’ by dark bronze accent details.

The oak floor gives a more weathered appearance and ties the exterior to the interior, as does the ceiling. This is important to allow the eye to be drawn beyond the interior, not constrained by it. Feature wall panels in vertical oak staves with discreet lighting provides extra depth to the bulkheads in areas that require the room to be visually lengthened.

To maintain a feeling of consistency and allow spaces to merge from one to the other, many of these visual themes are continued throughout the yacht. An example of this is the main deck corridor from the main salon to the owner’s suite: the long view, backlit surfaces and huge glass door panels, combined with the wall of windows along its length, offer a vista rarely seen on a yacht of this size.

The textures and shapes of materials play a huge part in the interior with leathers, ribbed oak details and elongated dark bronze accents sweeping up the bulkheads. The guest spaces themselves were optimized over a long period to ensure each was as well-organised as possible, including the technical spaces.

Without doubt, Virgen del Mar VIrepresents a big boat mentality in a compact design package.