SimplyAbuDhabi XXXIII

1 9 7 S I M P LY A B U DH A B I T he mighty motor yacht Jubilee, built by dutch shipyard oceanco, is a yacht that keeps on winning. Having scooped multiple design accolades since her 2017 launch (including best PyCyacht of the year for 2018), at 110m she remains the largest yacht to come out of the netherlands. For her Moscow-born exterior designer igor Lobanov, she represents more than just award-winning penmanship; she symbolises the need to always have faith in your own vision. “When i first designed the concept in 2010, no-one believed in this project,” he explains. “i exhibited it at Monaco yacht Show and nobody noticed. They simply looked at it, and couldn’t comprehend the number of decks. no-one got it, except for the client. i always believed in it; i thought it was a cool concept, and in 2011 we found the client.” However, rather incredibly, to this day Lobanov has never come face to face with the owner of Jubilee. Having stepped foot on board Lobanov’s first new build yacht—the 85.6m oceanco y078—and liked it but found it too small, Lobanov received a call from burgess broker rupert nelson who requested the design studio’s portfolio. “We supplied three concepts, and the client picked one, and that is Jubilee,” says Lobanov. “The exterior from that point has not been changed. Small details, such as the funnel and mast have been adapted, but the proportion of the decks remain exactly the same. The owner has never made a single comment on the exterior design.” Jubilee’s layered double decks—the very thing that put so many people off the concept—are, for Lobanov, the key to the yacht’s success, not to mention his favourite element overall. “When you’re travelling on a small tender it gives the scale of a bigger yacht, but as you get closer to Jubilee you realise her actual size. That’s what we wanted to achieve, the feeling of a 160m contained in a modest 110m length. We wanted it to be a design trick.”