Boat of the Week: This 318-Foot Gigayacht Got a New Glassed-In Gym After a Massive Makeover
Changing the name of a boat is generally considered bad luck. Yet with superyachts, it’s the easiest way to confirm when a boat is under new ownership. Unless that yacht is Carinthia VII, whose pedigree is so engrained in its DNA that to call it by any other name would be a sin.
Following 20 years of single ownership and with only 4,000 original hours on the engines, the famously private 318-foot yacht, which was snapped up by a new owner in 2022, emerged from a rapid 300-day refit by Lürssen and stole the Monaco Yacht Show. It might bear the same name, but Carinthia VII is now a very different yacht.
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The most eye-catching changes are a 36-foot glass-paneled swimming pool on the main deck aft and a 968-square-foot air-conditioned gym on the bridge deck. That space used six tons of folding glass doors to create a winter garden. It’s complemented by a large cinema screen.
Perhaps the most significant change, though, is the yacht’s conversion from private to commercial use to allow Carinthia VII to enter the charter market. “The deal was made for the boat to come to our facility on a handshake, and then we only had a couple of days to prepare between the handshake and Carinthia VII sailing up to Hamburg,” Thomas Krischkowski, head of refit and repair at Lürssen, told Robb Report.
The list of technical upgrades completed by Lürssen includes a new waterpower treatment, a full sprinkler system, 18.6 miles of cable for a new AV/IT system, new exhaust filters and fully overhauled engines and zero speed stabilizers. The yacht also had to meet new SOLAS stability requirements to be a charter vessel.
In 2002, when the Austrian billionaire Heidi Horten commissioned Project Faberge, as Carinthia VII was originally known, expectations ran high. The yacht paid homage to the fleet of Carinthias owned and built by her late husband Helmut Horten, three of which were designed by Jon Bannenberg.
As one of only a handful of women to commission one of the largest yachts in the world, Horten called upon one of Bannenberg’s protégés, a young Tim Heywood, to pen the design.
“Peter Lürssen showed Madam Horten my designs for the 377-foot yacht Pelorus, and she said, ‘I want that!’,” Tim Heywood told Robb Report during a tour of Carinthia VII in Monaco. “So, we had to design a boat that had the same spirit, the same attention to details and similar lines as Pelorus but divorce the two so that when Carinthia VII came out people saw it as an individual yacht, not a sistership.”
Horten had become an overnight sensation in the art world six years before commissioning the superyacht, after she spent $22 million in a single Sotheby’s auction. Renowned for her keen eye, she ensured Carinthia VII reflected a similar level of artisanal craftsmanship.
The original curved laminated teak planking, forward of the owner’s deck and bridge deck, is described by Fraser broker Antoine X. Larricq, who managed the sale, as “haute-couture detailing.”
Other original features include the thick exterior teak decks and cross-hatched parquet floors, which remain in fantastic condition, largely because Horten only used the yacht for her annual summer cruise.
The new owner, also a keen art collector, had two strict requests for the refit: to seamlessly marry the old with the new, and for the shipyard to complete the work within 300 days, so he could enjoy the winter cruising season. He enlisted Italian studio Bizzozero Cassina Architects to oversee the design.
The studio only had two yacht projects before this. But it had completed residential projects for the owner that brought a similar look to Carinthia VII’s 8,800-square-foot interior, including redoing all eight guest cabins.
The walls are covered in fabrics by Venetian artisans, and the central staircase is decorated with handmade, laser-cut tiles in an ombré-patterned blue that transitions from deep-ocean blue on the lower deck to pale-sky blue on the bridge deck. On each floor, the artwork in the lobby matches the color of the staircase, and classic gold elements have been replaced with a more contemporary silver.
The sundeck has been overhauled to make it more desirable for charter with a barbecue, wet bar and lounging area. The original high-gloss wood paneled ceilings are painted white, while the sea-level wellness area includes a hammam, treatment room and beauty salon, enhanced by a foldable balcony to bring guests closer to the water.
A full exterior paint job updated the hull to Majestic Blue, with the superstructure in Matterhorn White and the external deck walls painted in Shark Grey. Following a few minor tweaks at the shipyard, Carinthia VII will soon cross the Atlantic to make its charter debut in the Caribbean.
Click here for more images of Carinthia VII.
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