It’s hard to find the right superlatives in my already superlative soaked vocabulary to describe Ngoni, the extraordinary new build by Royal Huisman Shipyard. This is simply a stunning yacht that will have people talking for decades. Perhaps its pedigree comes from a very clear design directive given by the yacht’s owner. “Build me a beast,” he said. “Don’t build me a sheep in wolfs clothing. This has to be an innovative and edgy weapon; fast and furious.” It looks to me that that is exactly what he got. It’s most certainly a weapon and a striking one at that.
Ngoni is a 58-meter (198-foot) high-performance sloop designed by Dubois Naval Architects and featuring an innovative interior by Rick Baker, Ltd. There are two things that immediately jump out; the almost sinister looking plumb bow and the relatively narrow beam. Combined they make the boat look like some kind of Gucci missile. The other thing you immediately notice is the reverse sheer that runs from the bow aft toward the cockpit where it changes into a concave sheer to allow better visibility from the cockpit. The yacht tapers to an elegant stern complete with boarding platform. To give the yacht the weapon-like look that the owner insisted upon, the hull is painted in a bespoke metallic topcoat named “Claire de Lune” (moonlight). The paint was developed by the owner’s team and it was applied with an electrostatic coating technique that uses charged particles to bond the paint to the surface. The effect is quite extraordinary.
One of the owners other requirements was for the yacht to be very high performance and that starts with a generous sail plan. Indeed Ngoni has a massive sail plan. The square top mainsail alone is the size of four and a half tennis courts with the Blade Jib bigger than three tennis courts. It’s a very sleek combination that can be set and operated with the push of a button. The 20-meter long boom was custom designed and engineered so that the mainsail can be stowed inside to boom without any fuss. The square head mainsail and the gaff batten automatically attach and detach when the sail is raised and lowered. The jib is furled and unfurled with a hydraulic furling unit and the sheets are led under the deck to captive winches. The towering five spreader carbon fiber mast is one of the world’s three largest one-piece spars ever built. It was manufactured by Rondal, a sister company to Royal Huisman Shipyard, and is an incredible 66-meters (216.5-feet) high. In addition to the mainsail and blade the boat can also fly a staysail, a Code Sail which is for close upwind and reaching work, and a very large Gennaker. The Gennaker is an impressive 2,240 square meters in area which translates into more than 24,000 square feet. To offset the powerful sail plan Ngoni has a large hydraulically operated lifting keel. With the keel lowered the yacht has a draft of 8.10 meters (26.2 feet) which would precluded it from entering many harbors, yet with the keel raised the draft is reduced to 5.30 meters (17.4 feet). Staggeringly the fin and bulb together weigh 96 tons.
