Key Moments 2024

Next, luxury arrived on board, just like at home. Many shipyards are now going beyond the symbolic 80-foot mark to offer real “island-villas” on two or three hulls. Are multiyachts set to become a lasting trend? It’s a legitimate question, given the initial feedback from data collected by onboard apps. You know, from those discreet tracking devices that record your movements, engine hours, speed and all your on-board activities... At this year’s Cannes Yachting Festival, I had access to the first analyses, and it came as a surprise to find that the interpretation of the data from the motorboat sector would lead us to board a simple 33-foot (10 m) powercat daycruiser clad in solar panels to cover the 20 or 30 miles we’d like to cover in a day. A new manufacturer, Millikan Boats, has just launched an M9 that perfectly matches these virtual specifications... what will the real market make of it?

Norbert Conchin
Journalist