Changes in yachting are notoriously glacial – until last year. When Holterman Shipyard delivered its 32.65-metre superyacht X-treme 105, Lady Fleur, it was quite literally the ‘talk of the town’, and when she debuted at Cannes Yachting Festival the quay was awash with amazement. Lady Fleur is radically practical and it’s easy to pass her off as a traditional monohull with a large aft deck for tender storage; but behind her taut muscular design is an unusual and complex piece of engineering: a novel aft deck that can be hydraulically lowered below the waterline to safely launch and retrieve a large tender. The seed of inspiration was sown by her owners, who wanted a multipurpose aft deck: tender storage, a deep but safe swimming pool for their grandchildren, and somewhere to host intimate dinner parties. This all had to be squeezed into a 32.65-metre platform. Bernd Weel Design was the studio behind stylish, muscular and very attractive exterior design. But the big question, though: will it work? And who better to put the challenge to than Diana Yacht Design? 

“We’re not afraid of a challenge,” Casper Marelis, Naval Architect & Designer at Diana Yacht Design, told SuperYacht Times. “But this really was a major one, and we’ve definitely learnt a lot from this project.” The biggest…