Bluegame Shipyard and Zuccon International share in major new projectLeading Italian superyacht builder Sanlorenzo S.p.A is maintaining its seemingly unstoppable pace of expansion by now entering into the specialist sports utility yacht market.
This new move, about which full details will be made known at the Cannes Yachting Festival in September, follows the purchase by Sanlorenzo at the beginning of this year of an unspecified majority stake in the Bluegame Shipyard. Also sharing in this project is the prominent Italian design studio, Zuccon International.
At Cannes, Bluegame Shipyard, now based within the Sanlorenzo facility in Viareggio, will re-launch two sports utility yacht models, formerly known as the BG40’ and BG60’. As a result of a new partnership between Bluegame and Zuccon, the two models have been totally restyled by Zuccon and will be officially reintroduced as the BG42 and BG62 in September at Cannes.
Luca Santella, one of the founders of Bluegame and an Olympian sailing champion, first launched the sports utility models in the early 2002. He has also worked for Sanlorenzo as coordinator of projects and as such contributed to the SX88 crossover project which has been so successful for the company, amongst others.
The new agreement signed by Zuccon International Project marks a further strengthening of the firm’s ties with Sanlorenzo Yachts.
Bernardo Zuccon said: “We’re very enthusiastic about this partnership, because we think a captivating story can still be written about these designs: the Bluegame models are extremely up-to-date products that retain their powerful functional and stylistic appeal, even though they were created over 10 years ago. There is no doubt that working with Luca Santella represents an important opportunity, given his past and his experience, both closely bound to the world of the sea”.
Santella commented: “I had the chance to work with Bernardo – and with Zuccon International Project – on new models and ideas as the coordinator of Sanlorenzo projects and so it came naturally for me to continue the partnership. While with Sanlorenzo my role was as coordinator, with the Bluegame project we began working in closer collaboration: I focus mainly on the product concept and Bernardo on the aesthetics. As well as these two new models, which we’ll be launching this summer, we also have ideas for many other projects to complete and extend the range”.
Bluegame has an interesting history. In 2002, Santella presented a versatile new type of craft called a sport utility boat: a sort of walkaround model taken to the limit, with a design that draws on distinctive features of various categories of yacht, like trawlers, lobster boats, navettes and so on. The basic idea underpinning the new partnership with Zuccon International Project is to return to the approach used a few years ago, continuing to work on the concepts that Luca Santella and his team identified right from the outset.
Starting out with the idea of consolidating the design philosophy of the two original models, Martina and Bernardo Zuccon, working with Luca Santella, have rewritten the style of the two boats and strengthened the initial concept. Both the entry level BG42 and the BG62 are characterized by life on board that is predominantly outdoor: on both these walkarounds the exterior spaces have been optimised to the full and the hard-top redesigned to become a strategic feature of the way the boat is used.
The idea of offering an entirely deck-based experience of life on board was originally borrowed from the world of sailing yachts, which is where Santella began his career, and is a characteristic that the architects at Zuccon have decided to accentuate still further.
The firm’s work therefore focused on diversifying the ways the exterior spaces can be used, without neglecting the liveability of the night area. This also involved a rearrangement of the interior layout to improve versatility, but without altering its personality. At the end of the day, the two models aren’t simply day cruisers, but small yachts suited to short cruises, particularly the BG62, which is a motoryacht to all intents and purposes.
Source: https://plus.ibinews.com/article/eLenV4Oe0Yw/2018/07/12/sanlorenzo_enters_niche_sports_utility_yacht_market/
