Boat Review | A new born in Viareggio

Perini Riela: the seventh seal

It started with Burrasca. Then came Santa Maria, Rosehearty (now Zenji), Selene, Salute and Silvana. Now Riela brings to seven the number of 56-metre sailing yachts built by Perini Navi. “And we’re not finished yet as over the next two years we’ll be building another three,” stresses Bernardo Chici, head of the yard’s design division. Riela was built in the 5,450-square-metre sheds at the Perini Istanbul Gemicilik facility in Turkey, where the aluminium hulls and superstructures are both made. She was then moved to Viareggio where she was fitted out and rigged.

That job ended last April when she received her technical launch. Finally in June, Riela was handed over to her owner for her first cruising season. One that included participation in the Perini Navi Cup, the final test for the ketch whose waterlines came from the pen of Ron Holland and whose exterior styling is the work of the Perini Navi technicians themselves. This partnership, in fact, could be said to have created the first one design megayacht. Like Silvana, Riela spreads 1,500 square metres of sail on her two aluminium masts (main 58.8 metres, mizzen 48.26 metres) and carbon-fibre boom, all made in-house. Her deck plan is also the same as that of her sister ships, with two tenders stowed forward of the main mast and the sunken cockpit that is something of a Perini signature.

Up on the fly there’s an al fresco steering position, sofas and sun pads as well as a hydrotherapy pool. The space is dominated by the white furnishings and also teak. Traditional seafaring stuff. However, Remi Tessier went in a very different direction both in terms of design and colours scheme for the interiors. This is the designer who also worked on Salute, Squall and Parsifal, the latter two being 53 metres for which he won Designer of the Year in 2006. With Riela, he gives another superb demonstration of his personal vision of elegance: “It lies in the art of detail without ostentation, in the exaltation of the simple.” Thus moving from the cockpit into the living area, one not only enters Riela’s interior but passes into a dimension that is deceptive in its simplicity. “Overcome space and free it up, find a way of interpreting an element and organising a space that will give it new breadth. Furnish it with pertinent furnishings and let light and life flow into it,” he says.

This is exactly how both the décor and layout of the living area seem to work. Just inside the door there are large leather armchairs and sofas with light metal structures. Together with a low occasional table, they make up the first conversation nook. There are no divisions or buffers so the area is one big open space interrupted only by the polished steel stairs leading up to the fly and down to the lower deck. The saloon is a wonderfully sunny room: the walls, upholstery and ceiling are all cream and combine beautifully with the many different woods used by Tessier. It takes a lot of skill to be able to use such a variety of unusual woods together, but this is one of the salient features of Tessier’s work.

The result is that not merely in the living area but actually throughout the yacht brushed abete and macassar ebony or limed maple and teak pop up together. However, down on the lower deck, which is home to the guest staterooms and the owner’s suite, positioned forward of the engine room, the colour scheme is softer and more gentle. Taking up almost all of Riela’s 11-metre beam, the owner’s suite itself offers only a bedroom, a walk-in closet and two bathrooms, which feel brighter because of the white surfaces. The motifs from the owner’s suite continue in the pullman-furnished cabin next door but also in the two double and two twin guest staterooms. Throughout there is that light, sophisticated touch in the use of materials which together with a formal severity of the furnishings and spaces themselves make Riela what she is. A further demonstration of Remi Tessier’s talent at giving the much abused word “luxury” a new and fascinating meaning.

Emilio Martinelli

(Yacht Capital, n. 10/2009)

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