Excellence

The bow that started arguments

Nothing Abeking & Rasmussen had built before prepared the market for Excellence. Winch Design drew a reverse bow that plunges toward the water like the prow of a spacecraft, then blended hull and superstructure into a single sculpted form sheathed in reflective glazing. When she emerged from the shed at Lemwerder in 2019, the trade press used the word futuristic in nearly every headline.

Radical exteriors are easy to sketch and brutally hard to build. Mirrored glass over compound curves demands tolerances closer to instrument-making than shipbuilding, and the yard delivered the surfaces without a visible compromise. Whatever an observer thinks of the styling, and opinions genuinely split, the execution is universally acknowledged. That was the commission's quiet second message, that Lemwerder could build whatever a designer dared to draw.

Winch Design, unfiltered

Excellence is one of the purest expressions of a single design studio in the modern fleet, with Winch Design responsible for the exterior and the interior alike. The commission came from an experienced owner whose previous yachts had carried the same name, and the freedom granted to the studio this time shows in every line, a mandate designers rarely receive at 80 metres and almost never see fully honoured.

Inside, the reflective skin resolves into an interior flooded with light through vast panes of glass, arranged for 14 guests across six 25 square metre double staterooms plus the owner's suite, with a crew of 20 to 23 keeping the operation invisible. Winch and the owner deliberately capped the cabin count rather than maximising it, trading guest capacity for space. The double-height spaces and open sightlines take direct advantage of the sculpted superstructure. Where most yachts of this size are decorated volumes, Excellence reads as a single architectural gesture carried from the waterline to the mast.

Avant-garde above the waterline, orthodox beneath it. The visual risk carries no technical risk at all.

Living behind the glass

The practical experience aboard is defined by that glazing. From inside, the mirrored surfaces that make the yacht look sealed and enigmatic from a tender turn out to be windows of exceptional size, and the sea fills every principal room. Guest life spreads across a beach club at the waterline, generous deck spaces aft and the kind of full-beam owner accommodation an 80 metre platform makes possible.

She runs as a serious charter yacht through leading international houses, which tells a prospective owner two useful things. First, the layout works under commercial scrutiny, where charter guests forgive nothing. Second, the operating economics are supported by real revenue, a consideration even at this altitude of ownership. A statement yacht that also earns is a rarer asset than the market admits.

Conventional strength under the theatre

Beneath the drama, Excellence is orthodox Abeking & Rasmussen. A steel hull and aluminium superstructure carry 2,115 GT of volume on a 14.45 metre beam, with twin MTU 12V 4000 series engines delivering a 17 knot maximum and an economical 14 knot cruise. The propulsion package is the same family of machinery trusted across the German large-yacht fleet.

This is the yard's characteristic bargain, avant-garde above the waterline and proven below it. The engineering documentation, class compliance and build standard are indistinguishable from the most conservative yacht in the shed. For the owner it means the visual risk of the design carries no technical risk underneath, and for the eventual second owner it means a survey that reads like any other Lemwerder hull, which is to say clean.

The value of being unmistakable

Excellence occupies a specific position in the market that few yachts can claim. She is a floating signature, identified from a mile away by anyone who follows yachting, and her silhouette has become shorthand for the modern reverse-bow era. For an owner who wants presence, there is no anchorage where she goes unnoticed, and no risk of being mistaken for the yacht two moorings over.

That visibility rests on a foundation of pedigree that keeps it from being a gamble. A Winch flagship from a German yard with a century of naval work behind it is a durable proposition however tastes evolve. Excellence proved that Abeking & Rasmussen could lead the conversation on design, and she remains the yacht that introduced a generation of buyers to the name on her stern.

Who it is for: An owner who wants the most recognisable silhouette in the anchorage, backed by conservative German engineering underneath.