Liva O

• 118.2 m LOA, 16.8 m beam, 5,054 GT
• Delivered August 2023, the largest yacht in the yard's history
• Exterior and interior by Joseph Dirand Architecture of Paris
• Diesel-electric propulsion, 18 knots top speed
• About 7,100 nm range at 15 knots
• 12 m aft-deck pool with raisable floor
• Neptune lounge, aft helipad and seven-person Triton submersible
• 12 guests in six staterooms, crew of 33

The new flagship

Abeking & Rasmussen handed over Liva O in August 2023, and the yard's order of precedence changed in an afternoon. At 118.2 metres and 5,054 GT she passed Aviva to become the largest yacht Lemwerder has ever built, the first to cross the 100 metre line and immediately one of the longest yachts afloat anywhere. Build number 6507 in a hull sequence that began in 1907, she is the family firm's plainest statement of where it now stands.

The delivery moved the yard into the small circle of builders with a delivered flagship above 100 metres, territory previously associated with Lurssen, Oceanco and Feadship. The yard's chief executive called the project a defining one, which by Lemwerder standards is close to shouting. Everything else stayed in character. The owner has never been publicized, the client was represented professionally by Cornelsen & Partner, and the yacht slipped into service with minimal ceremony.

An architect's yacht

The design belongs to Joseph Dirand Architecture, the Paris practice responsible for both the exterior and the interior. Dirand described the ambition as a pure, contemporary yacht with an unusual amount of open-air space, arranged so that guests live immersed in the surrounding seascape. The profile that resulted is long, low and stripped of visual clutter, five decks resolved into a silhouette with almost nothing extraneous on it.

The execution honours the drawing in ways only a shipbuilder notices. The hull is laser welded to keep the plating fair under paint, and the anchors sit submerged so that no hawse pocket interrupts the bow. Those are expensive decisions in pursuit of calm surfaces, and they are exactly the kind of decisions this yard has been making for navies for decades. The result photographs like a rendering, which almost no 118 metre steel object manages.

The first Lemwerder hull past 100 metres, carrying a lap pool, a seven-seat submersible and a room glazed through the waterline.

Twelve metres of pool

The aft deck carries the feature the trade press led with, a swimming pool 12 metres long, a genuine lap pool at sea. Its floor rises to convert the space to usable deck when the pool is empty, and the surface can be closed over by a sheet the yard finishes as liquid marble, made to mimic the surface of the sea it sits above. Few yachts of any size carry water this seriously.

Higher up, the sundeck is arranged around a marble-clad firepit wrapped by a crescent sofa, an outdoor hearth carried high above the waterline, and a crow's nest sits at the base of the mast for guests who want the lookout's view of a landfall. Both are small spaces with a precise social purpose, and both extend the brief for open-air living into places most yachts leave to antennas and sunpads.

Below the waterline, beyond the horizon

Liva O carries a Neptune lounge, a room glazed through the waterline with a 3.4 by 1.3 metre window set into the hull, the second generation of the semi-submerged space the yard built into Elandess in 2018. The room has become a house signature, and on passage it turns the sea itself into the principal entertainment aboard, half light and half deep water from the same armchair.

The logistics run to expedition grade. One garage houses a 16 metre tender, a boat many owners would count as a yacht in its own right, while a second holds three more craft along with a Triton submersible rated for seven people. A helipad sits aft. A vessel that can land a helicopter, launch a small ship and send guests below the surface is a complete private harbour, whatever her silhouette says about galas.

Range without noise

Propulsion is diesel-electric, two Caterpillar units producing around 6,000 horsepower and driving her to 18 knots flat out, with 7,100 nautical miles of range at a 15 knot cruise. Those are serious passage-making numbers for 5,054 GT, and the electric distribution keeps machinery noise and vibration away from the accommodation, the quality owners of this class notice most and mention least.

Twelve guests sleep in six staterooms, looked after by a crew of 33, nearly three crew for each guest, the ratio at which service becomes invisible. For a prospective client the yacht is the yard's ultimate reference, proof that the family firm on the Weser can conceive, build and deliver at any scale the market contains, and do it with the discretion the house is known for. The next ceiling at Lemwerder is whatever an owner asks for.

Pour qui: An owner who wants true flagship scale from the quietest of the great German yards, with an architect's calm laid over expedition-grade logistics.