Lazzara Yachts

LAZZARA 106: SPACIOUS VOYAGER
- BY Daniel Spurr / Photo by Scott Pearson

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With her clean, sweeping lines and teardrop windows that resemble leaping dolphins, the new Lazzara 106 is a triumph of style and substance.

Sometimes, what you get is more than what you see. A case in point is Impulse, the first Lazzara 106, whose real beauty lies behind her beautifully finished surfaces where a unique combination of data, design and engineering create a yacht of exceptional strength and dependability.

The Lazzara 106, launched last summer in Tampa, Florida, represents her builder's conviction that a semi-custom yacht is a more rational choice for both builder and client than a one-off custom design because its systems can be standardized. As the owner of Impulse says, "For a little more money I could have commissioned a new custom design. But it's tough starting with a blank piece of paper. You need someone to guide you through the process, whether it's an office, a home or a boat. I didn't want the problems of a completely custom boat."

The motor yacht's exceptional character arises from a proven hull design imbued with her owner's personal style and taste.

Visitors enter Impulse's 19-foot by 31-foot salon through two large curved glass doors from the aft deck. This is the living center of the yacht, with sumptuous sofas and a hidden 42-inch plasma television that rises from a beautifully finished cherry cabinet. The salon's colors and textures are rich and deep. The views are panoramic. But hidden behind the overhead lighting, recessed into a wooden panel with waterfall borders, is a crawl space running fore and aft between decks that provides access to electrical and HVAC systems. When a component fails, costly woodwork doesn't need to be dismantled for repairs.

Even underway there's a story behind the story. Impulse's owner says handling and sea-keeping are superb. "You can be in the salon going through seven-foot waves and wouldn't even know it if you didn't look out the window."

Beyond hull design, weight distribution and stabilizers, one reason for the yacht's quiet solid ride is that the salon floor is mounted on rubber shock absorbers that decouple engine vibrations from the living areas.

The usual approach to semi-custom yacht building is to offer clients a standard hull and then allow them to choose from several accommodation plans and interior finishes. Regardless of the client's choices, the steering, heating, air-conditioning, electrical and plumbing systems remain essentially unchanged, which reduces experimentation and change orders, keeps production on time and on budget, and - perhaps most importantly - assures greater reliability.

Hull tooling is expensive - hundreds of thousands of dollars for a large motor yacht - so builders are reluctant to abandon old models, even when they become dated. Moreover, because of the cost of developing new tooling, even for smaller parts of a yacht, customers have little choice in important features they may want in their yacht. Even if they insist, and the builder agrees to build a new part, the cost for, say, a different transom cockpit or flybridge design can be astronomical.

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