PHOTOS BY BILL MUNCKE Skat’s large wheelhouse provides superb visibility and a premier suite of electronics. GEOMETRIC VISION C O N T II N U E D CONT NUED FROM FROM COVER FOLDOUT By JACK A. SOMER By JACK A. SOMER Photos by BILL MUNCKE and KLAUS JORDAN Photos by BILL MUNCKE and KLAUS JORDAN March 2003 SHOWBOATS INTERNATIONAL 69

W 70 SHOWBOATS INTERNATIONAL March 2003 ness and glassy candor of Martin Francis’s 235-foot Eco, and Sir Norman Foster’s 192-foot Izanami, whose military exterior and Pacific interior were a contradiction that worked. But Skat is no echo of Eco, no imitation Izanami. She is the expression of a highly engaged owner who has not compromised her for anything: not the charter trade, not resale, especially not potential critics. After working 15 years to perfect his Pacific Northwest residence, the owner, Charles Simonyi, Microsoft’s founding programmer, contemplated building a second, more remote,...

The interior features geometric forms throughout that complement the angular exterior hull design. Bright Arne Jacobsen egg chairs are the only splash of color in the uncluttered skylounge. his speed fix from a helicopter, a Sonic 42 powerboat and a Falcon 50 jet, and he has flown a fighter plane beyond Mach one. Skat, instead, was to be designed for comfort, work, and efficiency (performance tests run at Hamburg’s HSVA towing tank optimized appendages and shaped the bow bulb to reduce resistance by as much as 18 percent). The prime challenge to Oeino was to take the owner’s lead and create a...

BILL MUNCKE, TOP PHOTO BY KLAUS JORDAN BILL MUNCKE the crew has ship-length passageways on the two lower decks, a spiral staircase serving all decks and even separate entries to the elevator. The lower deck contains the audio/video control room; cool, cold and deep-freeze walk-in stowage; laundry, technical and bonded-stores rooms; the all-important wine cellar; and the engine room, wherein Lürssen’s installations are magnificent. Engines, gensets, compressors and watermakers are doubleresilient mounted on a massive steel “raft” that floats on some 60 flexible mounts to cut off vibration and...