Luciano: his yacht smells fishy

You can’t get much more off-grid than life on the ocean waves, and Luciano Benetton’s new yacht shows how to do it in green style. The yacht has just been awarded the first ever Green Star at the Monaco Boat Show, a new rating in the yachting world, to denote an environmentally friendly boat.

A mega-rich man”s politically correct whim? Far from it, Benetton insists. His firm was ahead of its time in stressing environmental concerns in its factories and offices, he says, and he has put those same values first - above price and speed, for example - in his new toy. “This was my choice,” he says. Was it his choice to name the vessel Trib�, after Benetton’s rather unpleasant (and environmentally destructive) perfume? Presumably it can then be written down as a marketing expense? Tribu is 50m-long and built to the same standards of environmental purity as the latest generation of cruise liners and cargo ships.

“The requirements for the certificate are complex: you need special equipment for the treatment of waste water and rubbish, the separate collection of different types of waste aboard, the elimination of emissions which damage the ozone layer,” said Benetton. “I believe that respect for the sea and for nature in general is the duty of everyone, and for those who sail and who love the sea above all. And the dangers of global warming remind us of that fact every day, ever more urgently.”
Benetton founded the family firm 40 years ago, using a bicycle to hawk around sweaters knitted by his sister.

The grand old man, the doyen of the Italian business world, 28th richest man in Europe with a family wealth estimated at �5.7bn, has been steadily preparing to make his exit over the past year or more. Now perhaps he is ready to cast off.

But while building a boat to the most rigorous environmental standards raises the cost, it is more than merely a gesture of public morality, a way to make the other moguls look cheap. Certificate in hand, Mr Benetton can sail his boat wherever he likes, including protected areas barred to conventional, polluting vessels. As ever, style and substance go hand-in-hand.

Trib� is actually two completely different boats. Outside she is all rugged functionality, with lines that would not look out of place on a navy frigate, only rounded somewhat, and white rather than battleship grey.

It is a ship, as Benetton told the Italian magazine Yacht & Sail, for going places. “It was the idea of the journey as a way of learning and exploration that pointed me in this direction,” he said. “I wanted a functional boat fitted to my objective: to sail everywhere, even in difficult seas and in less than perfect conditions. A boat for taking to the open seas in security, comfortable but sober, with fundamental attention paid to functionality and to the needs of navigation: a Land Rover, in other words, of the deep.”

Benetton does not intend to limit himself to short hops between Portofino and St Tropez. Other mega-rich boat owners have recently plumped for similarly spartan contours as a way of keeping a relatively low profile, deflecting the sort of attention that the stereotypical floating Las Vegas tends to draw. Benetton denies that he was motivated by such unworthy concerns.

“I have no interest in fashions in yachts,” he insists. “I chose this design because it is suitable for trans-oceanic voyages, and allows me to live on the water day after day, following the sea”s natural rhythms.”

But step below deck and the effect is Tardis-like. This is not a ship, it is the drawing room of the gracious home of a man of wealth and taste. The ceiling is more than 2m high, floors are carpeted, furnishings offer no concessions to maritime etiquette. The huge double bed in the master bedroom has no grab rails, and the room is equipped with a grand piano. Bathrooms have severe modernist lines, jacuzzis, polished marble floors. The galley is a large and luxuriously appointed kitchen (”I intend to cook,” says Luciano) featuring a machine for slicing prosciutto. And so on.

Piero Lissoni, the Milan-based architect responsible, says: “The project was a lot of fun… The client requested a dignified, silent and simple project. I think I satisfied him. He wanted a floating house, with the characteristics of a habitation, very much in line with his way of thinking and living. So it needed to be simple, rather elegant and above all not to resemble a boat.”

Given flat calm seas, the joys of bumbling about in Tribu will be surrealistic - plinking away on the piano as the dolphins and albatrosses sail past the large picture windows. How well it will work when Luciano”s more ambitious dreams come to pass - ploughing through the North Sea in the depths of winter, for example, or rounding Cape Horn - is another question. As the beds (and they are certainly not bunks) are not equipped with rails, for example, one can readily visualise Mr and Mrs Benetton being flung out of bed and landing in the workings of the grand piano. But Benetton is an experienced sailor, formerly owner of a more conventional yacht called Smooth Operators, so he has doubtless thought these questions through.

“Behind the construction of Trib�,” Benetton says, “there is my desire to go round the world. Taking one”s time, I”m not interested in going fast, I just want a boat that is trustworthy and solid. And clean, too.”

As if to warn the rest of the family not to think of him as out for the count, he insists that Trib� will in no way impede him from remaining involved in the firm. “No, I just need to get myself properly organised. I will work aboard ship, I have all the necessary equipment.”