MONNINCKENDAM – From wooden fishing boats to award-winning, gleaming super yachts, the Royal Hakvoort Shipyard has always read the sector well in its pursuit of excellence.
In 2020, the shipyard was granted the right to call itself the Royal Hakvoort Shipyard. It is a designation that, in the Netherlands, is not tossed around like confetti but given to companies that have provided traditional values of craftsmanship for more than a century.
Only last month, Royal Hakvoort — located in this picture-perfect town just north of Amsterdam – won a Neptune award at the BOAT International World Superyacht Awards 2024 for its 45.2m custom superyacht Milele in the “Semi-Displacement or Planing Motor Yachts, 40m and above” category.
Boat International reported that Milele won the Neptune for its “incredible build quality” and onboard spaces. Most notable of these is the innovative foredeck garage, which stores a submarine and crane and has a full entertainment suite with a large television screen built into its hatch.
One jury judge elaborated, “You’d never expect a submarine in that space,” U-Boat Worx of the Netherlands built the two-seater. It is custom-designed for the owner. Lighter and more streamlined than previous models, this submarine has now been made into a series by U-Boat Worx.
Milele’s design started with the naval architecture of the Van Oossanen studio. It was asked for a fast, efficient and comfortable sub-500GT motor yacht. Milele has Van Oossanen’s patented Fast Displacement Hull Form and a Hull Vane made of carbon fiber, the world’s first.
To reduce emissions, Milele is outfitted with hybrid propulsion (electric motors and a generator dry exhaust system that runs up her mast. The latter is unusual for a yacht of this size. A dynamic positioning system allows the yacht to be positioned around sensitive areas, like coral reefs, without having to drop anchor.
The Hakvoort yard has come a long way since it launched its first wooden fishing boat in 1919. “Our roots lay in the construction of wooden boats,” says the yard, “embodying a legacy of tradition that lives on today.” After the war, it began building steel vessels and became a super yacht builder in the 1980s.
