One of the highlights for me of this year’s Newport International Boat Show, last week, was taking part in Palm Beach Yachts’ thirtieth anniversary celebration. The elegant dinner was hosted by Palm Beach’s founder and CEO Mark Richards who in turn invited a dozen or more Palm Beach owners and a whole gang of the Palm Beach team to be part of the event.
In after-diner remarks, Mark emphasized that he might be the visionary who launched Palm Beach thirty years ago, but it is the owners and the dedicated staff that make the whole process of building the boats almost like a family affair today. The shared commitment to excellence, performance and elegant style are the qualities that set the Palm Beach family apart.
Marking the anniversary this year, was the launch of the new PB 85 which for now is the company’s flagship model. The size and scope of the 85 are awesome to look at and proof that the design concepts that have made the smaller boats so successful can be scaled to larger motor yachts. In the wind, there is now a new 107-footer that is scheduled to be launched in 2027.
Another milestone of the thirtieth year is the company’s purchase of a prime piece of Newport, Rhode Island waterfront real estate to be the Palm Beach base and customer service center in the Northeast.
There is a lovely dab of karma in the purchase, too, because the property at Spring and Waites Wharves was the base of operation for the 1983 Australian challenge for the America’s Cup. The Ben Lexcen designed Australia II defeated defender Dennis Connor’s Liberty and took the Cup for the first time in 134 years. Once again, an Australian has won a valued piece of American history.
Rooted In Performance Sailing
Palm Beach Yachts with their sleek Downeast inspired lines, V-warp hull forms, high tech composite construction and advanced propulsion systems are famous for their speed, efficiency and sea kindliness.
To underscore these qualities, Mark and his crew joined the last Newport to Bermuda Race in a PB 70 and ran the 635-mile course in 30 hours. They had to cross the Continental Shelf, traverse the Gulf Stream and navigate to the famous Onion Patch. The 70 performed perfectly giving the crew a soft and stable ride. And, it averaged 17 knots down the course burning only a miniscule 2.2 gallons of diesel per mile.
This emphasis on performance has its roots in Mark’s history of offshore sailboat racing and in particular his long experience as the skipper of the 100-foot maxi Wild Oats XI. With mark at the helm, Wild Oats has won the Sydney-Hobart ace nine times and won overall honors twice. Plus, they won the race in four consecutive years and hold the course record.
The key to such performance is complicated but at is core involves very sophisticated hull design, ultra-high-tech boat building techniques and the iron determination to leave no performance-sone unturned. This is what Mark and the team bring to the creation of Palm Beach Motor Yacht and what sets the brand apart.
Palm Beach yachts are built in Malaysia where the company recently added a new 100,000 square foot building to the also recently completed 740,000 square feet of inside boating build space. This is one of the largest manufacturing facilities in the world.
Inside, the 1200 employees create 38 different models from 42 to 85 feet and in many cases offer three or four different configurations for each hull. The goal is to make every owner’s new motor yacht uniquely his and hers and always in heirloom, yacht quality.
The Future
With the lines of the 107 in the works and the beginnings of a 101-footer, the trend for Richards and Palm Beach is to continues to grow both company and the size of yachts they can create.
With the new Newport service center which joins the existing center in Stuart, Florida, the company is focusing more and more on their customers’ experiences.
As Mark has written to his family of customers: “We know your demand the very best, and it is my true honor to be able to devote my life to delivering it to you. Because at this point you feel less like customers than you do like family. And, to me, that’s the real benefit of having been at this for thirty years Here’s to 130 more.”
Read more about Palm Beach Motor Yachts here.
