Beyond the serious and authoritative exterior of Panam lies a playful, inviting interior – as well as some interesting engineering...
Racing across the waves at 31 knots, the full-custom 40.2 metre Baglietto yacht Panam may be built for speed, but she isn’t your average go-fast superyacht. The owner’s brief was for exterior lines that evoked a sense of speed, and with a vertical bow, gunmetal-grey hull and forward-sloping windows, the tri-deck yacht certainly cuts an aggressive line across the water. Yet while edgy aesthetics and high performance were vital to the brief, so too was creating a yacht that would provide the comfort, livability and spaciousness more of a displacement vessel. The owner wanted to have his cake and eat it too, and Baglietto and designer Francesco Paszkowski rose to the occasion.
“The owner’s brief was quite challenging,” Carlo Toracca of Baglietto, who served as Panam’s project manager, admits. “He asked for a sporty performance yacht that maintained the distinctive design elements of the Baglietto tradition, mixed with spacious volumes, modern exterior styling, bespoke design solutions, close contact to the sea, bright and airy interiors and large outdoor and social spaces.”
Panam builds upon Baglietto and Paszkowski’s long-time partnership of creating high-performance, aluminum planing-hull yachts. In this vein, the yard and designer had experience in spades, but Panam herself represents something new to the Baglietto line-up. Not based on an existing platform, she is a custom project, featuring a brand-new hull form. “Despite our great expertise in boats of this type, this is a full-custom vessel built on a unique and highly challenging platform, which included a vertical bow,” Toracca says.
The square-shaped stern recalls the classic Baglietto styling, no doubt, but to update the exterior lines, this stocky hull merges with a compact profile, trapezoidal windows, and a fierce vertical bow, all of which provide a modern and dynamic look. “The bow features a step near the waterline, which enhances the sporty and aggressive lines,” Paszkowski says.
Combining a sleek exterior with unusual volume for a boat of this size required a series of carefully thought-out choices in terms of materials. One solution was the extensive use of composite materials, with carbon fibre utilised in places such as the hull doors and mast. Other innovations included a swimming pool in fibreglass on the sundeck and the design of a floodable garage that requires no davit to launch and haul the tender.
Transversally fitted aft of the engine room, the tender garage is noteworthy, especially in this size of yacht, and it accommodates a 5.5 metre tender. “It is partially floodable as the lower edge of the garage’s side shell door lies below the waterline,” Toracca explains. “This allows launching and retrieving the tender in a very simple, safe and fast way as the tender itself enters the garage when still floating and is towed inside by a winch and a balancing cradle.” Baglietto designed the garage so that it can fill with seawater before the shell door opens and immediately drains when the retrieving operation is complete and the door is closed.
Stepping inside Panam, a bright and airy interior is a cheery contrast to the imposing exterior lines and dark exterior paint. The cosy main salon, adorned in neutral-coloured soft furnishings, is well-lit, thanks to full-height windows and glass sliding doors. Close contact with the sea is maintained thanks to transparent bulwarks on the main deck, allowing unfettered views out of the large windows in the main salon and dining room.
Besides the views outside, what immediately grabs your eye is a living vertical garden, with fern-like plants covering a bulkhead that separates the salon and dining area forward. The installation visually divides the space, but it’s placed centrally so it doesn’t cut off the flow of movement on the main deck. “Architectural solutions that divide the spaces without really separating them allow us to create different locations while avoiding narrow spaces,” Paszkowski says. “On board Panam, this functional and aesthetic element might be a marble or a wooden wall – or a vertical garden.” Forward of the dining room is a large pantry area and galley.
The interior was created by Paszkowski’s team in collaboration with Margherita Casprini. They met the owner’s brief for a welcoming and elegantly contemporary interior with the use of woods, polished lacquered panels, grey and neutral tones, and onyx and marble embellishments, all of them chosen by the owner, who was very hands-on in the build of his first custom yacht.
Teak on the exterior decks meets sand oak for the interior floor and striped sand oak on the walls. A processing technique created a special wave effect in the oak used for the wall of the main deck lobby, which has a varnished metal sheet on the ceiling amplifying a 3D effect, and the owner’s stateroom.
The interior is further detailed in leather, glass and white backlit onyx, used to great effect on the main salon walls on either side of the living-garden wall. The wide selection of marbles includes glossy Persian Gray marble for the shower of the owner’s stateroom and Calacatta for the flooring, while Marfil Cream marble, Eramosa and Coffee Brown marble decorate the lower-deck guest cabins, VIP bathrooms and the dayhead.
The interior living areas take full advantage of the yacht’s nearly 28ft beam, meeting the owner’s request for spacious living in a high-performance yacht. It’s especially noticeable in the forward owner’s stateroom and bath, both stretching across the full beam. A dog-leg wall separates the owner’s office from the suite, ensuring privacy. Another nice feature here is that you can open the windows to allow the fresh sea air to flow through.
In all, following the owner’s wish to stay connected to his environment, the design enhances contact with the sea with open-air areas that include an expansive flybridge, a beach club and the aft section of the main deck. The latter features a custom-made table, planters for live plants and an aft-facing sunpad that might typically be seen on a smaller go-fast boat, evoking Panam’s speedy nature. Top-of-the-line speakers are hidden in the outdoor spaces, even inside the flagpole.
The flybridge, around 861 square feet in area, is a party deck with multiple lounge areas, a custom-made counter-current pool holding seven tons of water, with a television screen built into its back wall. It has a bar, a custom marble structure with a sliding countertop, designed as a flexible, space-saving solution. Paszkowski explains this clever feature: “By sliding, the top provides a shelf for people sitting on the stools and reveals the working area for the waiter on the opposite side. The top also hides a console for the DJ on one side.”
The bridge itself is situated at the mezzanine level, just a few steps down, and assisting the captain in docking maneuvers are two wing stations.
Much like with the main deck bulwarks, transparent protection rims the outer perimeter of the flybridge and the pool to connect the space with the water beyond. Other open-air areas of note include a lofty bow lounge – which Paszkowski says is his “favourite place among the al fresco spaces we designed” – and the beach club, which opens on three sides with two side-folding balconies in carbon fibre. “It is an excellent solution to provide another huge social area close to the water and to enhance the contact to the sea according to the owner’s wish of enjoying the surrounding environment while living on board,” the designer says. When the stern platform and side balconies are open, the total beach club area is 459 square feet.
This layout demanded innovative thinking and engineering. The central engine room was moved forward to make room for the large beach club and the semi-floodable garage. Although a triple-waterjet propulsion system made it easier to control noise and vibrations, Panam’s layout necessitated shaft lines that are 27.7 metre long from the transom to the gearbox flange.
“Building Panam has been a very challenging project for Baglietto, in both the design and technical aspects, but the final result has made everybody at the shipyard very proud,” Toracca says. “The owner was very happy and excited as well. Being a full-custom project, Panam is the realisation of his yachting dreams.”
First published in the November 2022 issue of BOAT International. Get this magazine sent straight to your door, or subscribe and never miss an issue.
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