Nilaya’s racy, low profile with its straight bow, wide transom, and twin rudders, echoes the
look of her owners’ previous highly successful maxi-racer of the same name. She is a 46.8m/154-foot sailing machine and comes from the boards of the same naval architecture and design firms, Reichel/Pugh and Nauta.The team made full design studies for the yacht in both carbon and aluminum using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to optimize hull shape and balance. Royal Huisman’s Featherlight™ method, an evolution of nearly 60 years of aluminum yacht-building experience melded with the latest carbon technology, provides her owners the best of both materials for a no-compromise yacht. Alustar aluminum is the right material for an advanced, quality superyacht for global cruising. It deals with noise better and is a better choice for cruising in comfort to remote locations.
Nauta Design’s Mario Pedol noted that the choice of primary hull material did not fundamentally change the yacht’s layout or total weight. «With Reichel/Pugh, we set the target weight. Royal Huisman really embraced the concept. It was a very good process, good collaboration».
Nilaya is a Panamax sloop and the builder has achieved its goal of slicing 11 percent of the weight of its typical advanced aluminum cruising yachts. Most importantly, it has reduced weight without sacrificing stiffness or cutting corners on quality for this high-performance cruiser. With engineering and weight management brought in-house, the approach was comprehensive, extending to lighting, insulation, and all mechanical systems. The interior, too, benefited from careful weight analysis. All interior structural members utilize lightweight foam coring. Capturing the carbon fiber expertise of its sister company Rondal, which made the mast and boom, Royal Huisman’s engineering team used this synergy to analyze and predict which structural components would be best made of composites or aluminum.
