The concept yacht design Soliloquy has won the Sustainable Design Category award from Condé Nast Traveller in a public vote proving that a determined and relentless public relations campaign really does work.
The yachts designer Alastair Callender is the brother of a team member at superyachttimes.com a well-respected superyacht information resource. It was they who first brought the design to the attention of the public. Since then it has been touted on literally hundreds of Internet Web sites with many of them suggesting that the yacht is real or that it will shortly be built.
The designer believes the 58 metre yacht could best be built from wood using the cold molded lamination process favoured by Turkish gullet builders and says that either Turkey or the USA would be countries capable of building it if this material were to be chosen.
The concept is attractive to tree huggers and environmentalists because the emission free concept taps into available technology available now and features solarsails produced by the Australian company Solar Sailor.
Estimated costs for building it vary and are between £30 and £40 million sterling but while that is comparable to building a similar size yacht she would says Callender be much cheaper than similar sized yachts to run. This is because using her solar energy and batteries the yacht would need very little in the way of fossil fuel and the conventional deck and engine crew of a boat this size cut back to just four.
In total three yachts were nominated for the annual Condé Nast Traveller Innovation and Design Awards, with Soliloquy being the only entrant. Readers of Conde Nast Traveller voted to elect it the winner. One other concept yacht the Wally WHY and the very real, Perini Navi Panthalassa, were nominated in the Leisure Category but neither picked up an award.