Juliet

March 1988 - Introduction from "Juliet, the creation of a masterpiece" (book by Jack A. Somer and Peter Neumann): A young entrepreneur, who has worked 20 years rebuilding a small family company into a global concern, has sold it at great personal profit. He thereby attains Step One in a simple Three-Step, 20-year dream: To earn some money, to buy a boat, to go sailing. With no design in hand, no designer in mind and only a vague idea of his dream-yacht's length (roughly 25 meters), he takes a tour of Europe's major shipyards to attain Step Two of his dream. When he reaches the famed Royal Huisman Shipyard, in the polder-flat heart of Holland, his tour comes to an end. 

"This place is like Santa's village," he says. "This is where I want to build my boat "

May 1993: During the sixty-three months that follow that initial visit he finds his designers - Ron Holland and Pieter Beeldsnijder - solidifies his design and builds his dream yacht, naming herJuliet. But early in the process he learns so much about a sailboat's potential for transport - in the literal and philosophical senses - he encourages Juliet to grow to 43.58 meters, more than doubling her displacement, raising her complexity, content and cost exponentially.

In that same period - far lengthier than anyone had anticipated - he visits the shipyard some sixty times, each time cajoling managers, technicians and the yard's inventive guiding light, Wolter Huisman, into creating the finest aluminium sailing craft of modern times - a yacht brimming with superb new technology, overflowing with unique operating systems, filled with glowing mahogany furniture and, above all, graceful from every angle. To achieve his dream, in fact, he and Wolter Huisman assume a sort of joint spiritual generalship over a virtual army of designers, technicians and craftsmen, leading them on an intense but merry chase after perfection. The client attends to every technical and aesthetic detail, with obsession and originality, and creates a magnificent yacht in his own image.

And, as with other yachts, Juliet begins from nothing but an idea and some raw materials, then is painstakingly assembled by dedicated workers into a solid reality from thousands of parts supplied by hundreds of companies: pipes, wires, hoses, appliances, fittings, bits of aluminium, massive machines, thin sheets of veneer and fine artworks, all blended into a masterpiece of such magnificence that no detail is out of harmony: all so that one man can offer friends and family an opportunity for adventure, escape, enlightenment and perhaps - when the wind is 30 knots on the quarter - bliss under full sail. 

2021: Juliet has turned turn green, yet her hull remained white! The yacht embraces all hybrid technology benefits that Royal Huisman’s Huisfit has to offer, with today’s ultimate systems upgrade to leading edge propulsion and power generation. Learn more: Huisfit.com (opens new tab)