“Innovation, quality and service – that was my philosophy, and it remains to this day. “I wanted to be incredibly innovative from the start, and make the absolute most of the newest technologies,” states Luca. It garnered such interest wherever he took it, that five years later he decided to start a “little business” to service others who wanted a similar yacht. “I knew of great materials and had these great ideas,” he says, “having spent a lot of time racing sail boats, so I set out to design a yacht myself that was all the things I needed it to be.” Little did he know that Wallygator would lay the foundations for what is now an instantly-recognised and internationally-respected brand. The industry was simply not ready for such unorthodox concepts – no boat designer accepted his commission. He wanted a boat with a carbon fibre mast, no backstays and a forward master cabin essentially a vessel that mixed the best from an America’s Cup yacht and a Monaco-based all-singing-all-dancing superyacht. I couldn’t find one that fitted what I was after.” “I was looking for a boat that would suit my family,” he explains, “something that offered both great racing speed and cruising comfort, but also looked amazing.
Luca Bassani, founder of Wally Yachts, knows this all too well, choosing to go against the status quo when he launched his company in 1994 and sail his vision where no other yacht designer had dared to go before.ĭriven by a deeply-rooted passion for yachting, following summers in Portofino as a child, the first boat he built, Wallygator, in 1989, was actually for himself. The respect in success is great the fall from grace in failure perhaps even greater – nonconformists to ‘design traditions’ are eternalised and castigated in equal measure depending on the outcome of their work. Inherently, this drive for innovation comes with risk. Setting the standard, in any industry, means pushing the boundaries of convention to their breaking point.
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