Designing the HH44 Interiors
Paul Hakes (CEO & Co-Founder of HH) and James Hakes (HH Naval Architect) in the second video of the series: how they and the team at HH Catamarans developed the all new HH44 Interiors. Welcome to “Yachting Evolved.”
Luxury Living Spaces
“The interior is where our clients live and as well as being inviting and comfortable they’ve got to be open and functional. I would like to think that after starting from the 66 seven years ago with all the models that we’ve done in between we’ve really cracked it with this one”.
“We’re quite fortunate in that all our boats are semi-customized. Despite us being an in-house design office, compared to a high volume production, we need to talk to the customer first to find out what they want, and design a functional space that suits them. That is how we developed the 44.”
“The 44 doesn’t have as much room for customization due to the price point so we had to design an interior that we could set in stone. The choices had to be limited on décor rather than arrangement and equipment.”
How it’s Arranged
“Let’s dive into the arrangement itself. On the port side as you enter the salon is the galley and it’s U-shaped. We’ve found this works really well on the 50. We’ve rotated it on the 44 but it is still fantastic on a fast moving boat that can move a bit and so you have room to brace yourself all around you.”
“It’s a very functional space for cooking. It’s important when you’re on passage, when even on a comfortable boat like this if you’ve got a meter or two meters of swell, the boat’s moving around.”
“Having a U-shaped galley is is a tremendous asset. We all love open spaces but on a boat, open spaces can be dangerous. There is a fine balance, a line that we had to walk when designing the interior. How much space do we offer? Lots of space looks great at a boat show but it’s not so good when you’re in the middle of the ocean when you’re trying to walk from one side to the other.”
“On the opposite side of the salon you have an L-shaped settee, two meters by two meters so you can lie down either side of it. The table even lowers into a pilot berth day bed”.
Work From Home
“One of my favorite areas in the salon is the nav station. You’ll notice it’s larger than on the HH50 in terms of surface area but we always seem to fill it up. I’m sure a lot of us experienced in 2020 a fair stretch of home working, and many wish they could have been working on a yacht somewhere at anchor.”
“A lot of our clients are buying boats for this very reason, so we paid a bit more attention to the nav station to make it functional not just as a navigation desk but also as an office desk, so you’ve got room for your laptop or a big screen, there’s storage and plenty of console space if you want to fit different electronics.”
Ventilation
Also in the salon, we should mention that the two forward windows swing open and that will create great ventilation. They swing forwards so when there’s light rain, you don’t have to close them. Also just behind the mast there are port lights that that actually open inwards.”
Keeping Cool
“One of the fantastic benefits of the hybrid is that in order to power it you need quite a large lithium battery bank to push the boat. In comparison to the power it takes to push the boat, air conditioners don’t use very much so, in a hypothetical scenario, if you weren’t using anything else but an air conditioner you could run it for a week non-stop.”
“Living on the boat every day you’re getting solar energy and if you are sailing the you’re charging. So you can run air conditioning all the time if you want and not have to worry about draining the batteries.”
Sleeping Well
“Another important aspect of the HH44 of course is luxury. We spend 30 percent of our lives sleeping, so we use proper sprung marine mattresses with plastic springs and memory foam on the top so you sleep well.”
“Even our cushions in the salon and cockpit we’ve developed over many generations to get the right combination of open cell high density and foam with a lighter density foam on top so that it feels nice to sit in for an extended period. This is what luxury is about: beautiful sculptured foam cushions!”
Headroom
“An important one because the human race as a species has got taller quite dramatically over the last 40 years, and Americans are particularly tall. In the hulls you have between six foot eight and six foot six clearance.”
“Despite the good looks of the boat, with clever design we can provide great head room. In the salon it varies from six foor eight to six foot ten. That in itself creates the feeling of luxury.”
Room for your Kit
“Storage space I consider another luxurious thing and we’ve got really big lockers at the front where we can house scuba gear and a dive compressor thanks to the hybrid electric engines.”
“Instead of the engine room, we’ve got a an empty space (well it’s got some steering gear in there and some other functions) but it’s another good cockpit storage space with a big deep locker.”
“The lockers at the front of the boat have plenty of room for all your sails and toys and if it were just a couple aboard and storage was the primary consideration we do have the option for the forward starboard cabin: you can take out the double berth there and fit it out with a workshop space with additional refrigeration.”
“And you’ve still got the aft cabin on the starboard side for your guests to come aboard with a vip double queen bed. And you’ve got overflow into the salon should people need to sleep there. So whether that space is a pantry, a workshop with lots of storage and a big working bench surface is up to you.”
Lighting
“Also adding to the luxury feel of the boat we’ve paid special attention to the lighting because that’s an important part of any environment: the feeling and being able to set the mood. A harsh spotlight makes the space feel smaller so we’ve used indirect lighting wherever possible with rope lights hidden in the furniture.”
“One of the features of this that I really like is that there are RGB lights so when you’re night sailing you can set all the rope lights in the boat to red to help with your night vision.”
“That’s form and function coming together beautifully. It’s one thing to design a beautiful interior but it’s another thing to keep the design as a performance boat.”
“And you know, we have a proprietary system of making our furniture panels. They’re all foam cored and weigh just over three kilos a square meter.”
“Well I think we have touched over everything beautiful about the inside of our boats, thanks for joining and welcome to Yachting Evolved on the HH44!”
