Custom elevators on superyachts are more than a means of vertical transport: they are complex feats of engineering often designed as mobile masterpieces. We spent a morning at Lift Emotion in the Netherlands to find out more about a highly specialised and competitive market with room for only a handful of key players. “Starting up an elevator company specialising in yachts would be almost impossible today,” says Mike Brandt, who founded Lift Emotion with business partner Eef Kwakkel in 2007. The financial crisis struck less than a year later. Bad timing, you might think, but in fact Lift Emotion was the result of a lucky break. At the time Brandt was working as a mechanical engineer for another lift supplier on 75.75-metre Ocean Victory (now Ebony Shine) at Feadship. When the company ran into financial difficulties, the shipyard asked him to help out. “Ocean Victory was our springboard into the business, because after that Feadship signed us up for Musashi and her sistership Fountainhead,” continues Brandt. “Around the same time we finished the lift installations on Amevi, now Deja Too, and Alfa Nero at Oceanco, followed by orders from Delta, Trinity and Derektor in the US, and what was then Proteskan Turquoise in Turkey. You could say we started with a bang.”

Bigger yachts with more deck levels have raised client expectations and suppliers like Lift Emotion, Holland Marine Lifts (HML), Lutz in Germany and Bertazzoni in Italy have had to step up to the plate in terms of technical and aesthetic innovation. In 2007 the lift aboard Ocean Victory was a fairly discreet rectangular design, but just two years later Musashi’s all-glass lift enveloped by a stainless steel and glass staircase had become a focal point of the Japanese-inspired interior design. Nowadays, elevators that combine custom engineering with specially commissioned artwork or lighting installations are more the rule than the exception. Innovation is often driven by developments outside the yachting sector. Lift Emotion, for example, has built a lift inside an armoured bus for a Middle Eastern client with mobility issues, and devised the ‘twisting’ lift for the Steve Jobs Theatre at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California, which is fitted with seismic dampers in case of earthquake. But at least 80 percent of its turnover comes from tailor-made solutions for superyachts and during our visit the company was working on 22 elevator projects for yachts of up 125 metres in length.

“Our strength since day one has been that we offer tailor-made products and every lift that leaves our facility is one-of-kind,” says Brandt. “The best marine elevators are never standard – they set the standard. This is both an advantage and a challenge.”“The story of our life"

Whatever the size of yacht, the perennial challenge for any marine lift contractor is lack of space – what Brand wistfully calls “the story of our life.” Most lifts on yachts rely on hydraulic systems. To go up, a pump pushes fluid into the cylinder that drives the lift car up. To go down, the valve opens and oil is allowed to flow back into the reservoir and the car returns down using gravitational force. For technical and safety reasons elevators require space at the top of the trunk as well as at the bottom in the pit (and possibly a separate machinery room) to house the telescopic cylinder.

It follows that the more deck levels and the bigger the lift car, the larger the cylinders, pumps, and so on. Lift Emotion’s spectacular glass lift that connects five decks aboard Benetti’s 107-metre Luminosity has two, three-stage hydraulic cylinders protruding deep into the fire-rated machinery space on the under-lower deck. Hydraulic systems have the advantage that the mechanics are familiar to yacht crews who can carry out routine servicing themselves. On the other hand, ship systems rely on high-pressure, low-volume hydraulics, whereas elevators use low-pressure, high-volume systems. These require a stand-alone pump unit, usually fitted with a variable-frequency drive to avoid more fluid being pumped than is effectively used, which is bad for energy efficiency and heats up the fluid unnecessarily.

In certain cases other mechanisms may be more appropriate. Electric traction elevators have rolling steel cables over pulleys or sheaves and the weight of the car is balanced by a counterweight (although having a counterweight that can easily weigh over 1,000 kg on a moving yacht brings its own challenges). Drum drives raise and lower the car using an electric motor to wind two cables or wire ropes directly onto drum winches. Lift Emotion installed a lift of this type at the top of the lift shaft aboard Nobiskrug’s 80-metre Artefact because there was insufficient room underneath for a hydraulic system. An early request for the lift car on Luminosity was to have a three-metre high ceiling and correspondingly tall glass doors, although only the main deck had landing doors of the same height. Lift doors and landing doors obviously need to open and close simultaneously. This is done by a clutch mechanism that engages with and opens or closes the landing door at the same time as the lift door. An electric impulse from the elevator controller – the brain of the elevator – sets the process in motion when the car is safely at the proper floor, but Luminosity’s irregular deck heights presented a technical challenge because the opening mechanism is usually housed on top of the lift car, which doesn’t always correspond with the height of the landing door. The issue was resolved by mounting the electric door mechanism under the car.

In fact, the doors are the hardest working part of an elevator and the cause of most breakdowns. “When the equipment is adjusted correctly, both sets of doors open and close in a smooth mechanical movement, but even a small misalignment can result in a very noticeable malfunction,” says Brandt. “This usually happens not because something fails, but when somebody forces the door or blocks it with their foot.”

Safety first

Modern elevators have two basic sets of safety components: electrical and mechanical. The electrical components include the controller, sensors and software systems whereby the sensors monitor functions like the speed and position of the car and door-lock state, and send the data back to the controller. The mechanical components include the machine brake, overspeed governor, safety brakes and, finally, buffers at the bottom of the trunk. With advances in programmable electronic systems, the control systems are able to identify which link in the safety chain is open and tailor the response based on the situation.

Because the crew are expected to rescue themselves in rare cases of breakdown, service elevators on yachts require further precautions such as a ladder inside the car, another inside the shaft, and an escape hatch at the top. In reality, such lifts are also used by staff, perhaps nannies with children, so Lift Emotion prefers to class them as passenger elevators. There are multiple safety procedures for when entering the pit below the car, or the trunk top above it, for maintenance purposes. These should offer fail-safe guarantees, but accidents do happen, usually due to human error (there have been several lift-related injuries on yachts and at least one fatality).

Safety is also a factor when considering pop-up lifts that emerge on the sundeck. For the 60-metre Benetti Diamonds Are Forever, owner John Staluppi requested a lift that appeared from under a table so there was no trace of it when not in use. Bertazzoni’s marine division, which supplies most of the Italian shipyards, duly obliged. Lift Emotion has installed several pop-up lifts, but Brandt makes a point of explaining to designers and owners that they can restrict the use of the top deck, especially during charters.

“The thing to remember is that you have moving machinery coming out of the deck where there are people and perhaps children,” he explains. “That means the area has to be closed off and the lift has to slow down to allow the deck hatch time to unlock and open. Technically, you should have a crew member on deck pushing a button to bring the lift up, but no one wants that. Owners often decide against it once they understand the limitations and potential hazards.”Rock ‘n’ Roll

Roll and pitch can have a detrimental effect on lift operations. Marine lifts should be able to perform reliably in heavy seas (up to ±10º rolling for a period of 10 seconds, or up to ±5º pitching for a period of 7 seconds) and Lift Emotion has developed its own algorithm for calculating the potential loads and prevent deflection of the lift trunk. Most guest lifts are in the main lobby amidships where vertical accelerations are lowest, but service lifts and dumb waiters are often further forward or aft where the forces are higher.

Comfort is also a question of speed. The maximum speed for comfortable travel between two floors is usually reckoned to be around 0.58 m/sec, allowing time for the car to accelerate and decelerate. Over longer distances it can be faster (Luminosity’s lift car travels at 1m/sec) because there is a greater interval between the speeding up and slowing down phases. The comfort factor is not so much top speed as acceleration and jerk, or rate of change of acceleration.The final challenge for lift manufacturers is the installation. This usually happens in the busiest part of the yacht when the interior outfitting has already started. Assembling the elevator on site is far too disruptive, so companies like Lift Emotion pre-assemble as much as possible of the shaft and cabin in the factory, including any glasswork. The whole thing is then transported by truck to the shipyard and hoisted in through the top deck in two or three sections. The 15-person elevator on Project X – the biggest of its kind on an 80-metre yacht with a 1,125 kg payload – was up and running in a matter of days.

Elevators are so familiar that we rarely consider how they work – or break down. The basics of lift mechanics have changed little since the 1800s, but modern technology offers infinitely better safety and comfort. Mechanical valves have been replaced with electrical ones; electromechanical limiter switches are giving way to digital encoders and magnetic strip readers for measuring the distance between stops; the latest inverter pumps provide more precise control of the hydraulic fluid flowrate and pressure for smoother operation; rubber belts are replacing cables and chains; and lift cars are being built of lightweight aluminium instead of steel. These developments mean lighter systems can be installed on ever smaller yachts and last year Lift Emotion fitted a three-deck guest elevator aboard Van der Valk’s 34-metre Lady Lene, its most compact yacht project to date.

Sidebar 1 | Ultralight Lifts

Holland Marine Lifts (HML) is a family business set up by Emile van der Starre in 2002 at a time when the superyacht industry was peaking. Today it has a predominantly Dutch client list that includes Feadship, Oceanco and Heesen. During METSTRADE last year it unveiled a carbon-fibre lift car in collaboration with Opulent Designs International.“Opulent was looking at new applications of carbon fibre and reasoned that if weight is sometimes a critical factor on yachts, then a lightweight carbon-fibre lift would make sense,” says van der Starre. “We started a collaboration about a year ago and at METS we displayed the first prototype.”

Constructed for Opulent by specialists Supernatural-X in the UK, the weight of the ultralight carbon-fibre frame alone is just 48kg, whereas a steel cabin would be as much as 400kg. A fully functional carbon fibre lift system is being further developed at the HML facility near Rotterdam and testing is due begin in March 2023. The car will likely be too light for a hydraulic drive system, which requires a certain weight or pressure to force fluid back into the reservoir so the car can descend, and HML is looking at an electric belt-drive system.“It’s not just the lift car that can be made of carbon fibre; it’s also the shaft structure,” van der Starre points out. “That could mean an additional 200 kg saved on each deck level, which on high-performance yachts can make a significant difference.”

Less weight means smaller power packs and lower energy consumption. Other advantages of carbon fibre construction is that it allows designers to create more adventurous shapes, while the high strength of carbon composites means less material is required, which also saves space.

“We’re always looking at ways to improve the design and technology, but yacht builders are quite conservative and change comes slowly,” says Van der Starre. “I believe the market is ready for a carbon-fibre lift and judging from the enthusiastic reactions to our prototype it looks like the industry thinks so too.”

Lifts of Ships

The regulations governing “Lifts on ships” for passengers and crew vary slightly between classification societies and flag states, but all are based on ISO 8383 or EN81 codes of practice. Importantly, these codes only set out guidelines for marine elevator settings and how to perform inspections.

EN 81-20 defines the technical requirements for the construction of elevators and for the testing of lift components.

EN 81-80 stipulates rules for the improvement of the safety of existing passenger and goods elevators.

EN-13015 deals with “maintenance for lifts and escalators”.

ISO 8383 lays down statutory requirements for the design, installation and inspection.

It is worth pointing out that there is no such thing as an ISO or Class approved marine elevator supplier. Additionally, classification societies only refer to the ISO 8383 code and do not add further instructions or guidelines. An exception is RINA, which stipulates it is the owner that needs to authorise the marine elevator service company. Different flag states can have their own additional rulings.

Did you know?

Marine lifts had an inauspicious start. The first ship to have one was the Royal yacht Victoria and Albert III in 1900. The elevator was made by London-based Waygood & Co. and functioned perfectly, but the yacht tipped over when her dry dock was flooded causing major damage. The same company later installed the electric lifts aboard the ill-omened Titanic.

Waygood & Co. merged with Otis, today the world’s leading elevator and escalator company, which claims to move two billion people every day. Founded by the American industrialist Elisha Otis, in 1854 he demonstrated his safety elevator in dramatic fashion by stepping inside and cutting the hoist ropes: the lift fell just a few inches before being arrested by a saw-toothed ratchet bar.

This article was originally published in our technical magazine How To Build It, you can find all our issues and download the magazine for free here.