Oceanco is offering yachting enthusiasts and marine explorers a new companion in their quest to conquer new territories – the105-m (345 ft) diesel-electric driven Esquel, which has been conceived and designed to explore the marine world.

Oceanco has created Esquel in collaboration with Timur Bozca Design, stylist Gina Brennan, Lateral Naval Architects and Engineering, and Pelorus, a leading experiential and yacht expedition travel company.

Sporting a displacement hull with a plumb bow, Esquel has been designed for extensive cruising to remote regions extending from the North Pole to the South Pole and everywhere in between.

“At the same time, she offers all the aesthetics, amenities, interior and exterior finishes and attention to engineering detail seen onboard all Oceancos,” says Dirk de Jong, Commercial Director at Oceanco.

A perfect blend between an expedition vessel and a sophisticated superyacht, Esquel offers the best of both worlds. She has a 230-sq-m tender garage for fast ribs, varietal tenders, watersports toys and diving gear.

Her expansive uncluttered main deck, measuring 200 sq m has an aft deck glass superstructure with an enclosed pool and wellness area with panoramic views. This deck also offers plenty of space for accommodating locked containers of any sort, as well as additional tenders and off-road vehicles. For those interested in marine biology and ocean conservation, Esquel can become a platform for any number of scientific studies such as coral aquaculture – creating reef farms aboard to help restore our world’s dying reefs.

Esquel has a very flexible layout and can be adapted to house additional multi-purpose cabins, first response units, seminar areas, and research offices.

As Esquel is not an ordinary rough explorer yacht, she is also eminently qualified to host a celebrity party at the Cannes Film Festival. 

Timur Bozca Design was selected to design Esquel. Bozca, who has design studios in London and Antalya, has won several design accolades in the last few years including Young Designer of the Year Award.

“Our vision is to create solutions by considering human factors, technology and aesthetics, says Bozca. “We design everything for a reason – not just for the sake of designing. We believe that we must not only create for tomorrow, but also for the day after.”

Esquel is equipped with a state-of-the-art sustainable compact diesel-electric architecture to allow uncompromised and autonomous operation throughout the world. With her strengthened hull and Polar classification, she has a cruising range of 7,000 nautical miles and can reach a top speed of 16.5 knots.

“In order to truly realise her expedition potential,” says James Roy, Managing Director of Lateral, “Esquel’s naval architecture has been executed to provide maximum redundancy for the lowest possible maintenance.”