A thin thread connects the gentleman’s yachts of the early twentieth century to the priorities of a certain kind of owner today: a preference for restraint over display. SES Yachts offers a contemporary reading of it with EPOQ 36, the first model in an entirely new series presented alongside Ocean Independence, with design by Sturge & Toth and naval architecture by Van Oossanen Naval Architects. The project arrives in the year of the Istanbul yard’s fiftieth anniversary and marks a break that goes well beyond styling: for the first time in half a century, SES Yachts is entering the semi-custom segment.
That, rather than the historical reference, is the industrial story here. The Turkish yard, family-owned and now in its third generation, has delivered ninety-one fully custom sailing and motor yachts, building its reputation on fine woodwork and long-term relationships with owners. The EPOQ series — three models spanning 24 to 46 metres, of which the 36 is the first to be presented — transfers that expertise onto a repeatable platform, with the declared aim of shortening the route to ownership without surrendering the standard of finish that has defined the yard until now.
A reinterpretation, not a quotation
The Belle Époque reference, to the European period running from 1871 to 1914, does not translate into a literal revival of the era’s visual language. Sturge & Toth has worked instead on the values that period expressed — elegance, maritime culture, the pleasure of unhurried passage-making — and carried them across onto modern proportions. The profile alternates discreet nods to British tradition with clean surfaces and pared-back lines, a concave bow resolving into a rounded transom, with teak detailing marking the topsides.
The studio’s founders, Toby Sturge and Ben Toth, note that the traditional gentleman’s yacht was often bound up with status and the visible expression of wealth. Their interpretation, they say, takes a different path: EPOQ does not seek to impress through grandeur.
The same thinking governs the distribution of space. The exterior areas are sized for time spent at anchor and for company rather than for parade, while the main saloon uses loose, freestanding furniture, which lends a residential character and allows the layout to be reconfigured. The interiors combine the yard’s traditional joinery with contemporary fabrics, a choice that leaves scope for personalisation even during the later stages of construction.
The tub that doubles as a skylight
The most immediately recognisable element of the project is the Jacuzzi on the sun deck, positioned directly above the al fresco dining area on the deck below. Its glass bottom works as an architectural skylight, filtering daylight and casting the movement of water onto the space beneath. Switchable liquid-crystal technology allows the glass to shift between transparent and translucent, a solution the design team associates with vessels of considerably greater size.
It is a detail that reads as a statement of method: innovation comes aboard where it adds something to the experience of being at sea, not as a demonstration for its own sake.
Built for real cruising
Technically, EPOQ 36 is built around a steel displacement hull developed against three criteria — simplicity, reliability and efficiency. Propulsion relies on low-revving engines, chosen to keep noise down and range up, while the onboard systems have been deliberately kept straightforward so that the yacht remains serviceable well away from the main support hubs. The lower deck has been standardised to optimise build quality, while retaining room to adapt details to the owner’s requirements.
Benjamin Toth is explicit that the project was never about adding complexity. Every design decision, he says, has been “evaluated through the lens of how owners actually use their yachts”.
Underpinning the hull is the Fast Displacement Hull Form developed by Van Oossanen Naval Architects, an architecture that, according to the Dutch studio, combines the efficiency of a displacement hull with some of the performance characteristics of semi-displacement forms, reducing resistance across the entire speed range. The designers point to lower fuel consumption and improved seakeeping as the consequences, with hull geometry optimised to limit pitching.
An alliance assembled upstream
The least visible but perhaps most telling aspect of the project concerns the way it was put together. Yard, design studio, naval architects and broker worked together from the earliest conceptual stages, without the customary separation between design, engineering and commercialisation: Ocean Independence was involved upstream and acts as exclusive sales partner for the series.
Peter Hürzeler, chief executive of Ocean Independence, frames the shift in terms of demand: owners, he argues, increasingly want yachts that reflect how they live rather than where they stand, and he describes EPOQ 36 as technically sophisticated without unnecessary complication.
Quite how a semi-custom platform will sit alongside the artisanal identity the yard has built over fifty years remains to be seen. But the direction is clear, and it runs through a quality SES Yachts sums up in a suitably understated formula: an elegance that does not shout, but whispers.
