Sassi's resurrection

On 13 September 2018, Lürssen experienced what was probably the darkest day in the history of the shipyard. The owner of the "Sassi" project will probably also remember this day forever. In Bremen Aumund, a fire broke out during the night on the 146 metres. It is assumed that the interior work was well advanced and the fire was able to spread quickly, heating the hull up to 1000 degrees and ultimately even spreading to the floating dock. For more than two days, 900 firefighters battled in the largest firefighting operation in post-war Bremen. Fortunately, there were no serious injuries.

The major fire also came as a shock to the entire industry, as it happened just a few days before the Monaco Yacht Show. It is therefore all the more pleasing that the follow-up project "Opera" has now literally risen from the ashes of "Sassi". Only the engine room is said to have emerged from the dismantling in Hamburg as the basis. In terms of shipbuilding, the hull created at Blohm+Voss in Dock 17 is better described as a new build, even if the undocking in mid-April this year revealed design parallels to "Sassi". For example, in the mixture of vertically and horizontally aligned oval windows in the hull. There are no specific references to the creator of the exterior design for either project. As with the scrapping of "Sassi", yacht spotters only caught a brief glimpse of "Opera". After a short tour of the Elbe, the gigantic vessel immediately disappeared back into Dock 10, where Lürssen covered the 287 metre long floating dock in Hamburg with a permanent enclosure before transporting it by five tugs, including the shell, to Bremen Berne, where the project will be completed at the owner's request.

The cause of the "Sassi" fire is not known; the Bremen public prosecutor's office closed the investigation at the end of 2019. It is also unclear how the damage was settled in detail. The construction risk insurance is likely to have totalled over 500 million euros. No insurance company can shoulder such a policy on its own. Thirty syndicates underwrote the policy via the Lloyd's insurance exchange in London, and five additional insurers carried a further share of the construction risk. A large number of reinsurers are also likely to be involved. The insurance payout is considered to be the largest since the sinking of the Costa Concordia cruise liner. The incident has not damaged Lürssen's order situation; the Bremen-based company is working on seven yachts with lengths of over 100 metres.