Riviera 68 Sports Motor Yacht

Riviera 68 Sports Motor Yacht

- Daniel Harding Jr

Timing is everything. On a recent jaunt through the Gold Coast of Australia, Capt. Bill Pike and I swung by the Riviera yard; they always have some interesting builds under way, we told ourselves.

The year prior, I had visited the yard and walked through a plywood mockup of the Riviera 68 Sports Motor Yacht. Covered in a fine layer of sawdust with renderings taped to the sides, it felt as if I was walking through an elaborate tree fort rather than a yacht; it took a bit of imagination to really see the newcomer’s proportions.

We rolled up to the yard office in our rental car, then followed the sound of a Travelift. We watched as the bow of a new motoryacht inched out from a 747-sized hangar. Luck was on our side. It turned out to be none other than Hull No. 1 of the Riviera 68. “Better to be lucky than good,” I mentioned to Bill, to which he replied with his signature mhmm.