The passion the Filippetti family imbues in their boats is hard to miss, especially when the rooster tail is 15 feet high. It belongs to hull number one of the Filippetti Yacht S55, a resurgence of sorts, or maybe a harkening back in time. At the wheel is Fausto Filippetti, which is fitting: You could say he has his hands all over this design. Cruising out of Miami’s South Beach into Biscayne Bay, there is a good amount of traffic. It’s obvious while sharing the water with center consoles and larger motoryachts that the S55 is the only yacht in the bay outfitted with twin 1,200-hp MAN engines paired to Arneson Surface Drives.
Italy has long been enamored with open concept sport yachts. When a more mustachioed Fausto and his partners Tilli Antonelli and Giuliano Onori founded Pershing in 1981, they both capitalized on and accelerated this growing trend, making its way across the pond and all over the world. They named their company after an intercontinental ballistic missile delivery system. This would be fitting, as their first boat, the Pershing 45, indeed moved like a missile, given its size, and was so well received that the company exploded in popularity.
This is evinced in the S55. (“S,” of course, stands for Sport.) Stepping aboard, the first thing you notice is how much social space the 57-footer affords. In the cockpit, an L-shaped sofa combines with a massive sunpad to answer the question, “Where are my guests?” on a sunny day. A robust, sliding glass partition is capable of completely disappearing, making the salon and the cockpit one.
