Case study · My own app
I can’t afford a superyacht. So I built an app for them.
Spot a Yacht is a superyacht research and spotting app I designed and built from scratch. Swipe through the world’s biggest boats, look up who built them, watch them on video and post your own sightings.
- 213yachts in the registry
- ~590videos embedded
- 13charter-ready yachts
- 2designs, phone and desktop
Launched November 2026 and still growing. Live tracking from public ship signals is up next.
Yacht spotting deserved better than a forum.
People stand on docks in Monaco, Miami and London snapping photos of boats the size of apartment buildings. Then the photo dies in a camera roll, or in a forum thread from 2009.
I wanted one place where you can find out what that boat is, who built it, how big it is and where it’s been seen. It had to feel as fancy as the boats themselves, and it had to be fun to scroll.
A swipe feed, but for superyachts.
On a phone it works like TikTok. Full-screen photos you swipe through, carousels for every sighting and little info bubbles sitting right on the photo.
- Pop-up sheets for specs, the legend, our verdict and charter info
- An anchor ⚓ instead of a heart, with a little drop animation when you tap it
- Follow a yacht and get an alert when it’s spotted again
A whole second design for the 50+ crowd.
Plenty of yacht fans aren’t scrolling TikTok. So the desktop got its own design instead of a stretched phone layout. Huge photos, buttons with real words on them and an ivory menu on the right side.
Click a boat and a side panel shows everything about it: specs, builder, history, videos and charter details. No hunting, no tiny icons, no squinting.
213 yachts, researched one by one.
Every yacht has a profile with IMO and MMSI numbers, builder, size, reported owners and embedded YouTube videos, about 590 of them so far.
The fleet page has filters for size, builder and type, plus a daily Yacht of the Day. Search ranks results by relevance and ignores accents, so typing “lurs” finds Lürssen.
Snap a boat. The app reads the hull.
Upload a photo and AI reads the name on the hull, then tags the right yacht for you. Nobody has to know the difference between a Feadship and a Benetti.
Every upload passes a quality check (1200 pixels minimum) and gets a crop and zoom editor, so the feed stays sharp. It all runs on Cloudflare Workers with a D1 database and Workers AI, which keeps it fast everywhere.
Dressed like it owns a marina.
Luxury branding
A gold monogram, Cormorant Garamond with Geist, deep ink and ivory with gold accents.
Charter, done right
Charter info for 13 charter-ready yachts and a private inquiry form right on the boat’s page.
Share cards per yacht
Every yacht gets its own share card, so a link in a group chat looks the part.
SEO and AI search
Structured data, a sitemap and llms files so Google and AI assistants can find every boat.
Common questions
What is Spot a Yacht?
A superyacht research and spotting app. You can browse a registry of 213 yachts, watch videos, upload your own sightings and follow the boats you love.
Who built Spot a Yacht?
Chenzo of Chenzo Designs designed and built it end to end: the brand, the phone and desktop designs, the database, the search, the AI photo tagging and the SEO.
Is it finished?
Nope, and that’s the fun part. It launched in November 2026 as a work in progress. Live tracking from public ship signals is next.
Can you build an app like this for my idea?
Rock on, yes. Feeds, catalogs, search, uploads, AI tagging and inquiry forms are all things I build for clients.
Got an idea that’s bigger than a website?
Feeds, catalogs, search, AI tagging, inquiry forms. If it lives on the web, I’ll build it and make it look expensive.