Anjelif

One crew member for every guest. Eleven and eleven: on a yacht of fifty metres that ratio sits near the top of the range, and it alters the texture of a week on board more than any single feature could. Requests are absorbed rather than queued, and the boat runs around the people aboard instead of the other way round.

Anjelif is a full-displacement Columbus of forty-nine point eight metres, built in 2006 and kept to a standard that does not betray the date. Full displacement means she sits in the water rather than skimming across it, and the difference shows in a swell: she goes through the sea instead of over it.

Her cruising speed is thirteen knots, which is the right speed for this coastline. Quick enough to leave one island after breakfast and be anchored off the next before lunch, unhurried enough that the passage counts as part of the day rather than an interruption of it. Nothing has to be put away, and nobody has to hold on to a glass. Thirteen knots also shapes the itinerary: a distance that would take a slower hull most of a day becomes a morning, and a week covers more ground than the chart first suggests.

Five cabins for eleven guests is an unusual division and a useful one, because it does not oblige everyone to arrive in pairs. A family with children of different ages, a group of friends whose numbers refuse to divide neatly, an eleventh guest who would be an embarrassment on a strictly two-per-cabin layout: all of these are straightforward here.

Exterior deck space is spread over three levels, which is what allows eleven people to spend an entire day outside without living on top of one another. Someone reads in the shade on one deck while someone else lies in the sun two flights above, and the two need not meet until dinner. On a yacht carrying this many guests, separation is itself a form of comfort.

She is available across the Mediterranean, and she suits charterers who judge a yacht by the way it is run rather than by the year on its papers. Eleven crew, three decks of open air, and a speed chosen for the distances actually involved.