Antheya III

Thirty-five metres one of Princess, and the number that matters is not the length but the draught. She is drawn to get into the smaller Greek harbours, which on a yacht chartering in the Aegean decides more about the week than any feature of the interior.

The Greek islands are a cruising ground of small ports, and most of them were built long before yachts of this size existed. A boat that can go alongside in the town rather than anchoring off it turns dinner into a walk and the evening into something that happens ashore.

Ten guests across five cabins, two to a room, dividing evenly with nothing folded down. Five couples fit the layout as drawn, and so does a family travelling in pairs. There is no compromise room and no conversation on arrival about who accepts it.

Six crew for ten guests. It is a working complement for thirty-five metres: enough to run the yacht, the meals and the tenders properly through a full Aegean day, without the near one-to-one service of a yacht fifteen metres longer.

The bathing platform is wide and the tender access is easy. In Greece that combination is used constantly: the anchorages are the destination, the water is the reason people come, and getting in and out of it a dozen times a day should not require organising.

She was delivered in 2009. Princess build in volume and build well, and fifteen seasons on a hull of this size is an age at which everything is known: the systems are proven, and the crew have learned exactly how she behaves in a meltemi afternoon.

She works Greece and the eastern Mediterranean, which is the ground she was chosen for. The Cyclades, the Dodecanese and the Turkish coast are all within reach of a fortnight, and the distances between islands suit a yacht of exactly this size.

Take her for the itinerary rather than the specification. If the week is the Greek islands, thirty-five metres with a shallow draught is close to the ideal instrument, and the extra length of a larger yacht would cost you the harbours that make the Aegean worth doing.