Arion

Nine guests in four cabins is a low count for thirty-seven metres. Yachts of this length are usually asked to sleep more, and the cabins give up something to allow it. Arion does the opposite: four rooms carry nine people, so each one is a room rather than a berth.

Six crew for nine guests is close to two people working for every three at the table. It shows in small things rather than ceremony: breakfast laid on the aft deck instead of inside, the water toys ready before anyone asks, a yacht that resets itself between one swim and the next.

The jet skis live off the platform and go in early. They are not kept back for the photographs at the end of the week. They are part of how the days are shaped, which is why the platform is the busiest part of the yacht from mid-morning onwards.

The tender is used as transport rather than kept as an ornament. On a yacht that prefers to lie at anchor, that distinction decides the week: lunch ashore, a change of bay, a run in for supplies, all without moving her off a spot worth staying in.

Dining happens aft. It is a small choice with a large effect, because a table outside sets the pace of the whole day: long meals, nobody changing for dinner, the sea at the same level as the plates rather than framed behind glass.

Couach delivered her in 1998, at thirty-seven metres. She is not a yacht that asks to be looked at from the quay, and the way she charters confirms it. The interior is where you sleep, and the rest of the week happens outside it.

She works the whole Mediterranean rather than a single stretch of it, so the itinerary can be built around where you want to be rather than where she happens to be. She is at her most convincing at anchor off a coast with very little on it.

Nine is an awkward number for many yachts and a natural one here: two families travelling together, or a group of friends who would rather not divide themselves into couples to make the cabin count work. Six crew make that group feel small rather than managed.