Baracuda

Fifty metres, and the sails are the working part. That sentence applies to very few yachts of this size. Baracuda is a ketch, two masts carrying a full sail plan in deep aubergine, and she is at her best on passage, which is not something most yachts of her length can claim.

A ketch divides its sail area between main and mizzen instead of putting everything on one mast. On a fifty-metre hull that division is practical rather than decorative: the individual sails stay manageable, and the rig can be reduced in stages instead of all at once.

Ten guests on fifty metres is a low number, and it produces the one thing rarely bought aboard a yacht: distance. There is enough deck for people to be genuinely out of each other's company without going below or leaving the boat altogether.

Five cabins carry those ten. Two to a room, evenly, with no cabin that exists to absorb whoever is left over. For a group travelling as couples, or for two families sharing a fortnight, the accommodation divides itself without any discussion.

Nine crew for ten guests is a high number, and on a sailing yacht it is the rig that explains it. Sails have to be handled, and handled at night, while the service inside carries on as though nothing at all were happening on deck.

The decks are teak and the aft dining is shaded, which on a yacht that actually sails matters more than it sounds. The shade is what keeps the aft deck usable through the middle of the day, when a boat under way offers fewer places to get out of the sun.

The swim platform carries the toys, and it becomes the centre of the day whenever the anchor is down. It is also the point at which fifty metres stops being an object seen from the shore and turns into the place you get into the water from.

Her season is the eastern Mediterranean, where the anchorages run deep and the pine comes down to the waterline. It is a coast that rewards a yacht able to make a passage overnight and be somewhere else entirely by the time breakfast is laid.