Da Vinci

Fifty metres that will hold twenty-one knots. Put those two figures together and you have something unusual: most yachts of this length settle at twelve or fourteen and stay there, because a displacement hull cannot do otherwise without burning through its own range.

She is a planing hull from Overmarine, delivered in 2018, and the speed changes the geography of a charter. Twenty-one knots turns a full day's passage into an afternoon, which means an itinerary can include places that are otherwise a compromise between where you want to be and how long it takes to get there.

That matters most in the western Mediterranean, where she works. Saint-Tropez to Portofino, Corsica to the Costa Smeralda, the Balearics from the mainland: all of them become decisions made at breakfast rather than passages planned two days ahead.

Twelve guests across six cabins, two to a room. No pull-down berths, no cabin that has to be given to whoever complains least, and no arithmetic to do before the guest list is settled. Six couples, or a family in pairs, fit the layout exactly as drawn.

The owner's suite runs the full beam of the yacht. At fifty metres that is a room of a size that has no equivalent ashore in most people's lives, with windows on both sides and the whole width of the hull between them.

Nine crew for twelve guests. It is the number that keeps everything running at once: the tenders, the meals, the cabins and the deck, without the yacht having to choose which of them gets attention on a busy afternoon.

Speed also buys weather. A yacht that can make twenty-one knots can leave before a front arrives rather than sitting through it, and over a two-week charter that is worth more than any single feature aboard: the week bends around the sea instead of the other way round.

She suits a group that wants to see the coast rather than settle on one part of it. If the plan is a fortnight in one bay she is more yacht than the plan requires; if the plan is four countries in ten days, there is nothing here better suited.