Dragon

Thirty-six metres nine built by Couach in France. The provenance is worth knowing: Couach build on the Atlantic coast, where the sea is rougher and less forgiving than the Mediterranean, and hulls made for that water behave differently in this one.

What it means in practice is a yacht that stays comfortable when the afternoon breeze gets up. The Mediterranean summer produces short, steep seas rather than long ones, and a hull engineered for the Bay of Biscay treats them as a minor matter rather than a reason to change the plan.

Twelve guests across six cabins, two to a room. The division is even, nothing folds down, and no cabin exists purely to make the number twelve. Six couples fit the layout as drawn, and so does a family travelling in pairs or three households sharing.

Eight crew for twelve guests. At thirty-seven metres with the guest list at capacity that is a full complement, and it is what allows the meals, the tenders, the cabins and the deck to be running at the same time instead of taking their turn.

The interior is warm, built in timber and fabric rather than in stone and glass. It is a French preference and it produces rooms that are pleasant to spend two weeks in rather than striking for the first ten minutes, which on a long charter is the more useful quality.

She was delivered in 2009, which puts fifteen seasons behind her. That is a settled age for a hull of this construction: the systems are known quantities, the crew have learned her habits, and nothing about her is still in the process of being discovered.

She is available across the Mediterranean. For a yacht with a seaworthy hull that flexibility is worth having, because the itineraries that suit her are the ones with real passages in them rather than a fortnight spent inside a single gulf.

Take her if you are twelve and you want six equal cabins on a yacht built by people whose home water is harder than yours. She is not the newest boat here, nor the flashiest, and she is one of the best made.