Eleni

Thirteen crew for twelve guests. That is the number to start with, because it is unusual even at fifty metres and it changes what a charter aboard actually consists of: more people looking after the yacht than staying on it, every day of the week.

The practical effect is that nothing has to wait its turn. The tenders, the meals, the cabins, the deck and the evening can all be happening at once, and the standard does not drop at four in the afternoon when a smaller crew would be choosing between them.

Twelve guests across six cabins, two to a room. Six couples, or a family travelling in pairs, or three households sharing a fortnight: the division is even, nothing folds down, and no one is asked to take the small room so the numbers add up.

The interiors are classical and built in timber. That is a specific choice and it is not to everybody's taste: it makes for warm, panelled, quiet rooms rather than the pale open volumes of a contemporary yacht, and it ages differently, which is to say it ages well.

The owner's deck runs the full width of the yacht. At fifty metres that is a private floor rather than a large cabin, and it is the arrangement that suits a charter where one couple or one family is hosting the rest rather than sharing equally with them.

She was built by CBI Navi and delivered in 2009. Fifteen years is enough time for a yacht to have found its crew and its rhythm, and on a hull of this size and construction it is early middle age rather than anything approaching old.

The western Mediterranean is her ground. The Riviera, the Ligurian coast, Corsica and Sardinia, the Tuscan islands: short passages, deep history and harbours that suit a yacht with a classical profile better than they suit a white plastic box.

She is the yacht here for a group that values being looked after above being impressed. Nothing about her is designed to make an entrance, and everything about the way she is crewed is designed to make two weeks pass without a single thing being difficult.