Emocean

A steel hull of thirty-eight metres two, built in the expedition manner by Rosetti Superyachts and delivered in 2021. The type is the point: a hull built to work rather than to pose, with the deck strength, the sea-keeping and the quiet that come from that way of building.

Twelve guests and five cabins. The numbers do not divide into pairs, so this is a yacht for a group that is comfortable sharing rather than for six couples who each want a door of their own. Two families travelling together fit her far better than six unconnected passengers.

Nine crew for twelve guests is high for thirty-eight metres, and it is the figure that puts her above the yachts she is measured against. The length says one thing about what the week will be like and the crew number says another; the crew number is the more reliable of the two.

She is quiet at eleven knots. On an expedition hull that is the designed cruising speed rather than a compromise, and it is why passages aboard are something you can sit through rather than something you wait out on the aft deck with the engines under you.

Shaded deck space is extensive, and on this type of yacht it usually is: the expedition layout puts working deck where a conventional yacht puts styling, and the result is more usable outdoor area than the length would suggest.

The steel construction matters more than it sounds. It gives a yacht that shrugs at weather a lighter hull would take seriously, and it is why an expedition boat can stay at anchor through an evening that sends the others into harbour.

She works the western Mediterranean, where the coasts are close together and the anchorages are good. An expedition yacht in that ground is not an eccentric choice but a comfortable one: it simply means fewer nights are decided by the forecast.

For a group of twelve who care about how the yacht behaves rather than how it photographs, she is the most interesting boat of this size here. The crew ratio and the hull type together buy a quality of week that a more conventional thirty-eight metres cannot.