Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 519

The side decks slope. It sounds like nothing until you walk one: instead of stepping up onto a raised deck and down again, you walk from the cockpit to the bow on a continuous surface, and every trip forward stops being a small negotiation with the boat.

That is the design idea behind the 519 and the reason she suits a group where not everybody is a sailor. The people who never go forward on other boats go forward on this one, which quietly changes how much of the boat gets used during a week.

Fifteen metres seventy-five of hull, four metres sixty-nine of beam, and a keel two metres twenty-eight deep. Those are sailing proportions, not accommodation proportions: she is narrow and deep because she is meant to lean over, hold on and go to windward.

Five cabins and four bathrooms for ten guests. Four cabins have their own and one pair shares, so the arithmetic is nearly even and worth agreeing on before departure rather than discovering it at eight in the morning halfway through the week.

Twin helms, one on each side of the cockpit. The person steering sits to windward with a clear view of the headsail and the bow, and the cockpit between the two wheels stays free for everybody else instead of being crossed by the person on watch.

She dates from 2017 and has no permanent crew. Bareboat for anyone qualified to take her, or with a skipper arranged in advance, which on a boat of nearly sixteen metres with a proper keel is a sensible option rather than an admission.

Draught of two metres twenty-eight means she anchors where there is water under her, further out than any catamaran and closer in than her length suggests. It is the trade the keel makes: less choice of anchorage, far more of the boat's own behaviour under sail.

The base is Portorosa on the Sicilian north coast, which is the doorstep of the Aeolian islands. Vulcano and Lipari are a comfortable day's sail, Stromboli is within the week, and the passages between them are the part of the holiday this particular boat is built for.