Lady Emma

Thirty-four metres one carrying eight guests with a crew of four. Both halves of that are low numbers, and together they produce a particular kind of charter: intimate rather than formal, with a small team who know the eight people aboard by the second day.

A crew of four is a deliberate scale. It is enough to run the yacht, cook properly and look after the day, and it is small enough that the service never becomes a performance. For a family or a group of friends who find a large crew intrusive, that is exactly the right arrangement.

Eight guests across four cabins, two to a room, dividing evenly. Four couples fit as drawn, and so does a family travelling in pairs. There is no odd berth, no compromise room, and nothing to negotiate at the passerelle on the first afternoon.

The interior is built in cherry timber, which is warmer in tone than the walnut most Italian yachts of this period used. It gives rooms that feel lived in rather than presented, and on a two-week charter that quality wears considerably better than a harder finish.

The aft deck is covered and laid for dinner. On a yacht of this size that is where the evening happens: outside, in the breeze, at a table that does not have to be cleared and reset indoors when the light goes or the wind picks up.

She was built by Couach, on the French Atlantic coast, and delivered in 2007. Atlantic yards build for harder water than this, and the practical result is a hull that stays comfortable in the short afternoon sea that a Mediterranean summer produces most days.

Nearly two decades of seasons sit behind her, which on a hull of this construction is a settled age rather than an old one. The systems are proven, the crew know her habits, and nothing about the yacht is still in the process of being learned.

She is available across the Mediterranean. Take her if there are eight of you, you want the yacht to feel like a house rather than a hotel, and the idea of four people looking after you appeals more than the idea of ten.