Mangusta GranSport 45

Twenty-six knots from a hull of forty-five metres three. The number on its own is remarkable; what makes it useful is that it comes without the ride penalty a fast yacht of this size normally imposes, so the speed is available on the days you would actually want to use it.

Speed at this length is not about arriving. It is about the shape of the day: a bay two hours away by a displacement yacht is forty minutes away by this one, which means lunch somewhere and dinner somewhere else stops being an ambitious plan and becomes an ordinary Tuesday.

Twelve guests across six cabins, two to each. The division is clean, nothing folds down and nobody draws the short cabin. Six couples fit as drawn, and so does a family travelling in pairs or three households sharing a fortnight aboard.

Eight crew look after those twelve. On a fast yacht that number is doing more than it looks: a boat that moves often needs the deck team ready more frequently, and the service has to hold together while the yacht is running rather than only when it is anchored.

The beach club folds out at the stern. It is the piece of the yacht that turns a swimming stop into a place rather than an event: the platform opens, the sea comes to floor level, and the space stays usable from breakfast until the light goes.

She was delivered by Overmarine in 2019 as part of the GranSport line, which is the yard's answer to the question of whether a fast yacht has to be uncomfortable. Several seasons on, the hull has proved the case rather than merely argued it.

The western Mediterranean suits her exactly. It is a cruising ground of short hops between very different places, and a yacht that can cross from the Riviera to Corsica in an afternoon uses it in a way that a twelve-knot yacht simply cannot.

Take her if the week you have in mind is busy. She rewards an itinerary with movement in it, and if the plan is to stay in one bay for a fortnight, most of what makes her exceptional would go unused.