Oasis

Forty-seven metres five, built by ISA Yachts in Ancona, carrying twelve guests in six full double cabins. The word full is doing work in that sentence: six real doubles rather than four doubles and two rooms that exist so the brochure can print twelve.

That distinction decides how a group divides. Six couples fit the layout as drawn, and so does a family travelling in pairs, or three households sharing a fortnight. Nobody arrives to discover they have been allocated the cabin that was designed to make up the numbers.

Nine crew look after those twelve. At forty-seven metres that is a proper complement rather than a minimum, and it is what lets the tenders, the meals, the interior and the deck all run at once instead of taking turns through a busy afternoon.

The sundeck runs the full length of the yacht. That is unusual even at this size, and it gives the top of the boat the quality of a terrace rather than a platform: room for the whole group at one end and for somebody who wants to be alone at the other.

The beach club and the bathing platform are the other half of the same idea. A wide platform is what turns swimming from an organised event into something that simply happens whenever the yacht stops, and it is the part of the yacht most used by the youngest and the oldest aboard.

Ancona is worth knowing as a provenance. It is an Adriatic yard town with a shipbuilding tradition rather than a fashion one, and ISA built its reputation there on hulls that are engineered first and styled afterwards.

She is available across the Mediterranean rather than confined to one basin, which suits a yacht carrying twelve. A large group usually has a fixed fortnight and a flexible geography, and the ability to choose the coast late is worth more than any single item of equipment.

She is the straightforward answer for twelve people who all want an equal cabin. Not the fastest yacht here and not the newest, and the one where the accommodation was drawn for the number of guests she is licensed to carry.