Ottawa IV

Thirty-nine metres with a blue hull, a water slide and a pool on the aft deck. Those three things together describe the yacht more accurately than any specification: she was laid out for time spent in the water, not for time spent in the saloon.

The pool is the unusual part. Plenty of yachts of this length have a jacuzzi; a pool on the aft deck is a different proposition, because it can be used while the yacht is moving and it gives the group somewhere to be in the middle of the day that is neither the sea nor the shade.

The slide is the other half of the same idea. It turns the top deck into the start of the swim rather than a place to look at it, and on a yacht carrying twelve guests it is what keeps the afternoon from becoming a queue for the bathing ladder.

Twelve guests across five cabins. The numbers do not divide into pairs, so she suits a group comfortable with sharing rather than six couples each expecting their own door. Two families travelling together fit her considerably better than twelve unconnected passengers.

Seven crew for twelve guests. It is a working complement at this length rather than a lavish one, and it is honest to describe it that way: enough to run a busy yacht properly, without the near one-to-one service of a boat fifteen metres longer.

She was delivered in 2016 as a custom build, which is why the deck plan does not follow a production template. What the owner asked for is visible: the water features took the space that a conventional yacht of this size gives over to a formal upper saloon.

She is available across the Mediterranean. For a yacht arranged around swimming, the choice of coast matters less than the choice of anchorages, and the flexibility to pick either late in the planning is worth having with a group of twelve.

Take her if the charter is a family holiday rather than a series of dinners ashore. The yacht was built around the hours between eleven and six, and a group that intends to spend those hours in the water will get more from her than from anything else this size.