Over the Rainbow

A 1930s classic of thirty-five metres, built in Scotland by A.M. Dickie & Sons and still working. That last word carries the weight: this is not a museum piece kept afloat for display but a yacht that goes to sea every season and earns its keep doing it.

She is a genuine period yacht rather than a replica, and the difference is not sentimental. A modern hull styled to look old has new systems in an old shape; this one has the proportions, the joinery and the sheerline of the decade that produced her, because it produced her.

The saloons are panelled and the timber is varnished. That is the finish the 1930s used and it is the reason the interior does not read as any particular later decade: a varnished panel looks the way it looked ninety years ago, and it will look that way in another thirty.

Eleven guests across four cabins. That is a dense allocation and it should be said plainly: four rooms for eleven people means groups that are comfortable together, families rather than four unconnected couples, and a conversation about who goes where before anybody arrives.

Five crew for eleven guests. It is a working complement on a yacht of this character, and the character is part of the point: a period yacht is run rather than staged, and the crew who take her to sea are doing a job that most modern yachts have engineered away.

Thirty-five metres from the 1930s is not thirty-five metres from 2020. The hull is narrower, the decks are lower, the rooms are smaller and the whole yacht sits closer to the water, which is exactly what people who want a boat like this are looking for.

She is available across the Mediterranean, where a yacht of this age and appearance draws a different kind of attention in a harbour. She is usually the only thing of her sort in the anchorage, and that is not an accident of scheduling.

Take her if the yacht itself is the reason for the charter. There are faster, newer and more comfortable boats of this length in the fleet, and there is nothing else here that anybody will remember in the same way.