Sereno

A Benetti of thirty-five metres with a slide off the top deck. That is not a detail added to a specification: it is a statement about what the yacht is for, and it tells you more about a fortnight aboard than any description of the saloon could.

The slide changes the afternoon. On most yachts of this size, swimming means a platform, a ladder and a certain amount of arranging; here it means the shortest possible route from the highest deck into the sea, which is a different proposition entirely for anybody under fifteen.

There is a jacuzzi forward and an open-air cinema aboard. Taken together with the slide, the pattern is clear: this is a yacht laid out around what people do rather than around how the rooms photograph, and the deck is the part that was designed first.

Eleven guests across five cabins. Eleven is odd, so the cabins do not divide into it evenly, and she suits a family with children, or a group where one person travels alone, far better than five couples each expecting an identical room.

Seven crew for eleven guests. At thirty-five metres that is a strong complement, and it is what a yacht with this much going on actually needs: somebody launching the tender, somebody at the platform, somebody in the galley, all at the same hour.

She dates from 1998, which makes her the oldest yacht in this part of the fleet, and Benetti is the reason that is a fact rather than a caution. A hull of this construction, maintained through a working career, reaches an age at which nothing about it is unknown.

She is available across the Mediterranean. For a family charter that flexibility is worth having: the coast can be chosen late, and a yacht arranged this thoroughly around swimming works equally well off Sardinia, the Aeolians or the Greek islands.

Take her if the group includes children, or adults who behave like them. There are newer yachts of this length in the fleet and there are quieter ones, and there is nothing else here that will produce more hours in the water over the course of a fortnight.