Unexpected

Thirty-eight metres of Heesen, built in aluminium. The material is not a detail: aluminium gives a lighter hull than steel for the same length, which means a yacht that moves more easily, sits higher in the water and behaves differently from anything built the conventional way.

Heesen build fast, well-engineered yachts and have never been a fashion yard. What that produces is a hull with a long working life, and this one has reached the age where the systems are proven, the crew know her, and nothing about her is still being discovered.

Ten guests across five cabins, two to a room, dividing evenly with nothing folded down. Five couples fit as drawn, and so does a family travelling in pairs. There is no compromise cabin at the end of a corridor and no negotiation about who takes it.

Seven crew for ten guests. It is a generous complement at thirty-eight metres, close to one for every guest and a half, and it is the number that determines what a week is like far more reliably than the length or the name on the transom.

The aft deck is large and covered, and it is where dinner happens. A covered deck of that size is worth more in practice than a formal dining saloon: it is usable in the evening breeze, it is outside, and it does not require the group to go below to eat.

The interior is relaxed rather than glossy. That is a specific character and it will not suit everybody: warm, lived-in, comfortable, without the mirror-finish surfaces that photograph well and then show every fingerprint for the rest of the fortnight.

She has aged into her best years, which is a real thing on a yacht and not a euphemism. The first seasons of any hull are spent finding what needs fixing; the years after that, on a well-built boat, are the ones where everything simply works.

She is available across the Mediterranean. Take her if you want a properly built yacht with a full crew and no interest in making an entrance, and if the ten of you would rather the boat felt like a house than like a showroom.