Vertige

Fifty metres, built in Genoa by Tankoa. The city matters as much as the yard: Genoese engineering has a particular character, unshowy and thoroughly worked out, and it is visible in a yacht that carries twelve guests and ten crew without either group being aware of the other.

Twelve guests across six cabins is a clean division. Two to a room, no folding berths to make the numbers work, no cabin that somebody has to be persuaded into. Six couples fit exactly; so does a family travelling in pairs, or three households sharing a fortnight.

Ten crew for twelve guests is close to one each, and it is the number that decides what a week actually feels like. It is enough hands to keep the service level constant while the yacht is moving, and enough to have the tenders, the meals and the cabins running at the same time.

The beach club runs the full width of the hull at water level. That is the part of a yacht like this that people remember: not a platform bolted to the back, but a room at the waterline, open on three sides, where the sea comes to the floor rather than the other way round.

She cruises at fourteen knots. That is not a speed to boast about and it is exactly the right one for the western Mediterranean: fast enough to move overnight between coasts, slow enough to be quiet, economical and comfortable while doing it.

Fifty metres is the size at which the hierarchy of decks becomes real. There is a deck for the group, a deck for whoever wants to be alone, and a deck for dinner, and on a two-week charter that separation is what stops twelve people becoming tired of one another.

She works across the western Mediterranean, which is the sensible cruising ground for a yacht of this profile: the Riviera, Corsica and Sardinia, the Balearics, and the Tuscan and Amalfi coasts. Everything within a night's passage of everything else.

What she offers is not novelty but competence. A recent hull from a serious yard, a full crew, a beach club that works, and a cruising speed chosen for comfort rather than for a brochure. On a yacht of fifty metres, that combination is rarer than it should be.