First Impression: Latinou

Date toured: May 2008

Editor's Note: We received special permission from management company Fraser Yachts Worldwide to take these photos of Latinou's sundeck, dining room, and main saloon. The yacht had not received her finishing touches at the shipyard, so a few areas are incompletely decorated.

Latinou is a 173-foot motoryacht that I stepped onboard just before her construction was officially complete. She had cruised some six hours from the Benetti shipyard in Livorno, Italy, so that she could make an appearance at the Genoa charter show before cruising back to the yard for her finishing touches. Capt. Jean Dumarais told me the ride over had been extremely quiet, “totally without vibration,” which speaks to the yacht’s seakeeping ability.
      She was designed for charter from the start, as her owners are longtime charter clients of management company Fraser Yachts Worldwide who had never before owned a boat. They worked with Fraser broker Antoine Althaus and project manager Antonio Pozzi, as well as with the Benetti team, to design a yacht they could enjoy as well as put into charter in locations such as the Caribbean, Mediterranean, Seychelles, and Maldives.
     “Charter is a good school for a future owner,” Althaus told me as we toured Latinou. “You find what you like, and what you don’t like. And you understand very quickly that the décor can be nice, but you need a good project manager so that the crew and boat will work well.”
     Even so, it is in fact the décor that is most noticeable at first glance onboard Latinou. At a time when so many charter yachts are from semi-custom yards that fill them with neutral tones and “resale friendly” designs, Latinou’s interior stands out. Its theme is 1930s steam ships, the kinds that used to sail with passengers from France and England. There are touches both in the furnishings as well as in the yacht itself, including carved woodwork that has an art deco bent. The artwork in the VIP cabin is two framed covers of Vanity Fair from 1926. I also saw bureau tops done in ray and shark skin, just as Hermes would have done them in the ’30s, along with sofas and chairs in the shade red leather the designer favored at the time. 
     The owners definitely learned a thing or two about comfort and service during their charters, and they built their preferences right into Latinou. A glass elevator goes from the bottom deck massage room/hair salon to the sundeck, as opposed to stopping one deck below the sundeck, as happens on most other yachts. There are two private balconies, one on each side of the master suite, for early-morning breakfasts or pre-dinner cocktails. Zero-speed stabilizers are installed to keep the yacht from rolling and pitching at sea, and just in case there’s a hiccup while cruising that nudges a guest off balance, all the furniture and walls are built with rounded corners and edges. The hot tub is all the way to starboard on the sundeck, to allow space for a teppanyaki bar and a round table that seats all 12 guests at once.
     Everything the crew will need to provide excellent service, too, is built into this yacht. The dumb waiter, for instance, is a good 6 feet tall so that an entire hand truck’s worth of food and stores can be moved between the galley and the freezers easily. Down in the crew area, there are luggage stowage compartments built into the walls, one bin for each guest room, so that guests don’t have to keep their suitcases with them the way the owners did during at least one of their charters.
     The crew themselves are new to one another, Capt. Dumarais told me, having been chosen with the help of the Fraser Yachts team. They had gotten their uniforms the night before I was onboard, and the chef was out on deck helping the deckhands polish the stainless steel to ensure Latinou was ready for the next day’s boat show. That’s the kind of teamwork that usually bodes well for charter, and it’s what Dumarais told me he sought out when assembling the yacht’s first crew.
     Dumarais himself has spent the past 18 years on private and charter yachts, most recently on the 118-foot Perini Navi sailing yacht Gitana. “I’m lucky,” he said as he showed me Latinou’s impressively large bridge. “Sailing yachts, motoryachts—I think there are very few people who have enjoyed working in the best of both worlds.”
     There’s no doubt that Latinou is one of the best new additions to the worldwide charter market for 2008, and she has the demand to prove it. Eight weeks of charter were already signed for the summer during my tour in May, Althaus told me, with perhaps two additional weeks going to become available for the rest of the year. With a weekly base rate of 231,000 euro for 12 guests—and an unfinished yacht making its first public appearance—that is quite impressive.
     To learn more, contact any reputable charter broker.—Kim Kavin