First Impression: Sherakhan

Date toured: December 2006

Editor's Note: In December 2007, CharterWave editor Kim Kavin got a chance to cruise onboard Sherakhan for a few days in the Caribbean. Her extended feature article about that onboard experience with the crew is here.

Sherakhan is a motoryacht that makes me want to stand up and cheer.
     At 228 feet long, she could easily be dismissed as yet another gargantuan expression of one guy’s deep pockets, a gigayacht in competition for the title of best and biggest out there on the world’s waters. The thing is, in this particular case, one guy’s deep pockets have funded an intelligently conceived, fabulously executed charter yacht.
     This is no boat built as one man’s vanity project. It’s a boat crafted specifically to make charter guests from all over the world happy, comfortable, and coming back for more.
     Sherakhan’s owner, you see, used to own and operate a 124-foot motoryacht called Jaguar. It was a popular boat, one whose steady charter business gave the owner a lot of insight into industry trends.
     He looked around a few years ago and realized that there seemed to be a growing demand for yachts that could take more than the 12 guests allowed by international regulations and safety codes. There was a way to build such boats—always had been—but they tended to end up looking and feeling like small cruise ships instead of proper yachts.
     And so, he set out to renovate a Dutch education vessel into a super-size yacht that was actually a yacht, not a small cruise ship. I wrote about his vision and the changing marketplace behind it in an article for Power & Motoryacht in early 2005 (click here to read it), but until December 2006, I hadn’t had a chance to step onboard the finished product myself. I loved the owner’s vision, and I hoped that the project’s execution had lived up to it.
It was a tall order, since every other yacht of this size that I’ve stepped onboard, I’ve felt lacked the hominess, the coziness that proper charter yachts offer.
     What a lovely treat for me, then, to walk into Sherakhan’s main saloon during the 2006 St. Maarten Charter Yacht Exhibition and feel instantly welcome. Every detail had been poured over, right down to how the carpet should feel beneath guests’ bare feet. (Mine felt nearly massaged, the rug was so soft and cushy.) The saloon itself was grand, but had been divided into smaller spaces so as not to feel overwhelming. It seemed as though I was on a proper yacht, even though you could fit two or three yachts inside this one boat’s massive hull.
     The cabins onboard Sherakhan are more like suites, with individual sitting areas and cheerfully decorated bathrooms done in colorful glass tile (the photo at left is of the master, which is bigger than the other cabins). On so many yachts this size, each cabin feels the same, all lined up like soldiers in a big beige row along a corridor that feels almost like a hospital ward. Onboard Sherakhan, there’s a corridor, but even it has been built with handcrafted woods to look artistic instead of sterile, a look that carries over into each individual cabin to make guests feel at home. (The yacht takes 26 guests, but two of the cabins are designed with bunk beds for kids, so 22 adults is ideal.)
     Even on Sherakhan’s outer decks, attention was paid to style as much as to substance. Two of the chairs in the boat deck’s main outdoor sitting area, for instance, are works of art themselves, made from twisted olive trees. Each of the two top deck showers is stylishly designed so that you wouldn’t notice them unless you were looking for them. The hot tub in that same part of the yacht is big enough to hold as many as 20 people at once, so nobody will feel left out of the fun.
     The only thing I think the owner may have overlooked during the renovation process is the addition of an elevator. A yacht this size is likely to draw charter parties that include multiple generations, and older people or those with mobility challenges may have a hard time making their way around. Going from the top deck to the bottom-deck cabins on this size of a yacht is definitely a healthy bit of exercise.
     Aside from that one omission, in my opinion, Sherakhan’s owner has succeeded beautifully in his vision. For my money—and it’s a lot of money, at a weekly base rate of $471,600 per week—Sherakhan is the most comfortable of the super-size charter yachts on the world’s waters today.
     I’m obviously not the only one who agrees, either, seeing as how in December of 2006, nearly the entire 2007 summer Mediterranean season onboard was booked, as well as the 2007-08 winter Caribbean season. If you want to try to squeeze in a booking of your own, contact any reputable charter broker. Sherakhan is part of the Camper & Nicholsons International fleet.—Kim Kavin