First Impression: Triumph

Date toured: December 2006

It’s not every day that I stand next to a 6-foot-2 charter broker who is standing upright with nearly a foot’s worth of room to spare inside a 64-foot sailing yacht.
     Such was the case the day I toured Triumph, a 64-foot Baltic sailboat built nearly two decades ago, in 1988. What a terrific little find. She’s been beautifully maintained, she has a good layout for charter, and her crew seem as talented and enthusiastic as you could ever ask for on an entry-level-priced charter boat.
     Let’s start with the boat itself, which was private from 1988 until 2004, when it first entered the charter market. Triumph sails fast—8 knots upwind, with a fastest recorded speed of 15½ knots on a downwind reach. If you want to go sailing, this boat may be the one for you.
    Then again, Triumph offers a lot of comfort for a boat her size, too. All the work of managing the sails is done from an aft cockpit that’s separate from a center cockpit, which is designed purely for guest relaxation. “If he loves to sail but she wants to read, everybody has a place to sit,” Capt. John Ishmael told me. (And he would know, having run the boat for the past three years.)
     Inside, there are three cabins that can take as many as six guests, but both John and chef/stewardess Kate Woodcroft say four adults is perfect. “You can do six if two are kids,” as John put it. “Six adults is a bit tight. Ideal for us is two couples or a family of four.”
     The word “family” sounded right to me for this boat, given the fact that the dinghy’s only powerful enough to pull children on water skis. Plus, the double and bunk cabins far forward share a bathroom, which is fine for a couple with kids but may not be okay for two separate couples.
     My conversation with Kate about the kinds of food she likes to cook sealed my opinion that this is probably an ideal boat for close friends or family. “I’m not super-fancy,” she told me. “I cook good family food. It’s not tiny, beautiful food that looks good on the plate, but you leave the table hungry.”
     She says she makes good smoothies, pastas, chicken, fish and—her specialty—soups.
     “It’s like what your mom would cook when you were growing up,” John said. “All in all, this boat has a nice ease of living. Kids know they can drop something. In life, you drop plates. You shouldn’t have to feel guilty.”
     Nor should you have to pay a fortune to charter such a lovely sailboat with an engaging crew. Triumph’s weekly base rate—which the captain says is all-inclusive—is $14,000 for two guests or $15,500 for six. The boat is part of the Select Yachts fleet. Contact any reputable charter broker to plan your vacation onboard.—Kim Kavin