Bound for adventure
It’s usually a question of more space – a bigger beach club, perhaps, a gym or a stellar master cabin. But it’s quite rare to get a new boat built primarily to carry a larger tender. Nevertheless, this is how it was for the proud owner of the first Flexplorer to emerge from young Italian yard Cantiere delle Marche last autumn – 39 metres of elegant go-anywhere yacht.
He already had one of the yard’s first 31-metre Darwin 102 explorer-style yachts and loved the design. “I have spent about four months per season on board Galego and I have to say that she is probably the best vessel someone can have in the 100ft range,” he tells me. “As a yacht owner, though, you make more experience mile after mile, and you understand better your real needs, the difference between what happens on the drawings and in your real life, and you decide to build the next one closer to your needs.”
He’s candid about his prime motivation: the Darwin carried only a 5.8-metre Novurania Chase tender. “Most important was the tender’s dimension. I wanted at least a 7.5-metre jet tender or ski boat in my new yacht, yet I didn’t want to build a boat longer than 40 metres. I didn’t want too much heeling when launching that big tender too. And I didn’t want to compromise the interior volume because of the tender.”
This is the train of thought of an experienced yacht owner – one who understands their requirements very well and is able to
