It was not, by any means, love at first sight for the man who would become the owner of 161ft Asteria. Back in 2015, some brokers took him to Genoa to look at potential hulls that would allow him, his wife and two sons to enjoy world-girding expeditions. “I wanted to have a boat that could go around the world. But I didn’t know what it meant,” he recalls. “The guys told me there were three boats, one of which was [177ft] Itasca. They asked me, “Which one do you prefer?’ and I said ‘For sure, there’s one that I would never buy, and that’s Itasca. I don’t like the look of it.’ The broker was very experienced, so he said, ‘Well, actually it’s the only boat that’s been around the world - that’s the boat you need.”
It took two years of looking elsewhere and visiting “maybe 100 yachts to understand that really was the boat
