MAXIMUS is a 2023 yacht that looks and feels like a much older one, and that is entirely deliberate.
Vitters built her to a German Frers hull and rig – a 59-metre performance sloop with an aluminium hull, a lifting keel drawing five metres up and eight down, and a black mainsail carrying a gladiator’s helmet. On the water she is unmistakably contemporary. Step below and the century changes.
Edward Spencer-Churchill’s interior runs on varnished timber, nautical oils, antiques, brass and a baby grand piano standing at the foot of the companionway. There are working cannons. There is a crow’s nest for anyone willing to climb to it. It is the sort of decision an owner makes once and commits to completely, and the effect is a yacht with far more personality than most new builds of any size.
The layout follows the same logic. Her owner takes an aft deckhouse with its own private cockpit, opening directly down into the master – which runs full beam and splits into his and hers bathrooms, one with a jacuzzi bath, the other a shower room. A dressing area and a lounge sit between. It is unusually generous for a sailing yacht, where volume aft is normally given over to the working deck.
Guests get four cabins below: a double, a second double, and two that convert between double and twin, one with a pullman berth above. Eight guests, nine crew. The guest foyer, dayhead and the cabins themselves are all finished in the same warm timber, which makes the accommodation feel continuous rather than a set of boxes down a corridor.
The social spaces stack. A vast covered cockpit takes the after deck, with a dining table and long banquettes in red. Forward and down, an upper deck lounge wraps around a bar with a wine fridge. Down again, the lower deck lounge holds the piano, deep sofas and a formal dining room that converts to a meeting room when a charter needs it to.
On deck she is a proper sailing yacht rather than a motor yacht with a rig. The teak runs clean from the transom to the bow, winches and blocks sized for a 59-metre sloop, and a side boarding platform folds out amidships for getting in and out of the water. A sailing dinghy stows aboard alongside the tenders for anyone who wants to race something smaller across the bay.
Under power two engines give 13 knots flat out and 11 in normal passage, but the numbers miss the point. She is a yacht chartered for what she does with the engines off.
Her winters run the Caribbean – Antigua, St Barts, St Martin and the Bahamas – at 210,000 dollars a week in low season. A practical note before enquiring: she is not available for charter to US residents while in US waters.
For a group of eight who want to sail rather than motor, and who would rather sit in a room with a piano and an oil painting than in another white-and-grey salon, there is very little else built this decade that competes.
