Heesen built seven aluminium 4400s, and G3 is the hull that has spent the longest proving what the platform is actually for. Delivered in 2008 as Sibelle, she came through a full refit in 2017 and a second refurbishment in 2022, and the two together have kept her current in a way that most eighteen-year-old yachts are not. The bones were always good. Aluminium hull, aluminium superstructure, teak decks, and a shape drawn to move.
That last part is the argument for her. She cruises at 17 knots and tops out at 23, which on a 44-metre changes the arithmetic of a charter week. Islands that sit three hours apart on a displacement hull sit ninety minutes apart on this one. A morning anchorage and an afternoon anchorage stop being a choice. Guests who have chartered slower boats of the same length notice it immediately, and it is the single reason to pick her over a heavier hull in the same bracket.
Six cabins sleep twelve, and the layout is more flexible than the number suggests. The master sits on the main deck, full-width and quiet, with a bathroom finished in pale stone. Alongside it is a room the yard could not settle on a name for: an office, a sixth cabin with two pullman berths, or a massage room, depending on what the week requires. That kind of ambiguity is useful. Below, a double and a convertible twin handle the rest of the party, each with its own shower room.
The social spaces stack cleanly. The main deck lounge runs to a bar and opens aft to a shaded deck that works from breakfast until it is dark. A sky lounge above it gives the party a second, quieter room with its own bar, which matters on a boat carrying twelve. The sun deck is the headline: a jacuzzi set aft, sun pads forward, and a projector rig that turns the whole deck into an outdoor cinema once the light goes.
What lifts her above the class is the transom. The beach club is not a token platform but a proper room, fitted with a gym, a wet bar and seating, so the water level of the yacht is somewhere guests actually spend time rather than pass through. Off the back of it, a golf range is rigged on the swim platform. She carries a 10-metre Intrepid as a towed tender, which is a serious boat in its own right, and she is set up for kitesurfing.
She runs the western Mediterranean in summer, Corsica, Sardinia, the French and Italian coasts, and she is priced at EUR 175,000 per week, which places her below several slower sisters in the same size band. Nine crew look after twelve guests.
The case for G3 is straightforward. She is quick, she is recently refreshed, her beach club is better than the class norm, and her sixth room bends to whatever the charter party turns out to need. For a fast week of island hopping with a group that wants to keep moving, she is hard to argue with.
