Taiba is a Columbus Classic 57M, delivered in 2015 to naval architecture and exterior lines by
Hydro Tec, and she is built around one room that almost no other yacht of her size has. Her
dining room is circular and glazed the whole way round — a true 360-degree space, screened by
laser-cut panels of butterflies, hung with a mirrored ceiling disc, with curtains that draw
back to open the glass on every side. Dinner is taken inside a window onto whatever anchorage
she is lying in. It is the kind of feature that sounds like a gimmick in description and turns
out, aboard, to reorganise how the whole boat is used.
The rest of her follows the same logic: fewer, larger, better-resolved spaces rather than a
long inventory of small ones. The main saloon runs most of the main deck as one continuous
room, a lit bar and stools at the forward end giving way to seating groups and pop-art
portraits, all tied together by a pale carpet with blue and amber rivers running through it.
Up on the sun deck, the whole upper terrace is left open — a spa pool forward, sunpads down
the centreline, loungers along both rails, and the mast and radar arch set aft so nothing
interrupts the run.
That spa is worth its own mention. It is set into the teak with a curved glass front, so the
water is lit from outside and reads as the visual centre of the deck rather than a sunken tub,
with a bar and high stools immediately alongside. Below, at the waterline, the beach club and
swim platform open onto the sea, and a gym runs the full beam with windows on three sides.
She also carries a dedicated treatment room — a proper one, with a monogrammed table, oils
laid out and a walk-in shower behind glass. On a 55-metre that is genuinely uncommon, and it
means a therapist can work aboard without commandeering a guest cabin.
Seven suites sleep twelve. The master takes the full beam with windows down both sides, a
study, a dressing room and his and hers bathrooms behind the bedhead. The VIP is finished in
deep burgundy velvet against pale panelling, the only cabin aboard in that register. The guest
doubles are lighter, worked in Macassar ebony with padded headboards and warm accents, and two
of them convert between double and twin, which is what lets her take a mixed party of twelve
without anyone drawing the short straw.
Underway she is a steel displacement hull with an aluminium superstructure, cruising at 12
knots and topping out at 16, with at-anchor stabilisers that matter more than the numbers on
a boat used mostly at rest. Her range is 5,500 miles. Fourteen crew look after twelve guests.
She charters the western Mediterranean through the summer, which suits her: the circular
dining room wants an anchorage worth looking at, and the deck spaces want heat. For a party of
twelve who would rather have three or four genuinely memorable spaces than a dozen forgettable
ones, Taiba is an unusually specific answer, and the dining room alone is a reason to look at
her ahead of more conventional boats in the size band.
