SUN

Most 35-metre motor yachts are variations on a settled theme. SUN is not. She is the first hull of Arcadia’s A115 series, launched in 2012 to a Francesco Guida design that started from a question the rest of the market was not asking: what would a yacht look like if it were built around daylight and efficiency rather than around a profile?

The answer is visible before you step aboard. Her superstructure is glass on three sides and roofed in photovoltaic panels, which power the hotel load at anchor and cut the hours her generators need to run. The upper deck reads as a pavilion rather than a saloon, and from inside it the horizon is continuous. Guests who have chartered conventionally styled yachts of the same length tend to notice the light first and the quiet second.

Her deck spaces are unusually generous for the size. The foredeck is a destination rather than a walkway: a circular jacuzzi set into the teak, sunpads either side, and two jetskis chocked on the deck ready to launch. Aft on the main deck, the shaded dining area opens onto a bar and lounge one level up, and both are sheltered by the hardtop, which matters in an Aegean afternoon. At water level, a hydraulic swim platform gives an easy base for swimming, boarding the tender and rigging the toys.

Inside, the main deck runs as one open volume, dining forward of a lounge with no bulkhead between them and glass doors that fold away to the aft deck. It is a layout that suits a group who want to stay together. The fold-down balconies either side of the saloon extend that idea outward, opening the room onto the water at anchor. Forward and below, the media room is where charter guests actually spend their evenings, with a large screen, deep white sectionals and the solar canopy overhead. She also carries a glassed-in gym with a treadmill and spin bike, which at this length is rare rather than expected.

Accommodation runs to six cabins for twelve guests. The full-beam master takes the main deck, with a king berth against a sculpted wave panel, a dressing console and a directly connected bathroom in dark stone and mirror. Below, the guest cabins alternate doubles and twins, all finished in the same pale limed oak, wave-textured panelling and white lacquer. Every cabin is ensuite. The layout flexes easily between couples and families, which is the practical reason six cabins matter more than six cabins usually do.

Under way she is quiet and economical: twin MAN diesels for ten knots cruising and seventeen flat out, with at-anchor stabilisers to keep her level when the day breeze fills in. Her crew of seven run her out of Turkey through the summer, working the Gulf of Gökova, Göcek and the Datça peninsula, where the anchorages are close together and the swimming is the point.

SUN is for charterers who want something considered rather than conventional, and who will notice that the design decisions all point the same way.