Few yachts of 55 metres carry a lift, and fewer still put it to such obvious use. Aboard AFTER YOU it connects the lower, main and bridge decks, which sounds like a technical footnote until you spend a week on board and realise it has quietly removed every staircase between the spa, the saloons and the sun. That is the character of her 2022 refit in a sentence: not a change of curtains, but a rethink of how a charter week actually runs.
Heesen delivered her in 2011 on a Van Oossanen hull, with exterior lines by Omega Architects and an interior by Ken Freivokh with Reverberi Design. She was fast then and she is fast now, 25 knots at the top of the range, 14 in comfort, which on a crowded August coast is worth more than it sounds. When an anchorage fills, she simply goes somewhere else.
What the refit added is a wellness programme most yachts twice her size cannot match. The spa runs to a cedar-lined sauna, a hammam and a treatment room, with a masseuse aboard for the week. The gym is not a corner of a corridor but a proper room, glazed and full of light, with an instructor available for yoga on the foredeck at the start of the day. Between them they change the shape of a morning: you can be in the water, in the sauna and back on deck with coffee before anyone else is up.
Her outdoor spaces are unusually varied for the length. A circular jacuzzi is set into the sundeck teak, open to the horizon aft, with loungers and shade around it. One deck down, a bar and a curved settee wrap the aft end. Forward on the main deck there is a cinema, screen and surround sound under the sky, which is where most guests end up after dinner. At sea level the swim platform opens into a beach club, and the crew rig a floating dock alongside it with an inflatable aqua park, jetskis, Seabobs and paddleboards ready to go.
Inside, the palette is light and the volumes are generous. The main saloon opens onto a bar aft; above it, an upper saloon holds a self-playing grand piano and a cinema screen that drops when the evening turns. A separate dining room sits in a curve of glass, with a circular light recess overhead and a round table that keeps twelve people in one conversation rather than three.
Accommodation is for twelve in six cabins. The master takes the full beam with glass on both sides and a balcony door alongside the bed. The guest cabins below are large, calmly finished and consistent, no obviously lesser room, which matters when a group is deciding who sleeps where.
She works best for families and for groups who want the day to have some structure to it, a swim, a session in the gym, a long lunch, a film on deck, and she has the crew of fourteen to make that look effortless. Based in the Mediterranean through the summer and wintering on the French coast, she is a rare thing: a fast yacht that is genuinely restful.
