Most 44-metre charter yachts spend their lives shuttling between the Mediterranean and the Caribbean. AIX does not. She works the South Pacific – French Polynesia through the season, then Australia, Fiji and New Zealand – which makes her one of a very short list of yachts of this quality available in that part of the world at all. Much of her photography was shot in the Whitsundays and off Sydney, and it shows what she is for.
She is a Sanlorenzo 44Alloy, delivered in 2022, one of thirteen hulls in the series. Aluminium hull and superstructure, semi-displacement, twin 1,850hp MTUs behind a Zuccon International Project exterior. Twenty-one knots when she needs them, eleven when she does not, and 485 gross tonnes of volume arranged with an unusual amount of restraint.
The interior is Sanlorenzo’s own, and it reads as a single continuous idea rather than a sequence of decorated rooms: walnut in long vertical battens, pale wool and linen, teak underfoot, and glass wherever glass will go. The main deck salon is bracketed by full-height windows on both sides, so the room takes its colour from the water. Forward of it, a ten-seat dining table sits under a run of the same glazing.
Up on the bridge deck, the sky lounge is the room guests actually live in. A deep sectional wraps three sides of it, there is a proper bar built into the aft bulkhead, and a cinema screen for the evening. Step out and the bridge deck aft carries sun pads forward of a shaded round table set for al fresco dining – two distinct moods, one deck.
Accommodation is for ten across five cabins. The master takes the forward half of the main deck and arrives through its own split-level foyer: bedroom, stone-lined en suite, and a separate observation lounge with a desk and a daybed set against angled windows that follow the sheer. Below, two doubles and two twins, finished in the same walnut and stone.
Her best space is aft and at the waterline. The beach club opens across the full beam with the garage doors up, jet skis stowed against one bulkhead, a bar and low seating against the other, and a teak terrace that runs straight out to the sea. At dusk the loungers face west and it becomes the quietest room on the yacht. Forward, the foredeck carries a proper jacuzzi with sun pads either side – a second, more private sun deck that most guests never have to share.
Between those two extremes sits the sun deck, the largest single open area on board: a long run of teak with sun pads forward, a shaded dining setting aft and clear sightlines the length of the yacht. It is the deck that makes her feel bigger than 44 metres.
Watersports are led by a 12.4-metre Tesoro T40 chase tender with a cabin and a hydraulic swim platform, which in the Whitsundays and the Society Islands is less a toy than a second boat. Jet skis, inflatables and diving gear round out the inventory.
Nine crew look after ten guests. For charter parties who want the Pacific rather than the Med, and want it on a yacht built in the last four years rather than a refit, AIX is close to unique in her range.
