ALAYA

Lürssen delivered ALAYA in 1965, and she still runs at 24 knots. That gap – between a hull drawn in the age of the ocean liner and a toy locker stocked for 2026 – is the reason to charter her.

Udo Borz drew her: 33 metres on a 5.88-metre beam, a mahogany hull carrying 129 gross tons. The proportions belong to another era. She is narrow where modern yachts are broad and low where they stack decks, and the payoff shows in a Cyclades chop, which she slips through rather than argues with. She holds 18 knots as a matter of routine and finds 24 when asked. A 2025 refit renewed her systems and left everything that makes her ALAYA untouched.

Lürssen’s yard in Bremen was already eighty years old when she left it, and the build reads in the details a production yacht skips: solid timber where veneer would do, joinery that still shuts cleanly after six decades, a wheelhouse made to be used rather than photographed. Her owners have maintained the hull continuously rather than restored it in a panic, which is why she carries her age as character instead of as a project.

Her interior answers to the same logic. Red-lacquered mahogany runs the length of the yacht, polished to a depth no photograph quite holds, set against cream upholstery and long horizontal windows that put the water at eye level from every seat. The main salon opens onto a dining table that seats all eleven guests. At sunset the lacquer takes the colour of the sky and the whole room shifts.

Five cabins sleep eleven across doubles and twins, each panelled in the same warm timber, each with marble in the bathroom and a hull window close enough to the bed to wake up to. Nowhere aboard feels like an afterthought.

Above, the sundeck carries a jacuzzi set into the teak with loungers on either side and clear water on three. Forward, sunpads fill the bow – the best seat aboard at anchor, and the quietest. Aft, a shaded table seats the full party for lunch without anyone moving indoors.

Then the toy locker, where her two eras meet. An Audi e-tron eFoil and a Lift electric surfboard. A Radinn jetboard. Two Seabob F5s. A Sea-Doo Spark Trixx. A four-metre FunAir climbing wall off her side and a NautiBuoy platform that turns her stern into a floating deck. Paddleboards, snorkelling kit, and a Novurania tender to run it all ashore. A 1965 hull does not usually come with this list.

She works the East Mediterranean and Adriatic in both seasons, and her draft and pace suit that ground: Greek islands close together, a long passage made short, an anchorage reached before the day boats arrive. Seven crew run her for eleven guests – a ratio that shows in the timing of things rather than in the announcing of them.

ALAYA is not a modern yacht wearing a classic profile. She is the real thing, sixty years old, kept sharp, and fitted for the way people charter now. Weekly rates run from 59,000 to 65,000 euros.