Twelve guests on an 88.5-metre yacht is a ratio very few owners are willing to build. BARBARA was, and the space that decision frees up is the whole point of chartering her.
Delivered by Oceanco in 2017 after a long build carried under the yard designation Y715, she runs 2,984 gross tons against a guest list capped at twelve across eight cabins – all of them doubles, which is unusual in itself. There is no twin, no bunk, no cabin that feels like the one nobody wanted. Whoever is aboard gets a room of roughly the same standard as everyone else.
The owner’s accommodation goes further. The master takes a full deck forward: cabin, en suite, and a separate office finished in the same dark timber, with windows on both sides and a private stretch of deck beyond. It reads as an apartment rather than a stateroom.
Her main deck is arranged around light. The lounge runs the full beam with glass down both sides, low seating and quiet colour, and forward of it the dining room is built around an aquarium set into the bulkhead – a detail that dates her precisely to the period when Oceanco were at their most confident, and one that still stops people mid-sentence.
Outside, the deck spaces stack rather than repeat. The main deck aft carries loose seating close to the water. A deck up, the bridge deck aft is set for dining under the overhang with a separate lounging area behind it, which is where a group of twelve tends to settle in the evening. Higher again, an observation deck sits above the bridge – the highest usable space on the yacht, and the one guests find last.
On the lower deck she carries a spa with a treatment room and a beauty station, and a cinema with proper seating. The sun deck holds the gym, unusually right up in the light rather than buried below, alongside a large deck pool, sun pads and shade running aft.
Aft at the waterline, a swim platform folds down and a toy garage opens behind it. Four tenders, four waverunners and three SeaBobs travel with her, a serious inventory even at this size.
Two MTUs of 4,828hp each give her 19 knots flat out and 16 in normal passage – genuinely quick for a displacement hull of nearly 3,000 tons, and the difference between arriving somewhere for lunch and arriving for dinner. A crew of twenty-seven runs her, better than two for every guest.
Winters she works the Bahamas and the Caribbean. Summers she is Mediterranean, and the practical detail worth knowing is that she is registered under the Yacht Engaged in Trade scheme: Mediterranean charters must begin in the South of France, Monaco or Corsica, and the principal charterer must be a non-EU resident. She is also unavailable to US residents while in US waters.
At this length the market divides into yachts built to carry a crowd and yachts built to carry a family exceptionally well. BARBARA is firmly the second kind, and the eight-double layout is the clearest evidence of it. For a group of twelve who want the volume of a 90-metre yacht without sharing it with anyone, there are not many alternatives.
