Most 38-metre charter yachts are trying to look like something bigger. Calypso is not, and that is the reason to take her seriously.
Feadship delivered her in 1978, drawn by H.W. de Voogt, and she has the proportions of that era: a low sheer, a proper bow, a navy hull under a white deckhouse, and varnished teak used structurally rather than as trim. She was commissioned by the automotive industrialist E. Clayton Gengras and later passed to Malcolm Forbes, who ran her as a place to entertain — the guest list of that period is a piece of twentieth-century social history in itself. In the 2000s she took a different turn again, working alongside National Geographic on remote expedition and research charters. Six name changes and five decades later she is back on the market as Calypso, following a twelve-month refit completed in 2025.
The refit is what makes her chartering proposition current rather than nostalgic. Systems, tankage and finishes were addressed across the yacht, and the result is a classic that behaves like a modern one. What was left alone was the thing that could not be replaced: the interior joinery. Cherry panelling runs through the saloon, dining room and library in a grain and depth that no contemporary yard would price. The library is the room that sells her — panelled to the deckhead, with a wine store built into the cabinetry, a writing desk and enough shelf space to be a genuine room rather than a corridor with books in it.
Her real technical advantage is under the waterline. Calypso draws 2.44 metres. In the Bahamas that is the difference between reading about the Exumas and anchoring in them; she can carry eleven guests into shallow cays that a modern 38-metre with three-and-a-half metres of draft has to admire from outside the bank. In New England, where she spends her summers, it opens the same range of harbours that a much smaller yacht would use.
On deck she works in layers. The aft main deck seats a full table under a permanent awning, glassed at the sides so it stays usable in weather. The upper deck runs sunpads and a jacuzzi set into varnished teak. Forward, the foredeck carries the toys — jet skis, boards and a tender chocked on the deck — so the aft platform stays clear for swimming. There is a BBQ station built into the upper deck joinery, which is a small thing that changes how a week at anchor actually runs.
Accommodation is five cabins for eleven guests, panelled in the same cherry and quietly generous for her length: a full-beam master amidships, two guest doubles and two twins, with bathrooms in white marble against the warm timber. Seven crew serve them, a ratio more usual on a yacht half again her size.
She cruises at 12 knots and tops out at 13.5, with 4,650 nautical miles of range from her Caterpillar pair — enough to reposition between New England and the Caribbean under her own program rather than on a delivery. Calypso charters the Bahamas and the Caribbean in winter and New England in summer.
