CORNELIA is what happens when a serious naval architect is asked for a small ship rather than a fast boat. Her hull comes from the board of Willem de Vries Lentsch, built in steel and aluminium by RMK Marine in Turkey in 2006, and it does something almost nothing else at 34 metres does: it goes 4,600 nautical miles on a single 818-horsepower engine, burning roughly a hundred litres an hour. That is trawler economics wrapped in a proper yacht.
The consequence for a charter guest is quiet. She is notably silent underway, and Quantum zero-speed stabilisers hold her steady at anchor as well as on passage, which changes how an evening feels far more than any list of amenities. A comprehensive refit completed in 2022 brought the systems and the entertainment up to date while leaving the cherry joinery alone. The interior is warm, panelled and unmistakably of its school – old-meets-new, as her owners put it – and it has aged into something more interesting than a contemporary white box.
Accommodation is for nine across four cabins. The master runs the full beam of the main deck forward, a king bed between panoramic windows with lounge seating, dual-basin ensuite and a dressing area alongside. Below, a further double and two twins, one with a Pullman berth, all with ensuite bathrooms. There is a proper study with bookshelves and a desk, the kind of room that has quietly disappeared from newer yachts and that anyone working a day at anchor will be grateful for.
The social spaces are laid out on the old logic, and they work. A main saloon in cream and cherry with armchairs facing the sea; a separate formal dining room forward, seating eight around a laid table; and above them a sky lounge with a curved bar and stools that opens straight onto the shaded upper deck. Three distinct rooms rather than one open plan – useful when the group wants to do three different things at once.
Outside, she carries her volume well for the length. The aft deck seats everyone for lunch under a white awning, the upper deck repeats it with a second table and loungers, and the foredeck is left clear and teak-laid for the afternoon. A hydraulic platform aft handles the toys, which include two Tiwal 3 sailing dinghies – a genuinely good addition, and rarer than it should be.
She cruises at ten knots and tops out around twelve, so she is not a boat for covering ground quickly. She is a boat for cruising slowly and well, with six crew, low fuel bills, and the range to keep going long after the itinerary changes. Her season runs out of Croatia and the wider Mediterranean, and the shape of a week aboard follows from the hull: short passages between islands, long stops, and an engine that barely registers.
That economy is not an abstraction either. A yacht that burns a hundred litres an hour rather than four hundred spends less of the charter budget on fuel and more of it on where you actually go, and the captain has no reason to talk you out of the longer leg. Few boats her size can say the same.
For families who value calm, space and a yacht with some character behind her, CORNELIA is a considered choice at a price that reflects her age rather than her quality.
