Most 52-metre charter yachts choose between speed and volume. DB9 was never asked to. A Palmer Johnson PJ170 Sport Yacht drawn by Nuvolari & Lenard, she posts a genuine 32-knot top speed in an aluminium hull that still finds room for a full-beam foredeck pool — a combination that made her a 2011 World Superyacht Award nominee and still reads as distinctive well over a decade on, sharpened further by an extensive refit completed in 2025.
The profile does the selling before anyone steps aboard: low, sculpted and unmistakably sporty, with twin funnels raked aft over a foredeck given over almost entirely to that pool rather than the usual sunpads. It doubles as tender stowage underway, freeing the aft deck for the business of actually being at anchor — lounging, dining, or simply watching the wake from a boat that looks like it’s moving even standing still.
Inside, the main salon runs open and bright, white upholstery and pale wood set against full-height windows that keep the water always in view. A back-lit white quartz bar sits beneath a vaulted ceiling and a crystal chandelier, doing more with lighting than most yachts twice her size, and an air-conditioned aft deck lets a dinner or a lounging afternoon continue in comfort regardless of what the weather’s doing outside.
Five cabins carry a light, contemporary palette through to the guest accommodation, each with its own en-suite bathroom finished in marble and warm wood. It’s a tighter cabin count than her length might suggest, and that’s deliberate — more space per guest, not more guests per yacht.
The sundeck adds a third water feature to the two already on the lower decks: an infinity jacuzzi aft and a further jacuzzi up top, plus an open-air cinema screen for evenings once the sun goes down. Between decks, the toy count matches the yacht’s sporting intent — two jet skis, a trio of SeaBobs, an e-foil, four paddleboards, wakeboards and a full towable set, launched from a garage that empties straight onto the swim platform.
A separate bridge-deck lounge, set above the main accommodation and shaded beneath its own awning, gives the yacht a genuine third social level beyond the aft deck and sundeck — somewhere to disappear to that isn’t a cabin, with its own low daybeds and open sightlines back along the wake. Stabilisers run both at anchor and underway, a detail that matters more on a yacht built to actually use her speed rather than idle at a mooring, and it shows in how steady the sundeck stays even with the pool full and guests spread across it.
DB9 charters the western Mediterranean through summer, threading the French and Italian coasts at a pace her top speed makes genuinely optional rather than aspirational. For a charter party that wants the option of covering serious distance without giving up a yacht built for lounging at anchor just as easily, she occupies a rare, genuinely distinctive middle ground that very few other 52-metre charter yachts even attempt to hold.
