Thirty knots. That is the number that separates ELVI from almost everything else chartering the Aegean at her size, and it is not a headline figure she reaches once for a photographer. She cruises at twenty-one. On a coast where the distance between two good anchorages is routinely forty miles, that is the difference between arriving for lunch and arriving for dinner.
Posillipo built her in 2006 as a Technema 95, and the hull underneath is the reason. A planing GRP form drawing 2.2 metres, driven hard, with the low sheer and long foredeck the yard was known for. She looks fast standing still, and unusually for a boat that does, she has not sacrificed the accommodation to get there.
Eleven guests sleep aboard across five cabins. The master takes the full beam on the main deck, windows to port and starboard, a padded headboard running the width of the room and a dressing area to one side – a main-deck owner’s cabin is rare below 35 metres and it is the first thing that marks her out inside. Below, two VIP doubles sit either side of the companionway, joined by an internal door. Opened, they become one large connected suite; closed, they are two independent cabins with their own en suites. Families with older children tend to spot the value of that arrangement immediately. Two further cabins complete the layout.
Her interiors are warm rather than fashionable, and that is deliberate. Carlo Trezzi’s original scheme runs on figured cherry, and the 2021 and 2024 refit work refreshed the soft furnishings and systems without stripping the character out. The main saloon holds an L-shaped settee and a low table with the aft doors sliding fully back onto the deck. Forward of it the dining room seats the party under its own ceiling. Be straight about the scale: those two rooms are her interior, and on a 30-metre sport hull that is the honest trade. The living happens outside.
And outside she is generous. The aft deck carries a full dining table under the overhang and opens onto a wide bathing platform, where a pair of slung deck chairs and a backgammon board are usually rigged by mid-morning. The foredeck is the quiet end – a curved settee and sun pads facing the bow, best at sunset. Between them, the side decks are wide enough to walk without turning sideways.
The toy list runs to a 4.5-metre tender, a Sea-Doo GTI jet ski, three Seabob F5s, two sets of waterskis sized for adults and for children, a wakeboard, a paddleboard, two towable tubes, a three-seat water sofa and snorkelling and fishing kit. Nothing exotic. Everything that gets used.
Captain Sakis has run her for years with a crew of six, and her charter references are consistent enough that IYC leads with them. That matters more at this size than at any other: six people are the whole operation, and the week is only as good as their coordination.
ELVI is a fast, well-kept, warm-hearted boat with a proper main-deck master and a connecting VIP arrangement that solves a real problem. At fifty-five thousand a week in the eastern Mediterranean, she is priced as a sensible choice rather than a statement, which is precisely what she is.
