NO SHORTCUTS charters the Bahamas, and almost everything about her is arranged
around that. She is a Westport 112, launched in 2006 on Gregory Marshall’s
semi-displacement hull and refitted in 2022, and she runs from a Jupiter,
Florida base into water shallow enough that the boat’s draft, tender and turn of
speed matter more than her tonnage.
The draft is 1.68 metres. That single figure is what puts her inside the sand
bores and cuts of the Exumas that deeper yachts have to admire from outside.
The 24-knot top end is the second half of the argument: a front moving through
the Northwest Providence Channel is an inconvenience rather than a lost day.
Between them they buy the thing that actually makes a Bahamas week work, which
is choice about where to be tomorrow morning.
Her day boat is a 39-foot Yellowfin centre console, which is a serious vessel in
its own right and not a shuttle. With eight fishing rods, three spearfishing
poles and a full beach setup aboard, a day can begin with a run out to the drop
off and end on a sandbar with the umbrellas up. A 15-foot Novurania handles the
short work. Four Seabobs, two jet skis, an eFoil, waterskis, a wakeboard and
towables come off the platform.
Inside, the refit shows. The main deck is one long open volume in cream and deep
blue, with a wraparound sofa and velvet swivel chairs aft and the dining table
forward against a backlit agate panel. It is a bright, contemporary room and it
photographs the way it feels, because the window line is nearly continuous and
the water throws light up onto the deckhead. Forward again, past the pantry,
sits her best surprise: a country galley with a navy leather horseshoe dinette
around a varnished table, a marble counter and its own view. Guests eat there in
the morning, which changes the temperature of the whole boat.
Four staterooms sleep eight. The master is full-beam amidships with a sofa, a
long dresser and mirrored doors either side of the headboard. The VIP sits
forward under a shaped, backlit deckhead in silver grasscloth. A further queen
and a twin complete the layout, all four en-suite. Six crew run her, which for
eight guests is a generous ratio and shows in the service.
Above, the flybridge is the centre of the boat at anchor: a jacuzzi with the
Bahamian shallows underneath it, a bar and grill aft, sunpads, and shade where
you need it. The aft deck below is set for alfresco dining under the overhang,
looking straight out over turquoise water. She is not the largest yacht on the
market at this money, and that is rather the point. She is the right one for the
water she works in.
Her crew know the ground, which on this coast is worth as much as the equipment.
The difference between a good Exumas week and an ordinary one is knowing which
cut to take on a falling tide, where the rays come in to be fed and which sandbar
is dry at three in the afternoon rather than at eleven in the morning. That
knowledge does not appear on a specification sheet, and it is why boats like this
one hold their bookings year after year.
