SERENITY

Moonen spent four decades building steel yachts in the thirty-metre range with a reputation for quietness that other Dutch yards measured themselves against. SERENITY is where that programme reached its top end – 41.78 metres, delivered in 2013 as the yard’s flagship, and refitted in 2019.

She does not look like her peers. René van der Velden’s exterior gives her a soft, rounded superstructure rather than the hard geometry that dominates the segment, and Art Line Interiors carried the same curves inside: sculpted ceiling forms, radiused bulkheads, curved seating and almost no straight line where a curve would do. It is a coherent design rather than a decorated one, and it wears its twelve years lightly.

Living space runs across four decks, linked by a stairwell that rises to a skylight and drops daylight the whole way down. The main saloon sits at the centre of it – white curved sofas, vivid patterned cushions, ribbed timber tables and glazing on both sides that keeps the room bright without heating it. One deck up, the skylounge holds a green-topped bar with stools at one end and a large oval dining table at the other, with a spiral stair connecting the two levels. Guests use the lower room in the middle of the day and the upper one in the evening.

The sundeck is the yacht’s best space, and Moonen protected it properly. A slatted sunroof shades a substantial jacuzzi, with a barbecue and bar to one side, a dining table beyond and the wind kept off by the screen forward. It is a deck you can use at midday in August, which is not true of every open sundeck. Aft on the main deck, wicker armchairs and woven poufs make a quieter lounge one step from the swim platform, and the toy inventory – two tenders including an eight-metre Viking Norsafe, jetskis, diving gear – launches straight off it.

Accommodation runs to five cabins for ten guests: a master, two doubles and two cabins that convert between twin and double, giving one king, two queens and four singles. They are finished in pale oak, linen-textured panels and warm indirect light, with hull windows in the master and opening portholes below. The bathrooms are timber and mosaic with glass shower enclosures. Nothing shouts, which is consistent with the rest of her.

Under way she is genuinely quiet – Moonen designed and furnished her to keep noise and vibration to negligible levels, and Quantum zero-speed stabilisers work at anchor as well as under passage. She cruises at twelve knots and tops fifteen. Her crew of eight run her through the Mediterranean in summer and the western Mediterranean in winter, and the yacht carries an RYA-approved personal watercraft training centre, so guests who have never driven a jetski leave able to.

Her deck programme is broad for a yacht of forty-one metres. Two tenders, jetskis stowed on the sundeck, diving gear and paddleboards all launch from a swim platform that opens into a proper docking station rather than a step. The crew of eight includes people who teach rather than simply hand over equipment, which changes what a week aboard actually looks like for guests who arrive without experience.

For ten people who want a Dutch-built yacht with an unusual design intelligence and a sundeck that is actually usable, SERENITY sits in a category with very little competition.