A lift is not what you expect on a 49-metre yacht from 1998, and it is the first thing regular guests mention about TE MANU. It serves every deck, which on a yacht with a sundeck this large is less a convenience than a redesign of the day: the top deck stops being somewhere you commit to for the afternoon and becomes somewhere you drop in on.
Codecasa built her in steel in 1998 with an aluminium superstructure, and a refit in 2019 brought her systems and finishes forward without touching what makes her good. The proportions are old-school in the best sense, high bulwarks, a proper foredeck, deep side decks you can actually walk down with a drink, and the interior by Franco and Anna Della Role with Betsy Godfrey is warm, panelled and unhurried. She is a yacht from an era when volume was spent on rooms rather than on glass.
The sundeck is her headline. It is genuinely large for the length, with a jacuzzi set aft, a shaded dining table, an open-air gym and enough teak left over to lay out a dozen loungers without anyone touching. Below it the shaded upper deck takes the long lunches, and the foredeck is set up as a second lounge with sunpads and a table, a proper one, not a token pair of cushions.
Inside, the main saloon is arranged in the traditional way, with facing sofas and armchairs around a low table and lamps rather than downlights doing most of the work. Forward of it a formal dining room seats twelve around an oval table beneath a mirrored ceiling detail. There is a separate bar with leather stools and a library-ish study off to one side, and an entrance lobby with an inlaid timber floor that sets the tone as you step aboard. It is a more compartmentalised interior than a new yacht would offer, which suits a large group: there is always another room to go to.
Accommodation is for twelve in six cabins. The master is the largest, with a dressing area, a desk and windows down one side; the guest doubles are panelled in pale timber with striped linen and marine art, and the twins take two full-length berths rather than the narrow pair you often find on a yacht of this age. Every cabin has been kept to the same standard.
Her toy list runs to a submersible among the more usual jetskis and paddleboards, and she is set up for the Atlantic crossing she makes each year, western Mediterranean in the summer, St Maarten and the Caribbean in the winter. That pattern says something about her: she is a working charter yacht with an established captain and crew of eleven, not a private boat that takes the occasional booking.
She is also dog friendly, which sounds like a footnote until it is the reason a family can charter at all.
Rates start at $185,000 per week. For a group of twelve who would rather have six real cabins, a lift, a very large sundeck and a crew who have done this a hundred times than the newest hull on the dock, she makes a strong case.
