Athos

Athos is a schooner in the classic mould: two masts and a long, low hull. Andre Hoek drew her, and Holland Jachtbouw put her in the water in 2010. Her current owner first came aboard as a charter guest in Greece, fell for her, chartered her for a further year and then bought her. He sent her back to Amsterdam, to the same shed where she was built, now run by Royal Huisman's refit division Huisfit, for fourteen months of work between 2021 and 2022. In 2023 that refit won both the World Superyacht Awards category for refitted yachts and the International Superyacht Society's prize for best refit.

The changes are mostly about how guests and crew share the boat. A new deckhouse forward now holds the navigation station, so the main deckhouse belongs entirely to guests; Peter Mikic Interiors furnished it with a marble-topped bar, pale sofas under mahogany-framed windows and sheepskin armchairs. Just outside, the cockpit was widened for a table that seats twelve, or sixteen with its extension. The stern was reshaped, adding 1.25 metres and a longer aft deck, and new, slimmer booms replaced the bulky originals.

At the back of the boat, the owner's area works almost as a separate apartment: a private cockpit and deckhouse on top, and underneath a cabin rebuilt to a new plan, now with two separate bathrooms, a dressing room and a door that shuts out noise from above. The four guest cabins forward each keep their original joinery in a different wood, cherry, pear, maple or anigre, and deck prisms now bring daylight into two of them. For films and reading on a lazy afternoon, there is a media room on the lower deck.

Athos is for a family or group of friends who want to sail properly, feel the boat heel and watch the crew set the canvas, and who are happy with a maximum of ten on board. She is not the choice for anyone who wants a beach club, a pool or the flat, high-volume decks of a motor yacht, and life below is that of a sailing yacht: comfortable, but more compact than the space on deck suggests.