Next Week, I Am Heading to the South of France to Film a Boat I Have Wanted to Board for Years
And I have my Wardroom members to thank for making it happen.
I want to tell you a story about how this trip came together, because it is not the usual way I work.
Most of the time, when I plan a filming trip, I try to line up at least three boats. It is the practical reality of running a YouTube channel like Yacht Buoy: travel costs money, time costs money, and to make a trip genuinely worthwhile, three boats in a region gives you enough content to justify the journey. It is a rule I have held to pretty consistently over the years.
Next week, I am breaking it.
I am flying to the South of France to film a single boat. One boat. And it is because a broker whose boats I have featured before reached out to me, and asked if I would be interested in coming aboard.
The Message That Changed My Plans
I get broker enquiries fairly regularly. Most of the time, they are for vessels that are interesting, but not exceptional. Good boats, worth covering, the kind of thing I would naturally add to a multi-boat filming trip when the timing worked.
This one was different....
When I read the message and looked up the boat being offered, I stopped and read it again. This was a vessel I had been aware of for some time, a boat I had genuinely wanted to get aboard, and here was a broker offering me exactly that opportunity. I sat on it for a day or two, running the numbers, wondering whether I could make the trip work financially without the usual three-boat structure.
In the end, it was the Wardroom that settled it (the name given to those subscribers here on my newsletter who become premium subscribers).
The growth in paid subscriptions over the past few months has given me a financial buffer I did not have a year ago. Your support, directly and concretely, is what makes a trip like this possible. Without the Wardroom, I would have had to wait until I could build a fuller itinerary around this boat, and there is no guarantee the opportunity would still have been there. Instead, I booked the flights and I am heading to the south of france next week.
So: thank you. Genuinely. If you have become a premium subscriber to this newsletter, then it is you who makes this single trips possible. I do not charge brokers for featuring their boats on my network. If I did, then that would mean that I could not report on what I see with impartiality.
What I Can Tell You (For Now)
I am not going to reveal the boat in this free section of the article. If you are one of my new subscribers, then worry not as the vast majority of my articles have a big free section, so, you will still get a lot out of being a paid subscriber.
That is not me being coy for the sake of it. It is because I want paid members of the Wardroom to get the first look, which feels like the right way to do things given that, without your subscriptions, this trip would not be happening at all.
What I can tell you is this:
This is a performance vessel. Not an expedition trawler. Not a heritage steel build. Something quite different from most of what I cover, and that is precisely why it caught my attention. It represents a different strand of serious yacht building, one that has its own community of passionate, knowledgeable owners.
The boat is currently moored in the South of France. She is for sale. And she is, in my view, one of the most interesting vessels currently on the European brokerage market in her category.
I will be arriving next week, filming the same day, and spending one night aboard before flying home. The whole trip will last less than 24 hours. That tells you something about how seriously I am taking this one. I do not fly to the South of France for less than a day for a boat I am lukewarm on.
The silhouette in the header image is hers. See if you can place her.
The Full Reveal Is Below
If you are already a Wardroom member, carry on reading. Everything is waiting for you: the builder, the model, the full specifications, my honest assessment of what she is built for and who she suits, the asking price, and the contact details for the broker who reached out to me.
If you are not yet a member, this is as good a moment as any. The Wardroom costs just £/$/€75 per year, or £/$/€7.99 per month. For that, you get full access to every article I publish, including the one you are reading right now, and you get it knowing that your membership directly funds trips like this one.
The boat below the line is worth it. I promise you that.
