Silhouette 76 : A Closer Look at King's Ransom
Silhouette 76 multihull charter: An opulent sailing opportunity, Check out the King's Ransom.
December 26, 2008
King's Ransom dining area.
One of the sailing yachts that generated the most chatter at the Tortola charter show was the newly launched catamaran King's Ransom, an identical sistership to the 76-foot Silhouette cats Akasha and Zingara, which have been chartering successfully in the British Virgin Islands since 2005. What had brokers buzzing in my ear wasn't just that King's Ransom is yet another lovely yacht from the same builder with an impressive crew, but that she can accommodate 10 overnight guests at a lower weekly rate than just about any motoryacht with the same capacity.
Her $47,500 price tag*, an all-inclusive rate, same as the weekly fees for Akasha and Zingara*, is at least $20,000 per week less than most newer, 100-foot-plus motoryachts get for carrying the same number of guests with the same number of crew.
That's a big chunk of change in this economy, one that had brokers salivating at the thought of being able to keep longtime clients whose vacation budgets are being pinched by contracting global markets. The talk I heard on the docks was of charter business being down as much as 50 percent from this time last year, at least in the category of crewed boats up to about 80 feet long. A broker who can move a $70,000-a-week motoryacht client into a $50,000-a-week sailing cat, instead of losing that client altogether, is going to feel a lot better about making the deal than in years past.
King's Ransom is hoping to do 25 weeks of charter this year, with the experienced husband-and-wife team of Capt. Peter and chef Colleen Leube in command. "Whatever it takes, that's what we do to give our guests the best," Colleen told me as she showed me around. The Leubes aren't all talk, either, having sailed 25 days from Cape Town, South Africa, to arrive at the Tortola show just one day before I met them onboard. They had smiles on their faces, and King's Ransom positively sparkled.
Seems to me a better name for this new launch might have been Great Deal.
- King's Ransom main salon.
