Luxury yacht charter on the French RivieraEnthusiast

ENTHUSIAST is a Prestige X70, delivered new in 2024, drawn by people who had clearly spent time thinking about where guests actually sit. Three dining areas, two in the open and one inside, mean a party of eight never eats in the same place twice, and the cockpit opens flush onto the saloon with no step and no threshold between them. Twenty-two metres, four cabins, a crew of two and a chef aboard.

Twin Volvo Penta IPS 1350 pods carry her to twenty-nine and a half knots and settle to twenty for the passage, which on this coast is the difference between a morning spent moving and a morning spent arriving. A Seakeeper 18 gyro holds her flat at anchor, so lunch off Pampelonne stays on the table when the afternoon breeze fills in. Draft is 1.7 metres and fuel capacity four thousand litres, enough to work the whole stretch from Porquerolles to San Remo without planning the week around a fuel dock.

The three dining areas are the point of the boat. The aft cockpit sits under the overhang, open to the water and shaded through the middle of the day. The flybridge, reached without crossing the saloon, carries its own table, its own helm and the best view of the coast aboard. Inside, the saloon table takes the evenings when the mistral is up. Forward, a full-beam sunpad and a second lounge give the foredeck a life of its own, which on a boat of this size is unusual.

Garroni Design drew the hull and the exterior; Valentina Militerno de Romedis did the interior, in warm dark woods and pale linens, with a great deal of glass at eye level from a seated position. Four cabins sleep six comfortably and eight when needed, two doubles and two twins that convert, each air conditioned and served by its own bathroom. A crew of two runs the boat and the galley, Wi-Fi covers the whole yacht, and ten guests can cruise by day.

A Williams 325 jet tender hangs off the stern for shore runs and for towing, and the toy box holds two Sublue sea scooters, a paddleboard, a kayak, snorkelling gear and inflatables, enough to keep a family occupied through an afternoon at anchor without a support boat. A week aboard usually starts in Cannes or Golfe-Juan, runs out to the Lerins and along the Esterel, then west to Saint-Tropez and Pampelonne or east through Villefranche and Monaco. Opera Prestige arranges the berths, the provisioning, the transfers and the tables ashore, from Cannes to Portofino.