WWW.BOATINTERNATIONAL.COM NOVEMBER 2017PHOTOGRAPH: GETTY IMAGES
stunned,” says the fit-looking 65-year-old, sitting in his
main salon. “There are things I hadn’t seen that I now
see, there are things I want to do that I haven’t done.”
Custom is the word when it comes toSeasense, and
it also describes her owner’s approach to everything.
Cohen is a property developer (and film producer, and
cinema owner, and vineyard owner, and fashion
entrepreneur) but essentially he’s a
designer, an aesthete. He sees himself
as a curator. “A friend of mine said to
me recently, ‘If you were to put
everything you do under one subject,
what would it be?’ It’s all about lifestyle.
And I think it’s a curated experience.
It is a luxury collection of office
buildings, apartment houses,
showroom buildings, high-end cinema
and film. We have men’s clothing
interests now, you know. Everything is
of a certain mindset and a certain style,
and they’re all connected.”
Many of these interests and talents have come
together inSeasense, a boat that is very much a joint
project between husband and wife. Clo, South Africa-
born and formerly a London-based marketing
executive for Gucci and a New York-based one for
Jimmy Choo among others, was heavily involved.
Indeed she was instrumental in kick-starting the
process and sparking her husband’s boating life.
It was shortly after they were married in 2004 that
Cohen bought his first boat. He’d sailed as a child at
summer camp and on family holidays but he didn’t
own one until he was well into his fifties. That first boatwas a classic, a Rivarama. “I still own it. And it’s
a wonderful boat,” he says. He named itClo Sea, after
his wife and with a play on their initials that they have
used on their new yacht. “He thought that way I
wouldn’t be upset if I saw it and asked, ‘Why did you
buy a boat?’ ” says Clo. A larger Riva, a Duchessa,
followed, allowing the Cohens to begin exploring the
Mediterranean. Then came a third,
an Aquariva, which they keep in
Connecticut, near the home they go to
most weekends to escape New York
(and which took Cohen only three
years to design and build). “We fell in
love with Italian style,” he says, “from
clothing to fashion to cars. I’m a big
Ferrari and Lamborghini fan – and I’m
a Riva fan.”
Clo, meanwhile, was becoming a
Benetti fan. “We had walked around a
lot of harbors and docked in a lot with
our other boat, and I said the prettiest
boats I see are Benettis. Everything else seemed to be
the same or a similar style, and then a Benetti would
come and it would just be its own thing. I said we need
to talk to them.”
They had talked to a lot of yards already by this stage
but were not too enamored with many of the boats
they’d seen. “We thought that the ceiling heights were
low, there was too much enclosed area and not enough
outdoor area. And on every ship we had seen, every
major common room had a bar in it! We enjoy a glass
of wine or a drink, but not in every room! We were
romanced by Feadship and Heesen and Lürssen and>
“We fell in love
with Italian style,”
says Cohen, “from
clothing to fashion
to cars. I’m a
big Ferrari and
Lamborghini fan
and I’m a Riva fan.”
The family are now
firm Benetti fans too