Boat International - July 2018

The original Brazilian design for the interior is a simple

light maple, which contrasts with bright fabrics and

marble in the bathrooms. Far left: Sandalphonhas

proven her stability and seaworthiness butting into a gale

in the south-western approaches to the English Channel

Warm-water explorer

Although Sandalphon has spent the last season pottering around the Med,

there is nothing to stop her from crossing oceans. Her Caterpillar engines

propel her at a cruising speed of nine knots with such eciency that her

huge 40,000 litres of fuel tankage give her a range of more than 4,000

miles. “I have to cross the Atlantic or the Pacific and we will see from there;

it will be a new experience,” the owner tells me. Details are still fluid, but

there is talk of crossing to the Caribbean in 2019, exploring the US East

Coast, before tackling Panama and continuing west. “I want to cruise

all of the warm world and the main cities of the world,” he adds.

maple and the bathrooms fitted out with

contrasting tones of marble. She is largely

unadorned with artwork or mementos of any sort

• perhaps in readiness for the owner’s planned
  round-the-world trip. “It may take six years or 15
  years, there is no hurry. At the moment we are in
  Turkey on the south coast with no other boats
  and brilliant weather,” the owner says.
  When you have a vision it is hard to let go, and
  this owner chose to see it through to the end.
  True, the final cost was roughly what Balk
  would have charged for a new build. But now
  he is sipping claret in the upper saloon, working
  out exactly where he wants to take the boat,
  while some of the sister hulls still remain
  unfinished. Perhaps it’s appropriate then that he
  has named his explorer yacht after an archangel;
  there is something of the miraculous in the way
  that this project was resurrected from the rust
  and dust of failure.B

PHOTOGRAPHY: KLAAS EISSENS/AV PRODUCTIES; BALK SHIPYARD; COURTES

Y OF OWNER