Cruising Speed

Italian shipbuilder MONTE CARLO YACHTS is less than a decade old but has already become an award magnet at the industry’s yearly international yachting events. Dietrich Neu visits its facility in Monfalcone, Italy, to find out what the company’s secret to success is.

- Dietrich Neu

EVERYONE AROUND ME was holding on for dear life. They clutched nearby handrails and leather seats with one hand while gripping their expensive cameras, scarves and handbags with the other. Their heads smashed up and down to the rhythm of our boat crashing against waves of the Mediterranean Sea.

The crackling sound of the wind slicing through the cabin was so loud that our attempts to scream at each other fell on deaf ears. The captain looked gravely concerned. He had lost control. It was his job to get our multi-million-euro yacht to shore safely, not to mention all the journalists on board back in one piece, and right now both seemed in jeopardy. What started as a routine test run in the Gulf of Trieste had quickly turned into his worst nightmare.

For starters, he was no longer driving our yacht; I was – a 27-year-old journalist with approximately zero seconds of boating experience before this moment. In fact, I didn’t even hold a valid driver’s license in my home country. The second problem: we were careening through the water at 28 knots (around 52km/h), with the throttle pushed all the way forward. Ports in Italy, Croatia and Slovenia were just a short ride away, but was I going anywhere? No.

Other ships in the vicinity had given us a wide berth ages ago, and what they saw in the distance would have no doubt looked like a five-year-old driving a billionaire’s toy. Left, right, left and right again with no direction or purpose at all. Aside from actually handing the keys to a five-year-old, there probably wasn’t a more dangerous person to give control of a Monte Carlo Yachts 86, one of the Italian shipbuilder’s most popular yacht models.