It is a balmy summer evening on the jetty of the Yacht Club de Monaco when the owner stands on a stage directly in front of the stern of his new yacht and begins to tell the story of his new asset. Behind him is "Seven Sins", 52 metres long and the former flagship of the Sanlorenzo shipyard, in front of him are his friends and a handful of press representatives. "After 39 years," reports 74-year-old Belgian Hugo Verlinden, "I've returned to the shipyard where my passion for yachts began." After two brief interludes with other manufacturers, which he will not mention on stage but will reveal later, Verlinden and a friend bought an 18.50 metre Sanlorenzo in 1978. He sailed with her for ten years through the western Mediterranean until he needed an upgrade and realised that Sanlorenzo was no bigger than 20 metres at the time. Verlinden then bought the 27-metre "Bacino" in his neighbourhood, at Heesen in Oss, which he soon extended by five metres and replaced with the 41-metre Heesen "Seven Sins" in 2005. While the yachts had previously been a private pleasure for him, he then turned the first "Seven Sins" into a business, so to speak. Together with his co-owner, the focus is on chartering. The most important rule: no owner uses the yacht during the high season. "Of course," says Verlinden, "you don't earn any money with a yacht. But if you charter properly, you can still reduce operating costs considerably." A second important rule is: if the yacht is reserved for an owner, he releases it to external guests if it is chartered out. If not, he pays the full charter rate.
Verlinden - who holds almost 70 per cent of the shares himself - is implementing exactly this system on the new "Seven Sins", only with two other Belgian partners. According to the central agent Yachting Partners International, the yacht is already fully booked for the premiere season except for a short period in the autumn. Even the owners of the following 52-metre units (build numbers 2 and 3) from Sanlorenzo had not been able to get their hands on the 270,000 euros per week. Verlinden, it was later said at the event, is a gifted marketing professional, although his actual business is the insurance industry.
Why the hype?
We now get to the bottom of the supposed hype together with Sandro Chiavetta from Sanlorenzo. His business card reads "Chief Designer Superyacht"; under the creative direction of Mauro Micheli (Officina Italiana Design), Chiavetta helped develop the concept and design of the "Seven Sins". Despite its length of 52 metres, this largest Sanlorenzo to date has some typical exterior features that are also found on a number of the shipyard's smaller units. The fact that an SL 118 is moored opposite on the quay makes the comparison very easy. The common long window front from the saloon to the bow area, the black hardtop with its black domes and the crouched, rather sporty superstructure of the yachts are striking.
A glass pool on board the "Seven Sins"
One of the trademarks of the "Seven Sins" becomes apparent after the first few steps on the passerelle: the shipyard has installed an extremely veritable pool in the stern of the main deck, which holds around 11,000 litres and has a glass floor, making it a skylight for the beach club below. Why hasn't anyone thought of this before?" the reporter asks. Chiavetta smiles, and his confident answer doesn't really require any further enquiry. "Well," he says, "we are Italian."
But then he still talks about the inspiration that came from a competitor's much larger yacht. "I saw the drawings of it, which showed an enormous pool," he says. "The reality didn't have much in common with that. The pool was much smaller and there was only a folding terrace. I thought to myself, maybe we can do better than that." We now descend a few steps and arrive in what is probably the most spectacular room on "Seven Sins". The sunlight filtering through the pool bathes the beach club in a soft light, and the hull is open on three sides, offering three different terraces when the yacht is at anchor. We sit in Roda armchairs in the centre under the pool and can only guess at the multifunctionality of the area.
Beach club is also a tender garage
"The beach club," says Chiavetta, "is also the garage for the tender." To do this, the teak floor we are currently standing on is lowered, the resulting basin is flooded with water and the tender is lowered in on its own keel. According to a crew member, the procedure is not completed in a few minutes - furniture has to be moved and water pumped out - but it is of course highly impressive. The somewhat different lazarette of "Seven Sins" holds an eight metre long tender, another small RIB is stored in the bow area. The guest area down here is completed by a gym, a hammam, a sauna and a shower. In the adjoining engine room, two 1500 kW MTU diesels are at work underway, while two generators (125 kW each) support hotel operations at anchor or in some marinas. The shipyard specifies a maximum speed of 17 knots for the 500-tonne displacement vessel; at a cruising speed of eleven knots, the tanks are sufficient for 4,000 nautical miles of non-stop cruising.
Layout of the main deck
Back on the main deck, the first thing you notice in the saloon is the lack of a dining area. Instead, there are two seating areas with furniture from Minotti and Flexform. "Who eats down here when the weather is usually nice?" asks Sandro Chiavetti, pointing to the dining tables on the upper deck and the sundeck. Large, steel-framed windows allow plenty of daylight into the room, which is covered with a rather robust carpet (Charter!) and features leather and variously finished Anigre wood on the other surfaces. Chiavetti calls the style "very Italian", describing a restrained colour and design language that is unagitated but elegant. This is exactly how the owner's suite forward on the main deck presents itself. A small office leads to the sleeping quarters, which are not exactly oversized given Verlinden's charter intentions. The large marble surfaces in the bathroom, which measure up to two square metres in one piece, are impressive. "Calacatta Borghini", says Chiavetta, referring to the name of this type of marble from the Cararra mountains - a very white stone with a grey grain that gives every bathroom an exclusive touch. It was also used in the guest cabins, four of which are located on the lower deck and one on the upper deck, just behind the bridge. Verlinden's theory is that by creating six fairly equivalent accommodations, booking decisions are sometimes easier than if the cabins are too different. A crew of eleven looks after the up to twelve guests, with the chef standing out in particular - the Dutchman has been awarded two Michelin stars and is said to perform minor miracles in the galley on the main deck.
We now take a look at most guests' favourite place to stay. It is the stern area of the upper deck. Officina Italiana Design has placed two dining areas here, one in the skylounge and one in the outdoor area. The glass bulwark provides an unobstructed view of the stern water, while additional panes of glass protect the al fresco dinner from too much wind. Alternatively, a seating area in the bow can also be used on this deck. There is more privacy here, especially in the Mediterranean marinas. "We can also completely screen off this area," says Chiavetta; guests who are in the public eye are thus somewhat protected from the paparazzi's telephoto lenses and will certainly appreciate this.
"Seven Sins" built in La Spezia
Seven Sins" was built at Sanlorenzo's site in La Spezia. Since the beginning of 2016, all of Sanlorenzo's steel structures have been built on the former 50,000 square metre Cantieri San Marco, where six to eight units can be manufactured at the same time. Among other things, a new 72-metre flagship is currently under construction in the Ligurian port city. Lengers Yachts from Muiden in the Netherlands is the designated contact for German customers interested in Sanlorenzo yachts.
Technical data
- Length over everything: 52,00 m
- Waterline length: 43,40 m
- Width: 9,40 m
- Depth:2,65 m
- Displacement (100 %): 500 t
- Gross tonnage:499 GT
- Material:Steel, aluminium
- Motor: 2 x MTU 12V 4000 M63
- Engine power: 2 x 1500 kW
- Speed (max.): 17 kn
- Speed (travelling): 15 kn
- Fuel: 55 000 l
- Range: 4000 nm @ 11 kn
- Water: 15 000 l
- Waste water: 6500 l
- Generator:2x 125 kW
- Construction: Shipyard
- Exterior design: Officina Italiana
- Interior design: Officina Italiana
- Classification: ABS
- Shipyard:Sanlorenzo, 2017
- Charter: Yachting Partners Intern.
This article appeared in BOOTE EXCLUSIV issue 05/2017 and was revised by the editorial team in May 2023.
