Holland Jachtbouw Calliope

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Sometimes, a new motoryacht gathers serious marketing buzz even before she leaves the shipyard. Charter clients around the globe clamor to book the absolute first possible cruising dates. If the yacht is set to launch at 10 a.m. on a given day, then the clients want to step on board at 6 p.m. that same day. Part of the excitement is knowing that, no matter who charters the yacht next, they will always be able to say that they were first to get aboard one of the most talked-about yachts of the year.

The 138-foot Calliope, as the second-ever motoryacht built by Holland Jachtbouw, had that kind of buzz going as she prepared to launch from the Dutch shipyard in midsummer 2010 (read about Windrose, the other Holland Jachtbouw, here, and see our complete photo gallery here). She was on schedule to be ready by late July, right on time for the high-season charter weeks in the western Mediterranean, and she had all the makings of a star. She was the second and larger motoryacht from the same owner as the 105-foot Holland Jachtbouw Cassiopeia, with the same crew who had logged thousands of miles aboard that yacht in recent years.

Repeat clients were ready to go. New clients were inquiring. Brokers could all but taste the commissions.

But for Calliope, they all would have to wait.

“The owner knew that the last thing you should do with a brand-new build is send it out for eight or nine weeks of work,” Capt. Ian Insull says. “Things need to be tested and properly finished off. The crew need time to get to know the boat. There is so much in these boats that can go wrong, you have to get sorted. Even just working out the entertainment system — every little thing is very important to charter guests.”

And so it was that instead of going into charter immediately, Calliope did something that precious few new-yacht operations take the time to do — she spent a full year fitting out and preparing — literally testing the waters.

The owners did a two-week maiden cruise to Norway in horrible weather in July 2010, then Insull steered toward Gibraltar in such nasty seas that he had to alter Calliope’s course. “Not a single glass or plate was broken,” Insull recalls. “These were good, stern tests of seaworthiness.” Next came a showing with Holland Jachtbouw at the Monaco Boat Show in September 2010, followed by a bit of private cruising with the owners and an entire winter season in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, where every last punch-list item was addressed. By May 2011 in Genoa, Italy, where I stepped on board Calliope at her first charter-yacht show, Insull and the owner finally felt certain that she was ready to go. The entire months of July and August were reserved specifically for charter use — and the entire Calliope team was already working on plans for the next two years of charter to come.



“We had a world cruise in mind when this boat was built,” says Insull, who was captain aboard Cassiopeia as well as build captain for Calliope. “She was always meant to be big enough, strong enough, and with enough range to go around the world.”