Ferretti 620 11111

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Let me admit this right up front. I was prepared to “like” the new Ferretti 620, but I was fairly sure that I wasn’t going to love her to death.

She is, after all, the latest confection from this Italian builder on this side of the Atlantic, and she’s full of stitched leather and whitewashed oak and the many amenities you’d expect in an Italian palazzo overlooking the sea (see the complete photo gallery here).

It would be easy for me, calloused yacht tester that I am, to dismiss the 620 as just another Portofino Palace, a stylish transporter of crumpets and champagne along the Riviera. She seems like a yacht designed for lazy afternoons in the sun, a few getaway weekends moored stern to the quay in St. Tropez, and perhaps an annual outing to Corsica or Sardinia. She doesn’t seem a yacht for the “serious American yachtsman.”

And then I had The Epiphany.

She is esattamente the kind of yacht our serious yachtsmen will appreciate because, you see, this is how we use our boats too. Language differences apart, Italian yachtistas are just like American skippers. We don’t set off on voyages to tropic isles and we don’t plan to live aboard. We, and they, have limited time in our busy schedules, which means that a weekend aboard is a vacation, and a Sunday boat ride and barbecue are what anesthetize us for the workweek ahead.

They may go to places like Monte Carlo or Porto Venere, but we have Block Island or Catalina or the San Juans or the Keys. Sometimes we get a week or two to spend aboard, and so do they. There is an international bond among yachting enthusiasts who, if they are honest, will admit they never have enough time to enjoy their boats.

And the Ferretti 620 is perfect for all of us, Italian or American.

More than a little of this perfection is the result of the Italian builders listening to experienced American advisors like Brian Kelley, the North American Ferretti product manager.