For those readers of a certain age, the very words “twilight zone” will bring back images of Rod Serling, standing in shadow, at the beginning of his often spooky, always compelling television series.
“You are about to enter another dimension. A dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land of imagination. Next stop, the Twilight Zone!” As I stood looking about the salon of the new Vicem 92, I had the eerie feeling that Rod Serling was going to step around a bulkhead, and that somehow I’d stumbled — like so many of his characters from The Twilight Zone — into another time and place.
In this case, the time would be, oh, say, the mid-1920s, before the bottom fell out of the stock market and before we knew enough to number our wars. A time when the magnates of Wall Street commuted via sleek luxury yachts from their waterfront Long Island homes. These were often lean yachts, and, as I first looked down on the Vicem 92 from the pier head, I had a fleeting impression of that same long foredeck, the low house set well aft, and lines that were not just classic, but timeless.
It wasn’t until I stepped into the salon that I started looking for Rod. You see, the elegant mahogany interior of the Vicem 92 clearly draws on a work ethic that just doesn’t understand the modern slap-on-veneer-and-bang-it-out interior style. Many yachts are built with faux raised paneling on the bulkheads, using half-round molding to simulate the panels in the hopes of faking you into believing this is quality. In this case, it’s the real thing. Each panel is beveled, like fine glass, and inset into the bulkhead. Where a panel bends around a counter, the solid wood is routed into recessed coves, something you can’t do with a millimeter of veneer on plywood.
It wasn’t just the level of the woodwork, which included African mahogany soles with delicately inlaid accents outlining the furniture, but the whole feel of the yacht. Aboard the Vicem 92, a gourmet dinner is served in comfort and style in the dedicated dining area, where you might linger contentedly over a snifter of Courvoisier while you solve the world’s problems.
Opposite the slip-covered sofa, which seems to have been purloined from a Nantucket beach house, is a full bar, with racks for wine glasses and, ta-dah, a wine cooler for no fewer than 57 of your favorite vins extraordinaires. Yes, the bar does use more space than a simple wet bar would, but it’s the elegant difference between a Mont Blanc and a Bic.
The one jarring note in the salon, to me at least, was the immense television cabinet that fills the after corner. Even with a 43-inch flat-screen television and lockers to hide all components of the Bose 48 Lifestyle system, it seemed to lurk ominously. It wasn’t until I stepped out to the cockpit that I discovered the cabinet concealed a day-head with an outside door. This makes it accessible both to the cockpit and the bridge.
