Stepping aboard the stern of the second Sanlorenzo 57Steel, Virtuosity, I immediately understood what this model is all about: connecting to the environment and entertainment, indoors and outdoors. With the yacht’s side platforms down, the beach-club real estate adds up to almost 1,000 square feet. Add the gym next door, which includes a hammam, sauna and day head, and the whole area becomes one of the best wellness spaces of its kind on a sub-200-foot yacht.
Just like the smaller 52Steel, Sanlorenzo’s 185-foot-long 57Steel has a fold-down transom door. The quarter platforms reveal a sunken beach lounge open on three sides. Its glass-paneled ceiling doubles as the bottom of the main deck’s 13-by-8-foot pool. During the day, this beach club is at its best, bathed in a shimmering pale-blue light. After the sun goes down, its mirror TV (one of several aboard) and four-stool bar make it a great entertainment cave.
The yacht’s light, contemporary interior vibe is the work of Piero Lissoni’s design studio in Milan. The decor majors on oak veneers, soft whites and creams. It’s a less-is-more approach rather than a minimalist one. Interior lounge space includes the after halves of the main and upper decks, which have full-height windows on their sides and sliding patio doors to aft decks. The main salon includes a cocktail-bar entrance to its lounge and dining areas, while the sky lounge is more informal with low-slung sofas and armchairs, mostly from Italian brands Minotti and Cassina.
Music and dancing are also important to Virtuosity’s owners. What could have been a small media lounge abaft the bridge deck instead has as a DJ booth, turning the top-deck aft terrace into a nightclub dance floor.
All three aft decks connect via stairs outside and with the standout interior design feature: the main spiral staircase from the lower to the upper deck. Created using a combination of steel, aluminum and plywood, and finished with a creamy matte lacquer, it’s gloriously fluted in shapes that seem impossibly organic.
Guest accommodations are spread across three decks. The 540-square-foot owners’ stateroom is forward on the upper deck. It has walk-in closets and a study, a forward-facing bed amid the wraparound picture windows, and a free-standing stone bathtub. From this stateroom, owners can access the two-tier foredeck terrace with a spa pool and free-standing furniture. Virtuosity’s owners have four armchairs on the lower level, and simple sun pads minimize visual clutter on the higher area.
The VIP stateroom is forward of the main lobby, which is amidships to starboard. The VIP also has 540 square feet of space, much the same size as the owners’ stateroom on the deck above. There’s a dressing area, including walk-in closets, and an Eames lounger and ottoman, as well as a desk. The double berth faces aft.
Another four en suite guest staterooms—two larger doubles, and two smaller convertible twins or doubles with Pullman berths—are accessed from a central lobby on the lower deck. All of the guest staterooms have en suites with light crema d’Orcia marble.
A portside amidships galley on the main deck serves as the crew hub, located near a main pantry and crew stairs to an upper-deck pantry and, ultimately, the wheelhouse, ship’s office and captain’s cabin on the bridge deck. There are six en suite cabins for 10 more crew forward on the lower deck—four with twin bunks, and two singles for officers—as well as a crew mess and crew galley. The latter area has a staircase up to a tender garage forward beneath the foredeck, as well as stairs down to the “tank deck,” which connects from the bow to the yacht’s cold stores, laundry and engine-room control booth. The engine room has its own air-conditioning system.
Visually, Sanlorenzo’s 57Steel makes quite a statement. With exterior design and space planning by Zuccon International Project in Rome, this model has a nominal volume of 1,050 gross tons. (At 1,021 gross tons, Virtuosity measures a little less.) Forward-raked bridge windows give the 57Steel a touch of go-anywhere styling, but it’s still a modern motoryacht with hybrid hull architecture—a modestly raked stem, square stem root, midlength fluted bow bulb, spray rails and flaring forward, and twin fin stabilizers and rudders. It has been optimized for displacement speeds. Twin 2,000 hp 3512C Caterpillar diesels hooked up to straight gearboxes and shafts deliver the thrust.
The yacht has a reported top speed of around 16.5 knots. Given its capacity for more than 20,000 gallons of fuel, the 57Steel’s range should be around 4,000 nautical miles at 11 knots, making it capable of crossing oceans.
Virtuosity started as a spec build for Sanlorenzo, was sold in May 2021, and was handed over to its owners 26 months later. It was made available immediately for charter via the firm that brokered the yacht’s sale, Fraser Yachts, meaning more than just the owners will be able to enjoy Virtuosity’s many delights.
Living Larger
The quad-deck 57Steel has more than double the volume of its trideck sibling, the 52Steel. Eight hulls of the 52Steel have been delivered to date, with two more under construction. The first two 57Steel hulls were delivered in 2023. Sanlorenzo announced in September that hulls No. 3 and 4 were sold and under construction.
What’s in a Name?
Virtuosity is the quality of being extremely skilled at something, especially in art, music, sport or, perhaps, yacht building.
Keep ’Em Moving
Sanlorenzo is now one of just a handful of yacht builders big enough to series-build multiple metal models simultaneously.
Try Before You Buy
Virtuosity is available for charter in the Mediterranean in the summer and the Caribbean in the winter at a lowest weekly base rate of about $440,000.
Take the next step: sanlorenzoyacht.com
