Andreas Panayiotou
The property developer and former boxer tells Risa Merl about his struggles with dyslexia and how his 42-metre Codecasa was the perfect boat for a Greek charter odyssey
“From the age of seven to my early twenties, boxing was my life,” says Andreas Panayiotou, owner of the 42-metre Codecasa Ability. The sport helped him process the frustration that came from struggling in school – a struggle that he would come to understand later in life following the realisation that he had dyslexia. He was in his thirties, in fact, when one of his daughters was diagnosed with the learning difficulty, and finding out more about what she was going through put his own educational challenges into sharp relief.
“The problem is, I’m 57 and if you go back 40-plus years, no one knew what dyslexia was,” he says. “I was struggling to read and write. I didn’t have the privilege of private schools and tutors, and teachers would just look upon you as thick.” The difference now, says Panayiotou, is that dyslexia is much better understood, so his daughter was able to get the support she needed and went on to be a straight-A student at university.
Now Panayiotou sees dyslexia as a superpower rather than a hindrance. “It’s actually a gift. Dyslexia makes you want to succeed because you feel like you’re failing at other things, so whatever else you get into, you put your all into it,” he says. “My frustration at not reading and writing was put into boxing, and I was a champion boxer.” He still trains five days a week religiously, sparring and weight training.
It’s this purposeful, pragmatic approach that has seen him flourish as an entrepreneur, in everything from residential property development and hotel ownership across the UK, Scotland and Italy, to
managing successful charter yachts, all under the banner of the aptly named Ability Group.
His primary residence is in Athens, but Panayiotou travels between Greece and the UK, where the Ability Group is based. He grew up in east London, where his earliest boating memory was playing with a remote-controlled toy boat on the lake in Victoria Park. “My mother used to take us on a Sunday. She bought me the boat, and that sparked a lifelong interest in yachts,” he says.
Panayiotou’s parents came to the UK from the island of Cyprus with nothing to their name and built a business from scratch. “My parents started in dry cleaning and eventually had seven shops. Then my dad went into residential development, and I got involved at the very beginning when I was 20 years old,” he says. Panayiotou was thrust into the hot seat five years later after his mother’s untimely death. “My mum died at a young age, and my father went back to live in Cyprus, so I took over the business when I was 25.”
The Ability Group started with residential development in London, converting old hospitals and schools into loft apartments. From there, the company went into building hotels, bringing in brands like Hilton, Crowne Plaza and Club Med to manage them. But Panayiotou admits that he doesn’t like staying in hotels. “If I stay in other hotels, I can’t switch off. I just think about work and what could be improved,” he says.
Before moving back to Cyprus, his father started the family on the yacht ownership journey by purchasing a 17-metre Sunseeker and, later, a 28-metre Ferretti Custom Line. “After that, we bought steel boats, first a 45-metre CRN, then we sold that and ordered a 54-metre CRN,” the son says. The larger CRN was soon traded in for a different sort of vessel – a fast 40-metre Mangusta.
Then, six years ago, Panayiotou embarked on a refit project when he bought a 41-metre Baglietto named RC, originally owned by fashion designer Roberto Cavalli, which was, of course, renamed Ability. “Cavalli’s boat was famous because it had this colour-changing paint on the hull, but I decided to paint it black,” says Panayiotou. “We refurbished the interior – kept it very Cavalli in style but upgraded everything.” This project planted the seed for taking on an even more extensive refit and he bought his latest yacht (a
Codecasa this time) – the seventh boat to be named Ability – with the objective of refitting it specifically for the booming Greek charter market. “It had become extremely lucrative since Covid-19,” says Panayiotou. “I was scouring the brokerage market as I didn’t want to wait for a new build. When I saw this boat, it only had 1,000 hours on the engines. She felt brand new – she hadn’t been used much but had been well taken care of.”
He believes it’s important to decide what you need a boat for. “That might sound obvious, but a lot of people focus on how many metres and it becomes an ego trip, rather than examining how you’re really going to use it,” says Panayiotou.
“It’s important to decide what you actually need a boat for. A lot of people focus on how many metres”