UNIQUE CHANGE
A FORMER SMALL-HOTEL OWNER BUYS A YACHT THAT NEW ZEALAND’S RICHEST MAN ONCE OWNED, AND IS REFITTING HER FOR CHARTER AT THE AMERICA’S CUP IN AUCKLAND.
The former owner of a boutique hotel applies her taste for interior design to a yacht she is offering for charter at the America’s Cup.
Tthey first saw her at a marina inBrisbane, Australia, and were thrilled when she turned out to be as pretty as she’d looked in the photos online. Her name had been Ulysses, because that’s what New Zealand billionaire Graeme Hart calls many of his boats. He had moved on to a new yacht, leaving the 100-foot 1976 Millkraft available for someone with a love of traditional vessels. ¶ Charlotte Devereux turned out to be that person. ¶ “He wasn’t the original owner. It was a custom build in Australia. I think he was the second or third owner, but he’d done quite a bit of work on her and spent a lot of money on her,” says Devereux, who, along with her life partner, bought the boat and renamed her Sea Breeze
III. “We really discovered how beautiful she was with the beautiful features and mahogany finishing and 9-karat-gold sinks—there are all these details that were absolutely phenomenal.” ¶ Devereux had run a 12-room boutique hotel in New Zealand, and her family had restored classic boats when she was growing up. Her partner is a former America’s Cup sailor who competed as a grinder during the races in Perth, Australia, in 1987. Together, they decided to refit Sea Breeze III into a “boutique-style” charter vessel in time for bookings at the America’s Cup in Auckland in March 2021. ¶ As this issue of
Yachting lands on newsstands, work is scheduled to be completed on the structural part of the refit, which includes adding a bulkhead, renovating the crew quarters, and raising the bridge deck to allow more headroom on the main deck below. ¶ “By raising it, we gain more headroom,” Devereux says, “and it allowed for reinforcements, so we can take up to 99 guests out for a day charter at events like the America’s Cup, where you want a spectator platform.” ¶ The yacht’s exterior lines won’t change, she says, but after the structural part of the refit is complete, work on the interior will begin, probably in June. Devereux was still looking for the right interior designer this past spring, trying to find someone who shares her sensibilities about style. ¶ “We don’t want the nautical look,” she says. “We want something that—for example, I had my boutique hotel, the Devereux Hotel, years ago, and it had all the rooms decorated. What caught everybody’s attention was that it wasn’t just a traditional hotel.