My life in boats: How this first-time yacht owner's small refit became a £1M overhaul

Tom Preston, the owner of Sunseeker's 28-metre yacht Kudos tells Kate Lardy about jumping into yacht ownership with both feet and how a small refit became a £1 million overhaul. 

I have been in love with boats for as long as I can remember, although growing up in Yorkshire, England, I had no experience of boating. I remember that on holiday in Puerto Banús, Spain, as a kid, I was constantly looking at boats and collecting brochures. In 2007, at age 25, I set up a car leasing/sales and finance business in a small, rented office, selling a few cars per month; we now supply more than 12,000 new and used cars a year across the UK.

In 2019, my wife, Suzanne, and I visited the Southampton Boat Show with no real idea of what owning a yacht involved. We had only done a few day charters on small boats. We spoke to British yard Sunseeker, which showed us some new smaller boats, but we wanted to charter the boat out when we were not using it. We have two young daughters, Georgia and Ellie, so need to work around their school schedule. 

They then told us about a 2014 Sunseeker 28 Metre that had just made its way from the Caribbean. We agreed to a deal but later found out that the engines needed to come out for a full service and that it needed new teak decks.

What started off as a small refit turned into quite a big one — a year-long, £1 million interior and exterior refit. It was character building for our first boat purchase, especially as it was during the Covid-19 pandemic. But fortunately, our Dutch captain, who we hired over FaceTime, had run four other 28Ms and managed the refit for us.

Once Kudos was fully refitted, we moved her to the South of France. We managed to keep it a surprise from our girls, who were seven and nine at the time. We were casually walking on the docks (looking at boats for a change!) and then the crew welcomed us on. I will remember the look on their faces forever.

For the past three years we have used the yacht extensively in the South of France and Italy. Our most memorable trip was three weeks going from Corsica to Sardinia; we stopped at Cavallo, a tiny island with crystal-blue waters where you use golf buggies to get around, then went on to Elba and returned along the Italian coast. When we are not using Kudos, we charter her out and get eight to 10 weeks a year consistently.

We are going to look for something else in the next couple of years so we have listed Kudos for sale with Ocean Independence. If she doesn’t sell, we plan to move her to Greece for a season, but we’ll definitely get another boat. My wife and I went to the Cannes boat show last year and looked at the (Custom Line) Navetta 33; the extra deck would give us a bit more space.

Our first boat was bigger than we thought it would be. Everyone warned me not to buy a boat, though they were people who’d never owned boats themselves. Obviously, it’s not a cheap thing to run but we went into it with eyes wide open. As far as the actual experience, it’s been better than I thought it would be. I just love the freedom to go wherever you want and to places you’d never normally see.

First published in the December 2024 issue of BOAT International US Edition. Get this magazine sent straight to your door, or subscribe and never miss an issue.