Bobby Genovese and Dee Dee: Inside the yachts and homes of an ocean-loving power couple

“The first time we met we played tennis. I won, of course,” Genovese tells me with a wink. “No you didn’t!” laughs Eustace, turning to me. “Bobby and I are very competitive,” she whispers conspiratorially. “My mum would always say to me, ‘You don’t have to win!’, but I’d always reply, ‘But why would you play?’ In that way we’re so alike - like peas in a pod. Where he yins, I yang!”

BG Ocala Ranch is their eight-bedroom bolthole, midpoint between their homes in Canada and their main base in the Bahamas, and a place where the couple likes to kick back and entertain a seemingly constant revolving door of friends and family (Genovese’s kids, Gigi, 19, and Bobby Jr, 21, and Eustace’s kids, Rachael, 23, and Jake, 28).

The ranch is also where he can indulge his love of horses, which of course he doesn’t do by halves either: an avid polo player, he also owns a renowned equestrian centre in Vero Beach, Florida, and has a winning streak – in 1998 his team won the prestigious Canadian Open.

Success has come easily for Genovese, but it wasn’t always this way. “Things were tough and we moved around a lot,” he says of his childhood in Northern Ontario in the late 1960s. “Mom was a single parent so she would have to work and I would get sent to a neighbour’s house a lot.” 

Eustace also learned about independence from an early age. A studious child, she recalls growing up as “Very Absolutely Fabulous. My dad was a lawyer, my mum was beautiful, and they were out there, having the best time and I was like, ‘You’ve got to stop partying, I have an exam tomorrow!’”

Like Eustace, Genovese always knew that he wanted to get ahead. In a hurry, he left school in ninth grade. “Mom, of course, was horrified! She told me to move out thinking that I’d give up and go back to school, but I found a job as a barn manager that came with accommodation. The only thing I knew was horses.” This made him more determined to succeed. “The people that had the money were the ones who had the horses. I realised I needed to get on the other side of the horse!”

The house had sat vacant for a couple of years so Eustace got to work, supervising the renovations and knocking down walls. Not everything was scrapped either; she cleverly rescued some of the furniture, reupholstering the dining chairs and pool table in the lounge and repainting the kitchen. 

Nor was everything pulled down. Echoing the theme park, the pool was also a Disney fantasy with waterfalls, a swinging jungle bridge and full-size dinosaur which the couple decided to keep while the kids were growing up. “Is there any greater gift than creating memories?” says Genovese. “You will never forget your train ride, your carousel ride, your bike ride… What a wonderful gift to be able to give to people.” 

But Florida ranches haven’t been Genovese’s only impulse buy. Two years later, after one notorious dinner with friends, he had to ring Eustace and tell her he’d bought a superyacht, the 47-metre Feadship Charade.  

“I’d see her when coming into the marina and I thought she was the most beautiful boat I’d ever seen. It had been (Microsoft co-founder) Paul Allen’s boat. Bill and Melinda Gates had their honeymoon on it,” he recalls.  

It now belonged to British businessman Joe Lewis, who also owned Aviva. “Over dinner Joe was telling us about the new Aviva II he was building and I was trying to be a big shot, saying to him, ‘What do you need three boats for?!’ I then threw in a crazy offer for Charade – and he said, ‘OK, sold to you!’”  

“Is there any greater gift than creating memories?”

The yacht was 25 years old and needed a refit: another job for Eustace. A trained architect, whose studio Taylor Hannah Architect works on everything from residential to commercial projects and private jets, she was also no stranger to boats; BG Charade (as she was rebranded) was her second refit and her redesign was nominated in the 2016 World Superyacht Awards.  

It was quite “1990’s Dynasty, New York Upper East Side in style”, Eustace says of the opulent furnishing and lighting. The bones of it were great however – “all beautiful pink oak walls, original chrome windows and railings”, so it was about ripping out the broadloom carpets, painting the wood panels and cabinetry white to make it more contemporary, clean and more Hamptons in style. 

“I thought we would put $2 million into it to clean it up and it will be fabulous… and then Mrs No-Budget here next to me gets her hands on it, and $7 million later…” says Genovese. 

“That’s not exactly how it went,” interjects Eustace.”I needed to put a bathtub in it.”  

Genovese (with a wink): “Which was literally almost a million dollars…” 

The yacht was 25 years old and needed a refit. “I thought we would put $2 million into it to clean it up and it will be fabulous... and then Mrs No-Budget here next to me gets her hands on it, and $7 million later…”

To fit the bathtub, his-and-hers shower rooms needed to be ripped out and plumbing rerouted. Changing the structure, along with mechanical updates, meant all the lengthy certification checks that come with any extensive refit. The process took two years.  

Designing boats is more complex than land-based projects, Eustace admits. “For a start, nothing has a straight line; the boat has to move and bend so there needs to be panels everywhere – on walls and ceilings.” The flow between rooms is important too. “In a yacht it’s easy to end up with too many hallways and galleries. I try to minimise that with the layout, really think about how the space will be used. Plus, we tried to grab back every inch possible by raising the ceilings throughout.” 

Genovese also contacted Robert Shepherd, a chef who had worked on Charade for 10 years, and flew him to Fort Lauderdale where the boat was being refitted so he could show them what he would change. “He told us how the dining room, which was a completely separate room from the boat, rarely if ever got used.” Shepherd and Eustace came up with the idea to take that space and turn it into a sixth cabin and have a VIP on the main deck.  

Genovese was not new to boats of course. Decades before BG Charade, summers at his lakeside property in Muskoka, Canada, ignited his passion for sailing. The area is famous for its classic wooden boats and he started restoring old boats and building  a collection, becoming proud owner of several of Canada’s most iconic boats: Miss Canada III, an 8.8-metre powerboat that broke the world speed record in 1947. Her sister boat, Miss Canada IV – built in 1949 with a Spitfire plane Griffon engine – was the first in the world to crack 200mph (322km/h) on the water. Last but not least there’s the 22-metre 1903 riverboat, Rambler, which the family would take out for day trips and which Eustace refitted with boatbuilder Paul Brackley.

A superyacht collection was the natural next step. When he bought BG Charade, he had already cut his teeth with a 23-metre Lazzara LSX called BG and 23-metre Sunseeker called BG3. The Lazzara was his first love – he bought it mid-build in 2009 and was able to request changes to the design. Testament to his boat knowledge, some of Genovese’s tweaks were incorporated into future models, “although Dick Lazzara didn’t agree with me at the beginning”. 

The first thing on his list was the VIP cabin at the front of the boat that only had a tiny circle for a skylight. “So I asked for windows cut into the side of the boat like the master, so you can look over your shoulder and look outside.” 

The family spent a lot of time at the back of the boat (Genovese loves a water toy), so he asked for its swim platform to be expanded. He also requested stabilisers. “They said ‘It’s a 75ft boat, you don’t need them,’ but I insisted – I’ve got children, and the minute they feel seasick, my trip is over!” 

With three superyachts and three wooden classics, Genovese suddenly found himself with more boats than he knew what to do with. “With children you think you’ve got all this time to travel, but then they’ve got school, friends of their own and you can’t go anywhere. So, we consolidated, sold the two yachts and kept the wooden boats and BG Charade.” 

 But now with a heavy heart they’ve decided to sell BG Charade too. “We’ve spent eight happy years travelling the world with her but it’s time for a change,” says Eustace. She is wrapping up renovations on Old Fort Bay, the Bahamas home she and Genovese have bought together (their first) and the couple wants to base more of their time there together.  

 “Charade is everything anyone would ever want in a boat,” says Genovese. “But she isn’t the problem, it’s the Bahamas’ shallow water. Charade draws 11 to 13ft (3.6 to four metres) so you’re really limited to where you can go.”  

There’s a new boat rumoured to be in the pipeline: a 24-metre Sunreef catamaran, he says, adding that the yard is one of the fastest-growing brands of boats in the Bahamas. “I first spotted Sunreef six years go at the Monaco Yacht Show and I just instinctively knew this boat was the Feadship of the catamaran market. You’ve got that huge volume of space that you just don’t get on a traditional hull-style boat.” 

“It’s a totally different boat to Charade – at 3,900 square feet (360 square metres),” Eustace continues. “Because it’s wider we have lots of opportunity to configure the space, so planning what we do will be very exciting.”  

“And we have a lot of travel plans – Florida Keys, Exumas, Berry Islands. Now we can go places we could only dream of going before,” adds Genovese. 

But as with everything he does, Genovese has decided to push the boat out, metaphorically speaking. Not content with just buying a Sunreef, he is taking things a step further by teaming up with Sunreef’s US sales director Robert Riva to have the exclusivity for selling Sunreef Yachts in the US and Bahamas.  

Mixing business with boats with pleasure. Surely the dream?  

Genovese grins: “I don’t want to look back and say I wish I hadda. I want to look back and say, ‘Man I did it all.’” 

Seriously, who has more fun than Bobby?   

BG Charade is listed for sale with Cecil Wright.

First published in the July 2023 issue of BOAT International. Get this magazine sent straight to your door, or subscribe and never miss an issue.