An epic adventurer designed to open eyes

This do-it-yourself attitude is unsurprising from a young owner “who isn’t into service”, according to Maria Roberta Morso, press officer at Cantiere delle Marche (CDM). In his 40s, German-born Schröder is a sailor, adventurer and now, a shareholder in the young and spectacularly successful Ancona-based shipyard.

Maverick, meanwhile, is the first Flexplorer 146, following the smaller Flexplorer 130 Aurelia in 2020. The second Flexplorer 146, Mat, is floating proof that CDM’s Flexplorer range has broad scope for customisation; Mat has one deck fewer and doesn’t have the A-frame crane, so tenders and toys are handled by a crane inside the upper deck.

Customisation aside, the owner’s attraction to the shipyard began on board another CDM model during the Cannes Yachting Festival several years ago – but it wasn’t the A-frame crane on 39.4-metre Aurelia or the highly customised interiors of 33.5-metre Mimi la Sardine that drew him in (although he has both of those things on Maverick). No, what lured him in was an engine room – a space so thoughtfully laid-out and well-equipped “that [it] has no equal on the market, even on much larger yachts,” says Schröder.

This space is the beating heart of all motor boats, but perhaps Schröder paid it extra mind because he was acutely aware of how much he would be relying on his new boat to get him and his family from A to B. Most owners shopping in the 40-metre-plus aisle are looking for a home away from home, but Schröder and his family will spend the first two years living on board with almost no long periods of shore time. This isn’t a fair-weather holiday boat; this is an epic adventure-facilitator designed to educate and open the eyes of his children. To that end “they want everything set up like their home”, explains Morso.

It’s a wonderfully well-considered set-up for adults to have cocktails with a view while the kids lounge on a modular sofa nearby, watching a movie from the drop-down television screen

A fine plan in theory, but condensing a home into a 499GT yacht called for some unusual quirks that left the design team scratching their heads. The owner wanted a private deck just for him, which was easy enough – but he wanted his cabin forward and a second cabin attached to it for his young son to be close to his parents.

When you factor in the dressing room on the port side and the service station amidships, it means the bathroom is located at the very aft and the bathtub is the first thing that greets you when you step inside from the upper deck aft. “It’s a bit of a surprise,” admits Morso, but evidently having a bathtub with a view was important to the owner – and you can’t argue with the views that are afforded through the nearly full-height windows.

Elsewhere, the self-service theme continues in an easily accessed wine cellar in the main deck lobby, a galley which has been tailored for the owner to cook and eat in, and a saloon dining table that is fitted with free-standing Paola Lenti platters where the crew can serve up family-style plates of food and let the diners help themselves.

There is also a second service area in the lobby on the lower deck. Like the one in the owner’s cabin, these aren’t designed to replace the larger counterparts in the crew areas – merely to live alongside them, giving Schröder and his family the utmost flexibility.

Ease of use was also the thinking behind the A-frame crane that lives in the open aft deck – one of CDM’s finest creations. It was first seen in a narrower format on Maverick’s smaller sister Aurelia. On Maverick, it takes up the entire 8.6-metre beam, stands about 18 metres tall, and can take a maximum weight of 4.5 tonnes onto its multiple hooks. It can also disappear below the deck in about 60 seconds and “it disappears flush – you can hardly see it,” says Morso. “You forget you have it.”

Built in carbon fibre, the engineering for the crane is born from workboats and it’s such a useful piece of kit that CDM can’t quite work out why other yards haven’t adopted it. Tenders will be stored on the main deck aft, some of them sitting inside each other “like Matryoshka dolls” and then hoisted up by the crane and placed onto the water. It’s a better solution than having them in the foredeck, which CDM believes can cause stability issues.

Explorers are this yard’s bread and butter, its raison d’être. It is the only southern European shipyard exclusively building long-range, hardy explorers (with the exception of Turkish yards AvA and Bering, perhaps). When asked if designing such a highly specified yacht for a stakeholder was a challenge, CDM CEO Vasco Buonpensiere skirts around the question delicately. “It has been a long, challenging and rewarding journey for all of us,” he says. Nonetheless, the yacht is one of the largest that CDM has ever built. (If you want to get technical, the yard’s flagship is Audace, but she started life as a 42.8-metre and was later extended at Lusben.)

Maverick is also one of the yard’s most customised yachts, with Francesco Paszkowski working alongside CDM’s interiors department to replicate the sophisticated, yet slightly industrial theme of the owner’s Mallorcan villa. The process was “complex and laborious”, according to Tiziano Mecella, CDM’s head of interior design, as they had to work with a broad spectrum of suppliers in first-time collaborations.

The A-frame crane is such a useful piece of kit that CDM can’t quite work out why other yards haven’t adopted it

A material by Fenix, made from compressing paper and acrylic resin at high temperatures to form a metal-effect surface, was used extensively across the boat, in shades of brassy gold and steel. A matt version exists too, and it covers “practically all the parts constituting the boat’s internal skin, from walls to ceilings”, says Mecella.

Illuminating the yacht are lamps provided by German company Occhio, while solid oak wood parquet – sourced from the Black Forest close to Schröder’s hometown – is used for all floors, even in the crew area. Schröder’s Germanic roots were also considered when it came to the height of the mirrors in the owner’s cabin bathroom, which reach 2.5 metres, to account for “very tall owners”.

For Schröder, yachting is all about “enjoying your time on board, the navigation and the environment”. On Maverick, he’ll sail to the furthest reaches of the planet, hopefully see some belugas – and not have to rely on his crew to bring him his morning coffee.

First published in the February 2025 issue of BOAT International. Get this magazine sent straight to your door, or subscribe and never miss an issue.