On board the new GranSport 54 yacht She’s a 10 Too

She’s organized a launch party at Pier 66. Friends, artists (including the Brazilian painter and sculptor Romero Britto), musicians — Aronson started a record label a few years ago — and other yacht owners are here to celebrate the arrival of her new boat. “I have trouble calling it a yacht,” she says with a laugh. “It feels a bit bougie.”

A small procession enters the air-conditioned room where we are chatting, interrupting her train of thought. “Look they’ve made a cake shaped like the boat,” she says, looking delighted.

Exterior designer Alberto Mancini Yacht Design was also involved with the complex and luxurious interior, but Aronson was in the driver’s seat

Aronson stands out among the fashionable crowd with a sunny yellow dress and matching heels. After a short speech thanking builder Mangusta Yachts and her captain and crew for the safe delivery of her new boat, she leads people outside, where a member of the wait staff hands her a sword.

After a couple of tentative moves along the bottle’s neck, she slices it right off, and white foam licks the side before tumbling to the grass. Servers open more bottles sheathed in gold foil to fill glasses. A toast follows and then the guests orderly get into single file for a first look inside the new Mangusta.

“The idea was to create a coupe version, then we together with Alberto Mancini redesigned the entire upper deck, including the wheelhouse and the front area,” he says.

Like her predecessors, She’s a 10 Too has a spectacular lounge space up front. “I always enjoyed our Jacuzzi (on the previous boat) and I liked that this had a pool. We ordered all kinds of custom awnings for it,” Aronson says. The pool is larger than on the previous GranSport and deeper, to create a true playground for kids.

At the other end of the boat, a spacious beach club that opens on three sides is elegantly finished with a central bar and augmented by a sizable swim platform. This arrangement is great for Aronson’s blended family; she and her husband, Jeff, have five children aged from three to 23. Everyone — teens and adults of all ages — can have their own space, she says.

Plus, Captain Mike Auer came up with the idea to add an inflatable dock that attaches to the transom. “We can just ride in and park the jet ski, it’s great,” Aronson says, although on the day we speak, in late April, she has not yet spent any time cruising on the new Mangusta.

“We just arrived last week,” Auer says, half apologizing for the few minutes it takes to open the transom door and set up the beach club. “I hope you can come back in a couple of weeks when it’s ready,” he adds. To my eye, the boat looks ready, but with a few crew members just settling into their new roles, lots is going on behind the scenes.

She’s a 10 Too came across on a yacht transport, so Auer’s experience operating the boat was a relatively short jaunt to Palma that left him enthused. “We did Viareggio to Palma straight in 22 hours averaging 21.5 knots, and it was flawless,” he says.

“It’s a wave-piercing hull form and it’s an extremely efficient hull. It’s a very impressive boat.” Naval architecture is by Pierluigi Ausonio at PLANA, a firm with experience in commercial boats, aside from its extensive work with Mangusta Yachts and Benetti in the past decade.

The speed and range of the GranSport were part of the appeal for Aronson who, with no previous experience in boating, jumped into yacht ownership with a 50-metre Oceanfast in 2013, called She’s a 10 (ex-Mystique).

Her first-ever boat was a big one. “I was spoiled,” she says. “It was a lot of room for a 50-meter.” She added her personal touches to the interior and she and her family enjoyed it for seven years. She looked for quite some time for the successor to She’s a 10 — a process she calls frustrating and that took almost two years — and while the Oceanfast was on the market she kept her eyes open. “I did a lot of research, looked at a lot of different boats,” she says.

One of her tips for people seeking to grow a business is not to do it all alone but to surround themselves with a competent team, and that’s exactly what she did when looking to build her first yacht.

“I tried to work with people who could give me good advice. And my captain who has been doing this for 40 years has built boats before and has a lot of experience,” she says. Still, she educated herself. “I learned about the engines, the draft and the beam. I know the sistership to this boat went around the world. And I think it’s going to be a great fit for me and my family.”

“I tried to work with people who could give me good advice. And my captain who has been doing this for 40 years has built boats before and has a lot of experience”

Busy growing her haircare and beauty empire — one of her latest endeavours has been “making men’s hair colour cool” with Rewind It 10, a line of hair colour for men — Aronson did not travel to the shipyard, but Auer did so regularly. “We really got into the details,” she says. “We did a lot of CAD drawings to make it functional, from racks to hold our jet skis to all kinds of unique designs and [to make it] easier for the crew to manage.”

She does say that with so much glass, She’s a 10 Too will likely require a lot of regular maintenance, and one addition she’s decided to make is a water purification system to help the crew keep the glass clean.

She liked that Mangusta Yachts is a family-owned business. “We did everything directly with them. That was my choice. It was a great experience for me (but) I probably made them a little crazy,” she says.

Choosing the materials from samples and books confirmed she has a nose for the finer things. “They’d say, ‘Oh this is very nice,’ and that’s how I knew I always picked the most expensive materials,” she says with a laugh. “We added an elegant touch, there is a lot of gold, black lacquer and rich ivories. The materials are just exquisite.”

Exterior designer Alberto Mancini Yacht Design was also involved with the complex and luxurious interior, but Aronson was in the driver’s seat to give the yacht her character and make it just right for her personal and business needs.

Changes in the layout — including the addition of a feature bar visually connected to a stunning slab of panda marble near the main salon’s entrance on the main deck — mandated substantial modifications, such as relocating the engine ventilation trunks. “It was a complicated build,” Arlunno says matter-of-factly.

The ceiling over the seating area further forward picks up the theme of gold. It’s made via a delicate and lengthy process involving multiple layers of paint and a lacquer finish, done by an artist based in Viareggio. There is no dining space here.

Aronson wanted to use the sky lounge with large windows and skylights as her formal dining room, and it opens out onto a substantial exterior upper deck with another bar. A large door opens onto the outer deck, and it’s all glass around the perimeter for forever views.

On beautiful evenings, the party will no doubt spill over to the spacious outdoor area. At the opposite end of the dining area is the pilothouse, a haven of modern tech with six screens displaying all the navigation information on a compact console clad in Alcantara, a material that makes quite a few appearances throughout the boat.

An owner’s suite on the main deck was one of the wishes Aronson had for her next yacht, and the one on She’s a 10 Too is a spectacular space with a large and well-lit closet and a balcony that opens automatically without crew assistance. The modern cabinets and a lot of the furniture are by Boca do Lobo. The bracelet of a Rolex watch inspired the tufting of the bed’s headrest, Arlunno says. Panda marble again serves as a stunning visual under the freestanding tub of the bathroom.

Five cabins, including a VIP with a large central bed, are on the lower deck, each with a different colour scheme and materials (the little girl’s cabin, for example, is pink and the metallic surfaces are finished in rose gold). Throughout the boat are fluted finishes, which Italians call cannettato, to add variety to the wall surfaces.

That modern and luxurious look is what Aronson was seeking, and the results are beyond what she expected. I ask if there were any surprises when the boat got here. “The surprise is that it looks better in person,” she says. “It’s more than a step or two up [from the previous boat]. It’s absolutely gorgeous!”

The first trip will most likely stay close to home, as she and her husband are both busy with their businesses. “Probably the Bahamas,” she says. It’s the perfect boat for it, able to get there fast and gifted with a relatively modest draft for her length — 2.3 metres at half load — but eventually she’d like the yacht to stretch her legs.

“I want to take the itinerary that El Leon did and do some of these adventures,” Aronson says enthusiastically. “We have homes in Costa Rica, so we intend to bring [the boat] down there. I mean, where do I want to go? Everywhere once. I want to take more adventures on the boat now.”

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