The cultural blend that is the 36m Botti

Jacelyn and her husband, Jack, are seasoned yacht owners who split their time between New Jersey and Palm Beach and, although previous Moonen owners, they are the first American owners for whom Moonen has built a new boat. They have lived aboard previous yachts they’ve owned and had a lot of knowledgeable input to offer when designing their newest boat. Or should we say, Jacelyn did. She took the reins on the design during the difficult years of the pandemic when travel was all but impossible. And she had the boat delivered to the docks in Palm Beach amid a cacophony of bagpipes and the engine noise of a small plane flying a sign that heralded the boat’s arrival, nearly as a total surprise to her husband.

When he stepped aboard for the first time, he recognised a style that was all her own – equal parts old Florida and modern Americana. It’s hard to look around Botti and decide if the boat is classic or cutting edge, and one soon comes to the happy conclusion that she is both at once.

“From the beginning, Jacelyn had strong ideas about what she wanted for this boat,” Fisher says. “A lot of it had to do with where the boat would stay in Florida and the Caribbean. She wanted strong colours and boldness in the interior. And also she wanted the boat to be fun – that was important. They do a lot of entertaining, so they wanted their guests to be able to walk from room to room and go on a journey. And of course, it had to be glamorous because [Jacelyn] is quite a glamorous lady.”

Some of the design elements she picked out jump out at me as I step inside Botti in her slip at the Safe Harbor Rybovich marina in West Palm Beach, with Captain Matthew Curtis. The first thing I notice is a chandelier over the forward dining table that twists and glitters in an infinity pattern that reminds me of a roller coaster. The table that the chandelier so playfully illuminates is inlaid with stingray and buffalo bone. “We like that combination of materials because the stingray has bits of bone in it that play off the buffalo, and also the buffalo fits in well with the cowboy theme that exists in other parts of the boat,” Fisher says.

It would be remiss of me to describe Botti’s salon without mentioning the underlit onyx counter that spans most of the starboard side of the room. With the lights flicked on the stone comes to life, dancing in a swirling, nebular pattern of golds, grays and purples, resembling the night sky the moment a bolt of lightning sets it ablaze.

The cowboy theme that Fisher mentions is most apparent in the owner’s suite, forward on the main deck. A starboard-side passageway sandwiched by two pieces of art Botti picked out – one a painting, the other a sculpture – leads to the cabin. The first thing one observes is the king-sized bed, which faces aft, and more specifically, its headboard. The headboard is made from cowhide applied in a zebra pattern.

“It came from sketches of my own,” Botti says. “Lyne [Arbid, associate director at Studio Indigo] sourced the cowhide, we picked out chips of rawhide to match the right colour, and then they followed my sketches. And remember this was all done by Zoom. I must have spent thousands of hours on Zoom with Lyne. I only met her once because of Covid-19, on a few-days trip to the yard, and then I met her again once the boat was delivered.”

Twin light fixtures featuring horsehair, among the most striking elements on the entire yacht, complement the headboard. “We used an American designer, Kyle Bunting, to do the headboard,” Fisher explains. “He is really clever at book-matching hides and whatnot, and the clients loved that we were working with an American designer because they are very patriotic. And we had another company, Apparatus, do those fantastic horsehair light fixtures. It all plays with this interesting idea of cowboys herding their cattle in Texas, which is all very American.”

Another coup in Botti’s interior is found in the yacht’s en suites – both in the owner’s suite and the four staterooms down below. There, Studio Indigo used vein-matched marble, cut in large slabs lined up perfectly with one another, to create a sense of glamour.

“I’ve never seen veining like they did in the bathroom with the marble,” says Botti, who has had a long career in real estate. “I’ve never seen anything like that even in a house.”

Elsewhere on the yacht, another highlight is the “winter garden” on the bridge deck. This space, which can be opened up nearly completely and serves as both an interior and exterior entertainment area, is done in bright colours and light woods reminiscent of the style seen in many of Palm Beach’s poshest lounges, clubs and homes. Another notable light fixture, this one meant to evoke flower petals floating on the surface of the sea, hovers lightly over the room.

A huge television is one feature that the craftspeople at Moonen found remarkable. “To us, that seemed like one of the most American things about the yacht,” Nicky van Zon, Moonen’s technical director, says.

Despite all of Botti’s treasures in her interior, she isn’t simply a floating palace, and van Zon is all too happy to espouse the vessel’s seafaring bona fides. She made the trip from the Netherlands to America on her own bottom and has a range of 4,000 nautical miles at 10 knots and 1,400 nautical miles at 14 knots. And she travels all that way quietly.

“We designed this boat to have low noise levels and low vibration,” van Zon says. “We pay attention to every detail in that regard. The engine rests on rubber construction mounts, and our entire interior is free floating from the rest of the ship; it sits on a layer of foam so sound and vibration doesn’t transfer into it. And between cabins, we have thick insulation with no air gaps; we are very careful about that because any gap will immediately become a source of noise.”

Van Zon is quick to tout another less glamorous aspect of the yacht: the crew space. When I toured the boat, one of the interior crew I met in the crew mess told me that the crew space on Botti is better than the 45.1-metre vessel she had worked on previously.

“The main purpose of a yacht is to make the owners happy,” van Zon says. “And there is the old saying that a happy crew means a happy owner. So we tried to make use of and maximise every inch of space, be it in the bunks, by the laundry, the eating space, whatever.

And you know, every crew bunk has its own TV – it’s an American crew and it keeps them smiling.”

Stowage in the crew area is abundant as well, with a generous bilge space running beneath the entire area, as well as a creative lofted stowage space reachable via a ladder.

Another ladder that Botti particularly likes is the custom, linen upholstered step that Moonen made for Maximilian, so he is able to get up into the bed in the couple’s stateroom.

He no doubt was comfortable there as Botti sailed north from Florida to the owners’ favourite summer cruising grounds in New England. There the yacht spent the season among the Yankees. And for what it’s worth, most linguists will tell you that the word “Yankee” stems from Dutch origins.

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