my dream keeper yacht owner

List your charter yacht with the Yacht Warriors and connect directly with experienced crews from our audience.

My First Yacht Charter Experience

When I arrived in St. Thomas, before catching the ferry to the BVI, the Caribbean heat hit me instantly. The sun was shining, the sky was clear, and the vibrant atmosphere could be felt immediately. Once I arrived in the BVI, Dream Yacht’s transport was waiting for me to take me to the marina. When I saw the yacht, I knew I was in for something special. That first night, which I highly recommend spending aboard if it’s your first charter, allowed me to get acquainted with the yacht and crew, and recharge for the next morning when we would be ready to set sail.

Sailing Into Paradise

The first day of sailing was unforgettable. As soon as we left the harbor, the scenery completely transformed, and the sense of freedom, being surrounded by the ocean, was indescribable. Our first activity was snorkeling, and although it was my first time, doing it at The Indians will be hard to beat. The following days were filled with activities like kayaking, paddleboarding, hiking, and, of course, time to relax on peaceful beaches. I never imagined I would enjoy a yacht vacation so much, but this experience has definitely made me reconsider my travel preferences.

Tips for First-Timers

If you're planning your first trip to the BVI, here are a few practical tips that I found really useful:

• Clothing: Pack light. During the day, all you need is a swimsuit, and for the evening, just something comfortable to change into.
• Transport: Make sure to have your transport to the marina well organized, and allow for extra time in case of changes in your flights or ferries. This will save you some stress, especially if it’s your first time.
• The Sun: Don’t underestimate the Caribbean sun! Bring good sunscreen and apply it regularly to avoid a sunburn ruining your trip.
• Shoes and the Yacht: Don’t wear shoes on board. I learned this the hard way—constantly cleaning the deck is not fun. Bring comfortable shoes for hiking on the islands, but on the yacht, no footwear is needed!
• Do Your Research: Before the trip, I did some research on the activities and places I wanted to visit. This helped me make the most of my time and know what to expect at each stop.

This trip didn’t just help me learn more about my work; it also changed my perspective on vacations. I used to prefer vacations on land, but after this experience, I’ve realized how special life at sea can be. Waking up and being able to jump straight into the water, watching the sunsets from the yacht, and having the freedom to explore different islands without the crowds of a hotel made this trip truly unique. And as for the British Virgin Islands, I believe the best way to explore them is on a yacht charter!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little story. If you’re about to embark on your first trip to the BVI, make the most of it because time flies! It’s been a pleasure sharing this experience with you, and I look forward to writing to you again soon!

Sailing Vacations

⛵️ Navigating Tahiti: Essential Sailing Conditions

Hi Reader,For part three of our Tahiti series, we’re diving into the one thing that can make or break your French Polynesia sailing adventure—the cruising conditions. If you missed part two, where we compared sailing in Tahiti to the BVI, you can check it out here. First, a couple of quick news bites: The US Coast Guard is still working to remove a grounded catamaran from Flamenco Beach in Culebra. A 400-ton crane was mobilized all the way from Baltimore and is now on-site, with salvage...

⛵ Captain's Log: Ernesto's Aftermath & Industry Consolidation?

Hi Reader, As we navigate the doldrums of summer, two major events are making waves in the world of chartering. First, we'll share some updates about the aftermath of Hurricane Ernesto and its impact on the Virgin Islands. Then, we'll move to some major industry consolidation that could be underway. Source: NOAA Ernesto's Aftermath As many of you are aware, last week Hurricane Ernesto swept through the Virgin Islands, bringing strong winds, heavy rainfall, flooding and temporary disruptions...

⛵BVI vs Tahiti: A Sailor’s Dream Dilemma

Hi Reader, In case you missed it, I wrote last time about exploring a charter in French Polynesia for my 40th coming up next year. This week, let's compare Tahiti to a destination most of us already familiar, the BVI. Both destinations offer unique experiences, each with its own charm and challenges. So, let's see how an adventure to the Society Islands stacks up. But first, a couple quick notes: If you're chartering in BVI over the next few months, check out our list of bars and restaurants...

The global authority in superyachting

• NEWSLETTERS
• Yachts Home
• The Superyacht Directory
• Yacht Reports
• Brokerage News
• The largest yachts in the world
• The Register
• Yacht Advice
• Yacht Design
• 12m to 24m yachts
• Monaco Yacht Show
• Builder Directory
• Designer Directory
• Interior Design Directory
• Naval Architect Directory
• Yachts for sale home
• Motor yachts
• Sailing yachts
• Explorer yachts
• Classic yachts
• Sale Broker Directory
• Charter Home
• Yachts for Charter
• Charter Destinations
• Charter Broker Directory
• Destinations Home
• Mediterranean
• South Pacific
• Rest of the World
• Boat Life Home
• Owners' Experiences
• Conservation and Philanthropy
• Interiors Suppliers
• Owners' Club
• Captains' Club
• BOAT Showcase
• Boat Presents
• Events Home
• World Superyacht Awards
• Superyacht Design Festival
• Design and Innovation Awards
• Young Designer of the Year Award
• Artistry and Craft Awards
• Explorer Yachts Summit
• Ocean Talks
• The Ocean Awards
• BOAT Connect
• Between the bays
• Golf Invitational
• BOATPro Home
• Superyacht Insight
• Global Order Book
• Premium Content
• Product Features
• Testimonials
• Pricing Plan
• Tenders & Equipment

Dream: Inside the Breathtaking Conversion of the 106.5 Metre Superyacht

First published in the February 2019 edition of Boat International .

A life’s goal has been realised with Dream, a 106.5-metre conversion so massive and ambitious in its scale it would have been quicker and easier to start from scratch...

I’m doused from collar to sopping sandal in brine from a wave that has just crashed over the RIB’s bow – and the seascape before us is lively enough to whiten knuckles on grab handles. The côte may look particularly azure in the autumn sunshine but ploughing out of Monaco’s Port Hercule, tenders – and motherships – are bouncing around in an unstately fashion. Our target yacht is about the only stable point on the horizon, which is rather comforting.

As we step on to the broad swim platform and up to the aft deck, feeling a little as if we’ve just been rescued, 106.5-metre Dream towers above us, overwhelming in scale. And that’s just what you can see from the aft deck: there are also two lifts and four staircases for guests alone; a 260-square-metre master cabin, a 400-square-metre main saloon, a cinema and 22 guest cabins; a hotel-sized warren of crew and service areas (where a kindly stewardess tumble-dries my dress); six pantries and more than 270 kilometres of electrical cable powering it all. There are so many enormous decks that the GA takes up two whole pages at the end of this feature.

But then this boat has been a very long time in the making. “In 1953, at the age of seven, while dinghy sailing in the Glyfada gulf, outside my house, I came across the Onassis-owned Christina, the first real superyacht,” recalls  Dream ’s owner, George J Prokopiou. “I remember approaching the yacht’s stern on which Winston Churchill was smoking his cigar. This image has stuck with me ever since and generated the dream of a large yacht as a world cruising platform.”

Today, like Onassis, Prokopiou can properly be called a Greek shipping tycoon, having founded Dynacom Tankers, the shipping group Sea Traders and LNG transport company Dynagas. He has an engineering mind, extensive shipbuilding experience and his sea legs also extend to his leisure time, with a collection of four large motor and sailing boats – recently adding 69.5-metre Oceanfast  Nomad  to the collection. He chose to build  Dream  because “I could not find anything on the market to fulfil my needs and wishes”. He had also met naval architect Nikolas Dendrinos – “We share the same passion for sailing, yachting and the sea” – and they decided they could do something special together.

Dendrinos recalls: “He found this small passenger ship through a friend and he thought it would be a good idea for a conversion project. It was delivered in 1997 – it was doing cruises around the Mediterranean.” Dendrinos, who project-managed  Dream , works for Athens-based Olympic Yacht Services, owned by Prokopiou’s shipping company.

Established during the build, it now undertakes the operation, repairs, rebuilds and technical management of all the owner’s boats and plans to take on more clients in the 60-metre-plus range. “The other different thing about this project is that he wanted to build a boat himself,” says Dendrinos. “So this means that we hired a place in a shipyard in Greece and we organised from scratch. We designed, engineered and built everything for this project. We produced internally all the construction drawings for steel, systems, piping, integration and interior sub-constructions. We had subcontractors only for painting and the interiors.”

They also assembled a crack team of workers and designers with a wealth of experience, tapping established Greek-born, Italy-based yacht designer  Giorgio Vafiadis  to pen the new exterior and GA. Interior designers  Simone Ciarmoli and Miguel Queda  worked for years at powerhouse fashion brands, including Valentino, Prada and Armani before founding their own interior design firm, Ciarmoli Queda Studio, in Milan in 2009. Ciarmoli notes that making a success of the unorthodox set-up was one of their greatest achievements. “It was not like  Lürssen  or  Baglietto  or  Azimut . It was us: Simone and Miguel [and Vafiadis]; it was George, Nikolas and his team. And it was a big challenge,” he says.

Given the scope of the conversion this was certainly an ambitious project to tackle independently – the only original elements to remain were the hull and the engine room. So why do it this way? If you’re replacing so much, why not build from scratch? “I do know that he enjoys very much the construction at every stage,” says Vafiadis. “He was going to the yard almost every other day. And he likes to see the things coming. So once you have something existing it is easy to see what is coming – if you start from zero, you don’t see what is coming. Although you see renderings, it’s not like seeing the thing and saying here we do this, there we do that.”

As Prokopiou recalls: “Every evening we had an hour-long phone call with Nikolas reviewing all these [details]. This was a pleasure. I think as much as possible in terms of every detail, because I enjoy having such a good response; giving a small idea and then to see it in a drawing the next day – this is a huge advantage and it gives you the courage to do more things. You just say an idea, and then immediately… improved.”

In this way the mast, the swimming pool and the location of the helipad were all edited during the build. The method may ultimately have worked but he also reflects with frankness on the scope of the conversion.“In hindsight we should have started from scratch given the scale of the rebuild. [It] would have been simpler, faster and cheaper,” Prokopiou says.

The team’s efforts were aimed at some clearly defined goals. For the exterior design, says Vafiadis, “he wanted a classic style and he liked the look of something between a yacht and a ship. He didn’t want anything contemporary.” As Dendrinos puts it: “He wanted to have a classic nautical feel.” In terms of lifestyle, Prokopiou wanted plenty of cabins for family and guests, but also office space for himself and his colleagues, and excellent communications so that they could work effectively – this had to be a yacht he could live on. “The boat is made in a way that several groups of people can enjoy it without interfering one with the other,” says Vafiadis. “There can be a family group on one side of the boat and business people can be on the other.”

Another feature on the list was a quiet and vibration-free interior “even when sailing at full speed in bad weather”. To this end, Dendrinos installed huge volumes of insulation as well as floating walls and ceilings. Also requested were iPad controls (these are everywhere, even in guest cabins) and easy access to the sea for swimming, diving and watersports. For this, as well as a dive store and space to keep rugged tenders and the overhead cranes to launch them, there is a 42-square-metre, 12-tonne stern door that opens on to the sea. There’s also dynamic positioning for dives in protected areas where you can’t drop anchor.

More unusually, Prokopiou requested opening windows throughout, so that a natural breeze rather than air con could ventilate the boat in warm weather. In response, there are 66 opening portholes, 20 manually opening windows and 112 electrically opening windows, 500 kilograms each, 60 millimetres thick, custom made in Germany by Fehrmann and (the electric ones) controlled by iPads integrated to the “infotainment” system by VBH. “I think we have overdone it – in the toilet, instead of four windows opening, one would have been enough!” says the owner. To meet class safety requirements, all the windows are controlled by the Kongsberg Alarm Control and Monitoring System, which monitors them individually. Proximity switches tell it which are open, and they can be closed or locked automatically from the wheelhouse if necessary.

But first and foremost Prokopiou required a large and comfortable living space with balanced design – not too much of a problem with 4,702 gross tonnes to play with and the owner’s wife, Alexandra, on hand for decor selections. The request was for formality, but Ciarmoli and Queda steered away from dark woods. “I said, ‘OK, if you want formality why don’t we think about Marie Antoinette and Versailles.’”

Dream  is no confection: their interpretation of this style focuses on decorative wood panelling as well as delicate blue tones and acres of shagreen (invented by Jean-Claude Galluchat for Madame de Pompadour). It’s elegant and restrained – they cite minimalist master Jean-Michel Frank as an influence. But there are also nautical flights of fancy: in trompe l’oeil mosaics of sea creatures, or the insides of lifts decorated to feel as if you’ve dived into the blue.The vast array of spaces that Prokopiou and designers created are uniformly astonishing in scale and detail.

The more unusual ones include an intimate dining saloon set up around a central grill for teppanyaki and decorated in black and red lacquer like a glossy bento box; an owner’s deck that sprawls through a private dining room, office, steam bath, al fresco spa pool, cabins for immediate family and a lot more; VIP cabins in aqua tones with their own drinks cabinets and baths, and which open directly on to broad side decks; a main saloon centred with a ceiling light feature “like an oyster pearl”, says Ciarmoli, above powder-blue upholstery, which flows around to a mirrored bar and ceiling lights that recall abstract fishing nets. Further forward, the towering, multi-deck atrium in marble and glass is the architectural equivalent of a jewellery box, displaying the boat’s grand scale to spectacular effect.

Supporting all this is some serious tech. The wheelhouse has been rebuilt with an integrated bridge that allows the captain to watch and control the engine room and all systems, as well as monitor CCTV and night vision cameras. There’s also a sophisticated cruise-ship-style fire alarm system with a display to show the status of fire doors and temperature of all areas – and there are vertical escape routes from all compartments. “[Below decks] we stripped the engine room and rebuilt the engines and the generators. We have very good engines and generators,” says Dendrinos.

Aside from that, as he puts it, “everything you see on the GA is new”, and the bow, stern and all of the superstructure are new steel constructions. Under the waterline are controllable pitch propellers with independent rudders, a bow thruster and zero speed stabilisers – all super-sized, since  Dream  is one big boat.

Unusually for an owner, Prokopiou is also excited by the least glamorous kit on board. “It is interesting to see the kitchen, the refrigerators, because this is the heart of any ship. I have been to tankers, bulk carriers and LNG carriers, so I have seen a lot of the shipyards,” he says. But his favourite space on board? “The diving centre with all its toys and diving gear,” he says. “I like this space because it opens up to the sea and provides the perfect place for enjoying swimming, diving and watersports. It is the centre of the boat during the summer months.”

It’s easy to imagine Prokopiou whiling away an afternoon here, rightfully satisfied with the superyacht that he has created in his very own way. Perhaps he might even spot a small boy in a little dinghy in the distance, conceiving his own dream.

Dream won a World Superyacht Award in 2019 . Click below to register for the 2020 virtual World Superyacht Award ceremony, which will take place on Friday, November 13.

More about this yacht

Yachts for charter, more stories, most recent, from our partners, sponsored listings.

• Forum Listing
• Marketplace
• Advanced Search
• All Topics Sailing
• SailNet is a forum community dedicated to Sailing enthusiasts. Come join the discussion about sailing, modifications, classifieds, troubleshooting, repairs, reviews, maintenance, and more!

Experience with Dream Yacht Charter (owner & guest)?

• Add to quote

I am considering a charter management program to finance a boat. Does anyone have experience with Dream Yacht Charter? Two options seem to be interesting for me: Dream easy: 35% upfront + 25% balloon payment -> here the question is if I get at least a partial owner's title on the boat? (for the case of insolvency) Partnership: 55% upfront -> I suppose this one comes with a 1/1 title. I know this is not the king of investments but 40% value loss over 5 years seems realistic, probably this is the cheapest way to manage ~4weeks/year sailing time.  

Hello, What are your goals for the boat - charter then sell or take over after? I just returned from a charter with DYC - people were great. Boat was a 2014 - in terrible shape. Mechanically sound and rigging was good but surface wise she was beat up and not taken care of. I have made a formal 'complaint ' with DYC and still waiting for their reply.  

KnottyCanadian said: I just returned from a charter with DYC - people were great. Boat was a 2014 - in terrible shape. Mechanically sound and rigging was good but surface wise she was beat up and not taken care of. I have made a formal 'complaint ' with DYC and still waiting for their reply. Click to expand...

I was in the BVIs (3 weeks ago) and I was not the boat owner. A refit for her, based on my standards would be a complete interior renovation of cupboards/appliances/flooring/blinds, wiring and control assessment and replacement, deck refurbishing. Hull was scratched up but acceptable. Nav electronics were useless - kept shutting down. The lines were all different sizes/ material and conditon. I was told to run the generator 6-8 hours a day to keep everything charged and run the A/C - if this was done for the past 3 yrs. then those hours really build up on the 'mechanical' side. So cost could be expensive of for the latter component rebuild or replacement. Charter Company standards for such upkeep will vary I am certain. I have dealt with Horizon Yacht Charters as well and find them good. I am certain that there are others, but I would visit some boat shows and search the net for previous owner assessments of the companies before stepping in. Hope this helps.  

Thanks! Owner assessments - especially helping negative feedback is extremely rare to find. Actually for DYC I found some positive feedback so far. I do not mind e.g. if the sails are worn off after 5 years or the engine needs a standard overhaul do to its hours. But groundings (remember Cheeky Rafiki!), hull/helm/rudder damage of any kind, dead electronics is unacceptable. I'd say I'd accept a "complete blue-water refit" budget of <10% of the boat price (that's pretty much done if you replace the sails, batteries & service the engine). As for Horizon: they offer Bavarias for monohull, no thanks...  

just heard about a bigger Bavaria that was bought from charter company. owner had the yard do a complete refit and the generator had to be removed for overhaul. the only way out was through the side of the hull. built like a Motorhome.  

overbored said: ... the only way out was through the side of the hull. built like a Motorhome. Click to expand...

I just finished up a charter with DYC - with the caveat that I have only done one charter with them, I would will probably never charter with them again, and would never put a boat into charter with them. We were on a 2015 Bali 4.3 - I was interested in it as a possible BVI charter. The boat was only two years old, but was not in great shape - all the cabinetry hardware was ready to be replaced - hinges completely rusted, faucets badly corroded. We also had a problem with cockroaches on the charter which resulted in them fogging the boat after we returned it. Our electronics had nothing but problems - wifi was almost worthless since we were unable to connect to it much of the time. The main chartplotter at the helm froze on a regular basis and had to be rebooted on a regular basis. The sails looked pretty knackered as well, but I don't have a frame of reference if that would be considered typical. The bottom of the boat was in bad need of cleaning - lots of green slime growing on the bottom. One of our heads blocked completely on the trip necessitating two trips out by the repair team and a complete tear down to fix. Fortunately the head belonged to the skipper that was on board, so we weren't the cause of it. The skipper that was on board was great but did make the comment that after about 2 years in charter the boats are about done - can't imagine what they look like after 5 years. I sent an email outlining my experience to DYC - have to yet to hear back. There are better charter companies out there then DYC - we are on our second charter with BVI Yacht Charters in a 2016 Helia and the difference is night and day - of course it is a newer boat, and is better designed boat, but I'm sure glad that we got the better yacht as our second charter rather than the first!  

Be wary of the tax advantages associated with charter ownership. Most models I've seen show depreciation deductions, which are perfectly legal, but are also critical to make the numbers work. Since the boat will actually depreciate, that portion that represents actual reduction in value is truly a tax advantage. However, tax laws let you keep going, until your tax basis is zero. This means that when you ultimately sell the boat, you will pay taxes on whatever you sell her for. On the maintenance side, you want the best show available. Getting a hunk of junk back at the end just has to be a nightmare. It will, however, have accelerated rental wear and tear. It will never look like it was owner sailed.  

• ?            
• 176.5K members

Top Contributors this Month