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Ritz-Carlton Makes a Splash on the Megayacht Scene

Evrima is unlike anything else on the seas.

We haven’t even departed Athens, but already I’m toying with a few changes to the itinerary. Over the next 11 nights, my wife, Ruth, and I are set to sail to Venice by way of some of the Mediterranean’s most storied and dramatic ports. We’ve got glorious-sounding shore adventures ahead throughout Turkey, Greece, Montenegro, Croatia, and Slovenia. The only sticking point is, I’m suddenly not sure I ever want to get off this ship.

Let me rephrase that. Technically, the elegant 624-foot, ten-level, 149-suite vessel we just boarded is a ship, but our hosts prefer we think of it as a “yacht,” a “superyacht,” or even a “megayacht.” However you categorize it, the Evrima is unlike any cruise ship I’ve ever been on. Designed from the keel up to offer a refined and exclusive-feeling resort experience at every turn, this debut entry in The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection is a high-seas, low-cheese luxury outlier that aims to update the familiar playbook when it comes to seeing the world by water. Leading a wave of upcoming hotel-branded launches (call them “boat-ique” hotels) by the likes of Four Seasons, Aman, and Orient Express, Evrima has fewer passengers, understated entertainment, discreet personalized service, private terraces in every room, and Michelin-level restaurants. 

When I bump into our amiable Scottish captain, Keith Falconer, near the concierge desk on our first afternoon –because that’s how things go on an intimate sailing like this – he’s like a proud papa gushing about his baby’s awe-inspiring attributes. Five restaurants and six lounges. Stabilizers that keep the yacht gliding like a dream. Four dual-fuel engines that use liquefied natural gas for reduced emissions. His favorite part is the marina terrace, which opens on the waterline as a backdoor “beach,” water toys and all, when we’re at anchor.

Evrima was in Monaco for the Grand Prix this year, and while I won’t say the other yachters were envious, they did say ours was the prettiest yacht in the harbor,” Falconer says, as a sly smile plays across his face. “OK, maybe they were slightly envious.” 

Lunch at Karnas Vineyards.

Sophia van den Hoek

No doubt we’ll find a few new admirers along the way on this voyage. Our trip takes us through some of the world’s busiest tourist corridors, but with a smaller profile, roughly the size of two football fields, Evrima can access harborages that most medium-size and larger ships can’t, and the pace is slower too. We have sailing days that I soon discover are built in simply as time buffers. The point is to avoid a frenzied, superficial itinerary that leaves passengers exhausted. As Captain Keith says, “Does anyone really need to see ten countries in seven days?”

It might take that long just to get my head around our accommodations. Each cabin features a spacious private terrace overlooking the water, king-size bed, and bath with double vanities. Designed in tasteful creams and greens, our 600-square-foot Grand Suite – we upgraded from the standard 300-square-foot Terrace Suite – includes dual walk-in closets (“There’s even a glass-top drawer for jewelry!” Ruth says delightedly) and other refinements. We have a large dining table and living area, a deep soaking tub, and a separate shower, plus hidden snack troves and a minibar stocked with our preferences – the chilled Moët & Chandon is replaced so quickly, I’m guessing there must be a pneumatic tube somewhere.

Evrima carries 260 passengers on this trip, and nearly as many crew members – the “ladies and gentlemen” of Ritz-Carlton – ready to meet everyone’s needs. On the way to our first stop in Bodrum, Turkey, our personal suite ambassador, Kimmy, walks us through various shore options, from a guided visit to the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, to an all-day outing at Ephesus, one of the best-preserved ancient cities in the Aegean.

It’s hot, so we choose vines over marble and spend the afternoon at a family-owned boutique winery and farm 30 minutes from Bodrum’s port. Under soaring cypresses at Karnas Vineyards, we learn that the region is thought to be the birthplace of zinfandel, which we assumed was native to our home state of California. The grounds are dotted with hundreds of olive trees, including one that’s over a thousand years old.

In a shaded courtyard, Ruth and I feast on Ottoman recipes, including keskek risotto, and dishes of local goat and lamb cooked with homegrown herbs. Afterward, on a tip from our host, we stop at Buldano, a manufacturer of traditional peshtemal towels and robes that are popular in Turkish bathhouses and just about every stylish beach hotel from here to Maui. It’s hard not to buy out the store after seeing how affordable they are compared to similar ones in the States. 

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Strolling through Bodrum’s Old Town.

Sophia van den Hoek

Back on board, we discover it’s possible to entertain and amuse guests at sea while keeping things classy. There’s a whisky tasting in a private dining room, predinner hors d’oeuvres in the ship’s “living room,” complimentary diamond cleaning – you read that right – in the boutique. I enjoy a 90-minute deep-tissue massage on the spa terrace before meeting Ruth in the lounge on Deck 10, where an acoustic trio is playing bossa nova. That’s not to suggest Evrima takes itself too seriously to let loose. At night in the Observation Lounge, the lights go low, the disco balls shimmer, and DJ Jessie James finds exactly the right balance of Beyoncé, Dua Lipa, and Tears for Fears to get the party people up and moving.

Yet even so, Evrima is a choose-your-own-vibe escape. The next morning, I find Allen, a lawyer and entrepreneur from Idaho, tucked away with a book in a quiet corner of the ship’s library. He’s been swamped with work lately and tells me that the usual tourist hustle can make him a bit cranky. “Hot weather plus crowds turns this Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde,” he jokes. Now he’s all about catching up on the downtime he’s missed these past months. “My only job on this cruise is to master the art of doing nothing,” he says with a smile, diving back into his mystery novel.

Enticing as that sounds, Ruth and I can’t help but be drawn to the magnificent stone facades and fortifications we woke up to outside our window. Rhodes, the largest of Greece’s Dodecanese Islands, with a medieval Old Town established in 1307, is like a kid’s drawing of a walled kingdom come to life. The UNESCO World Heritage site is a maze of narrow, winding streets and stone alleyways, each with quaint shops and hidden cafés that all somehow have an adorable cat snoozing out front. It’s good to be a cat on Rhodes.

On a group outing that afternoon, we join a small caravan of four-wheel drives cutting through the island’s riverbeds and pine forests, stopping in tiny villages and at a fifteenth-century chapel done up with Byzantine frescoes on the slopes of Mount Profitis Ilias. The views of the Aegean from the mountaintop have been luring Rhodian voyagers to sea since Phoenician times. I can’t help thinking that those ancient rowers would lose their minds seeing the 24-hour room-service menu on the giant TVs back in our suite.

Deck 8’s Mistral seafood bar and pool.

In Kotor, Montenegro, Evrima is as majestic and eyecatching as the crystal-clear cove we anchor in. Locals snap selfies with the yacht from the medieval ramparts around the pier, and we feel like VIPs simply walking off the gangway. As we take in the town’s baroque bell towers and fortifications, I keep daydreaming – somewhat guiltily, I admit – about how fantastic it will be to settle in again on my poolside lounger and which restaurant we’ll dine at tonight: the Evrima Room, alfresco Mistral, or Southeast Asian-themed Talaat Nam. (The latter has become our go-to; without even asking, the servers know I must have chilies in fish sauce at every meal). Or maybe we should get dressed up for S.E.A., with menus by chef Sven Elverfeld of Aqua, a Michelin three-star restaurant at the Ritz-Carlton in Wolfsburg, Germany.

Evrima’s staff start to feel like friends. Henry, our South African head server, is so passionate about his country’s coastal wine region that we add Stellenbosch to our must-visit list. Karla the bartender customizes a vanilla-pineapple-vodka-rum concoction for Ruth and uses ChatGPT to name it (the phenomenal “Mineapple Express” becomes our cocktail of the trip). John the keyboard player brings us to tears with a rendition of Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1 after hearing that the piece played us down the aisle at our wedding.

Without assigned tables or forced mixers, a bit of self-selection happens among the passengers. The sun worshippers find each other. The board-game people find each other. The gym people also find each other. The Game of Thrones fans, overjoyed about their tour of the show’s filming locations during our stop in Dubrovnik – they definitely find each other. Ruth and I genuinely look forward to our conversations with Anna, a charismatic 80-year-old from São Paulo who is on a “freedom trip,” as she calls it, after divorcing her husband of many decades, who never wanted to travel (she bought a Lamborghini too). Two fun new couples we’ve  befriended, Renae and David and Cris and Aaron – part of the Idaho contingent along with Allen – are here because Cris won $142,000 playing Ultimate Texas Hold ’Em last Super Bowl Sunday and could think of no finer way to invest that lucky loot. Ursula and Sean, retirees from the Caymans, call themselves early luxury adopters and wanted to get ahead of this talked-about superyacht trend. “So far, so great,” Sean says every time he sees me.

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Mali Ston, Croatia.

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Great indeed. One day in Croatia, a Mercedes Sprinter van whisks a group of us to elegant Mali Ston Bay for a delicious oyster feast in a shimmering Adriatic cove we have all to ourselves. On the deck of a vintage wooden sailboat, we learn about oyster farming from a man whose family has shelled these marine delicacies for 550 years. Out comes the bubbly and the rosé and course after sensational course of shellfish, freshly grilled sea bream, salads, and sides, and did I mention the rosé? Afterward, we take a dip in the Adriatic and bond as a group over our all-time favorite beaches, our fantasy trips to come, and why we never want this voyage to end.

Our last couple of days drift by in a whirl of contented idleness. It doesn’t really matter how sweaty or hectic things are on land because Evrima has our back. It’s easy to get spoiled this way – waking up in some enchanted new port, having lattes delivered to our ocean deck, making the ship’s marina-terrace “beach” our own personal Ibiza. Passengers are already buzzing about the other Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection launches: Ilma, with 224 suites, debuted in September with one of the highest space-per-guest ratios at sea. Luminara is scheduled to arrive in 2025 with 1,000-square-foot supersuites featuring private outdoor showers and whirlpool spas.

On our final day, Ruth and I are scheduled to take part in a five-hour truffle hunt and winetasting in Slovenia’s Istrian heartland. But then we see Allen, frosty glass in hand, doing not much of anything on a cushy daybed in one of Evrima’s quiet areas. 

“Any fun plans for today?” I ask him.

“Yeah,” he says, gesturing to his book and the sea beyond. “This. Just this.”

Ruth and I share a look, and I instantly know the Istrian countryside can wait. Today, we’ll dedicate ourselves to lounge chairs, ocean views, and a few last Mineapple Expresses.

This article originally appeared in the November/December 2024 issue of Virtuoso, The Magazine (U.S./Canada edition).

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How to Cruise the Med

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    The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection’s Evrima heads from Athens to Venice over seven nights on a route around the Peloponnese and through the Adriatic. Along the way, the 298-passenger vessel calls at Kotor’s fjordlike bay and gives passengers time to explore Dubrovnik and Sibenik. Dancing to ABBA and Beyoncé in the elegant tenth-floor Observation Lounge is joyful but completely optional. Departure: July 13, 2025.

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    With a casino, a grand salon for entertainment, and a lively Observation Bar, Seabourn’s 600-passenger Encore charts an elegant course around Italian isles and Adriatic gems on a 14-night sailing from Lisbon to Dubrovnik. Its intimate spa features a wellness program designed by Dr. Andrew Weil. Departure: May 10, 2025.

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    Silversea’s Silver Whisper sails the Greek islands and the Adriatic on 11-night itineraries between Athens and Split, offering butler service in each suite and nearly one crew member for every guest. With just 392 passengers, the ship is small enough to access lesser-traveled ports, including Spetses and Syros. Departures: June 28 and September 25, 2025.

  • Swan Hellenic

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    Launched in 2023, Swan Hellenic’s 192-passenger Diana cruises from Venice to Athens for seven nights, by way of Croatia, Montenegro, and Albania. Most suites have private balconies, and some have walk-in wardrobes, soaking tubs, and virtual fireplaces. Departure: September 1, 2025.

  • Windstar Cruises

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    Windstar Cruises’ 342-passenger Wind Surf, the world’s largest sailing ship, follows a storied route over eight nights from Athens to Venice. The itinerary includes a musical performance at the UNESCO World Heritage site of Olympia in Greece’s Peloponnese and a sail, swim, and snorkel off a pristine archipelago near Hvar, Croatia. Departure: September 5, 2025.

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