CHRISTINA O Review: The 99m Onassis Yacht Where 34 Guests Eat at One Table

Built as a ship, and you feel it in every room

The first thing we noticed, stepping off the tender, is that the proportions are wrong for a yacht and right for a ship. The corridors run the length of a frigate. The ceilings are lower and the rooms are deeper than on a modern 99-metre, and there are more of them: a main lounge with a card table, a library lounge with a curved sofa under bookshelves, a writing desk by a window, a second library, a music room, a ballroom. Nothing is open-plan. On a new build these would be one enormous saloon; here they are a sequence of rooms you walk through, each with a door, and a group of 34 can be in six places at once without hearing each other.

That is the practical point of her for a big group. The crew of 40 is the other half of it. There is roughly one crew member per guest, which is why a group this size eats at one sitting, and why the spa, the bar and the tenders all run at the same time.

Ari’s Bar: whale-tooth handles and the stools guests either love or refuse

Ari’s Bar is the room every guest asks about, and it is still the room Onassis built. The counter is wrapped in rope, the handles under it are whale teeth etched with scenes of ships, and the stools are upholstered in whale leather. Guests either love them or refuse to sit on them, and we understood both. The brass lamp, the glass top over the model ships and the dark panelling are all original. It is a small room, which is the point: this is where the deals and the gossip of the 1950s happened, and it is the first room the crew took us to.

One table for the whole group: the dining room, the ballroom and the Callas Lounge

The dining room seats 42, with 28 at the main table. On almost every other yacht that takes more than twenty guests, dinner is two sittings or two rooms; here the whole group eats together, which changes the character of a week. The ballroom next door has a grand piano, a raised dais and a red carpet leading to a gilt-framed portrait; the Callas Lounge has a second piano on a railed dais and her portrait with the photographs around it. The ship was built to hold a party of this size, and the rooms show it.

The Churchill library: the guest who kept coming back

Winston Churchill was a regular guest of Onassis on this ship and the library is named for him. The doors carry his name in brass, his bust sits on the library table beside the yacht’s guest book, and his portrait hangs in the lounge. It is a strange thing to stand in that room while she sits at anchor in the same harbour where Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier held their wedding reception aboard, seventy years later. The history is not a theme here; it is the furniture.

The pool that becomes a dance floor, and the decks for 157

The pool on the aft deck has a mosaic floor, a minotaur design, that rises hydraulically to deck level and becomes the dance floor. When we were aboard it was raised, and the awning over it, the long dining table under the next awning and the open-air bar on the jacuzzi deck make it clear what she is for in the evening. She can take 157 guests aboard at anchor for an event, and very few yachts in the Mediterranean can host a group that size anywhere, let alone on a piece of history.

The Onassis Suite: a bedroom, a marble bathroom and a study with a fireplace

The owner’s suite is on the bridge deck and is the one cabin that is sized like a modern yacht’s master. It has a bedroom in gold and cream, a marble bathroom with a bath, and an oak-panelled study with a fireplace and a sitting area, which is where the owner of a 99-metre ship presumably ran his business. It is the cabin to give the host of the group.

Guest cabins: fourteen twins, which is the thing to know before you book

Of the seventeen cabins, fourteen are twins on the main deck, with one VIP and two convertible cabins below. They are ship’s cabins: comfortable, bright, well kept after the refits, but compact, and most of them have two single beds. A group of 34 is usually families, friends or a company, and twins suit that; a group of couples expecting double beds throughout should ask the broker which cabins convert. The corridor that connects them runs the length of the ship and tells you how big she is better than any number does.

The spa: two treatment rooms and a beauty room

The spa has two massage rooms, a beauty room and a gym, with two full-time therapists on the crew. On a 34-guest week that matters more than it sounds: two therapists can get through the whole group in a day.

The walkthrough: how the crew shows her

We were shown round by a crew member who has clearly done it a thousand times and still enjoys it: the memorabilia case with the photographs, the lounges, the bar, the suite, in an order that tells the story. Mo, Yanna, Nadja, John and I sat in the main lounge with the ship’s book of photographs open on the table before we started. A yacht with this much history can feel like a museum; the crew keep it feeling like a house.

Who CHRISTINA O is for, and who should not book her

She is for a group of 20 to 34 that wants to be together: a family across three generations, a milestone birthday, a company week, a wedding party. Anyone who wants the one yacht in the anchorage that everybody ashore can name. Hosts who will use the rooms, because a 34-guest week on her is a programme of dinners at one table, evenings on the mosaic floor and afternoons on the tenders, not a quiet week in a bay.

Four honest limits. First, the rate: 700,000 to 740,000 EUR a week before expenses is a large number, even if the per-head figure with 34 aboard is lower than on many 50-metre yachts for 12. Second, the cabins: fourteen of seventeen are twins, so plan the group around that. Third, she is a ship: 99 metres and a 1943 hull mean she anchors off rather than berths in, and the tenders do the work; if you want to step off onto a quay in Hydra, this is not the boat. Fourth, the history is the point, so if your group wants a brand-new interior with floor-to-ceiling glass, the money is better spent elsewhere.

Booking CHRISTINA O for Greece: rate, VAT, base and what to ask

The published rate is 700,000 EUR per week in low season and 740,000 EUR in high season, plus expenses: the Advance Provisioning Allowance for fuel, food, drink and port fees, and charter VAT in Greece at 13%. She spends April to September in the Mediterranean and winters in the Caribbean and Bahamas, and she is listed for Greece among her summer grounds. Ask three things before you sign: which cabins convert from twins to doubles for your group, whether the event capacity of 157 is available for your dates and what it costs, and where she will be at the start of your week, because a ship this size positions between countries and a Greek embarkation is a question of her calendar.

We have been aboard her and sold her, and she appears on our lists of yachts over 200 feet and the longest superyachts we list for Greece. Her yacht page is on dmayachting.com, and your broker can confirm her position and the current rate for your dates.

Klara Braga Jakobsen is Yacht Reviewer at DMA Yachting. She walks the charter fleet at the Mediterranean and Caribbean shows every year and photographs every yacht she reviews.