Infinite Jest

A motor yacht with a sailing yacht's stance

Andrea Vallicelli made his name in sail, most famously with Azzurra, Italy's first America's Cup challenger, and Infinite Jest wears that heritage openly. The transom slope sits low, the forward overhang runs long, and the sheer line curves as it tapers aft, so a steel displacement yacht of serious volume reads from the water as long, slender and elegant. The yard itself describes the profile as reminiscent of sporty sailing yachts, language builders rarely earn at 75 metres.

She is the second yacht in the Vallicelli line at Turquoise and a sistership to the 73.6 metre Roe, built in steel and aluminium as hull NB69. Launched in April 2023, she ran trials on the Sea of Marmara and was delivered on 27 July 2023. Class is Lloyd's Register and the flag is Cayman Islands, the same institutional package that runs through the rest of the modern Turquoise fleet.

The widest kind of 75 metres

The number that organises the whole yacht is the beam: 14.2 metres on 75 metres of length, a full metre more than the yard's 87.7 metre flagship Angelique carries. Volume follows the width, 1,725 gross tonnes over four decks, and endurance follows the volume, with 156,000 litres of fuel and 42,000 litres of water in the tanks. The width buys generous side decks, full-beam interior rooms and the settled motion at anchor that owners feel more than they measure.

Fourteen guests sleep in seven staterooms, with a crew of 22 to run the boat, better than one and a half crew for every guest at full occupancy. Those are charter-grade service numbers on a yacht drawn to a private brief, and they explain how she sustains long itineraries without strain. The directory figures put her among the widest yachts of her length afloat, and the interior proportions are where that statistic turns into daily experience.

Within seven months of delivery, Infinite Jest had crossed five continents and reached Antarctica.

Sinot architecture, Hillman decoration

The interior pairs Sinot Yacht Architecture and Design, the Dutch studio behind some of the most disciplined large-yacht interiors afloat, with the New York designer Julie Hillman, who is credited for the interior design itself. The split follows how great houses are built ashore: one office resolves the architecture, the volumes, sightlines and circulation, while another dresses the rooms. It is a pairing more common on landmark residences than on yachts.

For an owner weighing the yard, the studio roster on this one hull is the point. Turquoise built Vallicelli's exterior, Sinot's architecture and Hillman's decoration into a single coherent boat, which is evidence of a shipyard comfortable taking direction from three strong creative voices at once. The same flexibility later brought Harrison Eidsgaard, Team For Design and Hoek projects into the shed, but Infinite Jest is where the multi-studio habit proved itself at scale.

A beach club that opens on three sides

Her most talked-about space sits at the waterline. The full-beam beach club opens aft to the swimming platform, and shell doors on either side hinge open into extended platforms over the sea, so the room takes daylight and access from three directions at once. German trade press singled the space out as oversized for the class when she delivered, and on a 14.2 metre beam the floor area backs the claim.

The tender garage sits amidships, housing a 10.2 metre limousine tender, so the beach club keeps its full footprint with no boat stowage to share it with. That is a naval architecture decision made early, in the general arrangement, and it is the kind an owner cannot retrofit. The stern belongs entirely to people: platform, club and sea terraces working as one continuous room at the water.

Nineteen thousand miles in seven months

Most new yachts spend their first season between Monaco and Porto Cervo. Within seven months of delivery, Infinite Jest had covered 19,699 nautical miles across five continents, including a full Antarctic expedition, a shakedown programme her captain, who had spent nearly three years planning it, described as "the adventure of a lifetime". The yard published the voyage itself, which says the builder read it as the strongest endorsement available.

The machinery that carried her is deliberately conventional: twin Caterpillar diesels totalling 5,150 hp, 17 knots flat out, 15 knots cruising and 7,000 nautical miles of range at 12. For a buyer, the voyage is the rarest kind of due diligence, a new hull, new systems and new crew proven immediately in the hardest waters recreational vessels visit. Turquoise builds get discussed in terms of value. This one earned discussion in terms of capability.

Nineteen months of Antarctica, told by two different crews

Captain Tim Davison, who ran the 2024 voyage, told Forbes that "nearly three years of planning and preparation came to fruition" as Infinite Jest crossed into Antarctic waters, calling it "the adventure of a lifetime." He described the approach in physical terms: "the air and water temperatures dropped to freezing point, the sea changed colour, the wildlife changed, the fog closed in, and the first icebergs were sighted." Leaving South America behind, he called it "a leap into the unknown."

A later voyage, covered by Dockwalk in March 2025, put different captains at the helm: Tom Shipton and Cuan Nicolay. Shipton found the Drake Passage itself surprisingly forgiving, "so calm and flat and actually made for a relatively easy time of it," but Antarctica proper left an impression neither could fully put into words, Shipton calling the ice "hard to believe... the colors, the blues and whites and everything in between," and Nicolay warning that "those ice floes, even if they look small, they play hard." Shipton described the operational reality behind the scenery: "everything needs to be planned out six hours in advance because of the weather... you're really on your own." No source explains why the captains changed between the two seasons, and none is needed to take both accounts at face value.

Для кого: The owner who plans real voyages, wants the widest beam in the 75 metre class and values a hull that proved itself with an Antarctic season in its first year.