Around the world with VivieRae II

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• Top story: Around the world with VivieRae II

• Charter Updates: Camper & Nicholsons’ Lulus for charter in the Caribbean this winter | New CA for 50m Aspen Alternative | Croatia onboard Annabel II | 50m Valinor for charter in the Mediterranean | New Central Agent for Lady K

• Superyacht Spotlight: Wake surfing at the edge of the world

TOP STORY

Around the world with VivieRae II

From swimming with penguins in the Galápagos to diving among wartime wrecks in the Pacific and visiting remote communities in Vanuatu, Bob Giles has spent years exploring the world aboard VivieRae II. For an owner who has always been drawn to what lies beyond the horizon, the 29-metre explorer has become a passport to places few ever experience.

For Bob Giles, boats have never simply been about being out on the water. They have been a means of getting somewhere – preferably somewhere difficult to reach.

His relationship with boating began after university, when he bought a 24-foot single-engine boat and ventured as far as 120 miles offshore to dive, navigating without GPS. Later came catamarans, sportfishers and a 39-foot cruiser that he took in stages from Louisiana to the Virgin Islands. By his late 50s, however, Giles was ready to realise a long-held ambition: owning an expedition yacht.

“In 2014 I heard Nordhavn was building a 96-footer. I still had the VivieRae I, an 86-footer Nordhavn and was in the process of selling it, and while that deal fell through I still decided to get involved in the 96-footer.” Delivered in 2017, Nordhavn, under the name VivieRae II, her maiden voyage took her from Hong Kong to Bali, where Bob stepped onboard and began what would become a near-continuous programme of exploration. During the first nine months alone, Bob spent 210 days (±7 months) onboard.

“I actually built a spreadsheet,” Bob recalls. “I had figured out the route, the distances, the time.” Friends were invited to add their names to different legs of the journey, allowing Giles to assemble groups for a succession of ten-day adventures. “My captain said, ‘Bob, there’s no way this is actually going to work this way.’ Yet it did.”

Going the long way

From Bali, VivieRae II travelled across the South Pacific to Southern California before heading south through the Panama Canal and into the Caribbean. After several years cruising the region, Bob decided it was time to go even further. “I got bored with the Caribbean; I wanted to go around the world.’”

Back through the Panama Canal, what followed was a route through the South Pacific, New Zealand, Australia and Indonesia, initially with the intention of continuing through the Red Sea and into the Mediterranean. The security situation in the region ultimately made that impractical, so Bob made an appropriately adventurous decision: instead of pushing ahead, VivieRae II would simply go the other way.

Retracing her path through Thailand and Indonesia before continuing through the Philippines, Palau and Chuuk Lagoon, the Marshall Islands, Hawaii and San Diego, eventually crossing the Panama Canal a third time before continuing onwards to the Mediterranean.

It is precisely this kind of cruising for which VivieRae II was conceived. With a range of approximately 4,000 to 4,500 nautical miles depending on speed, Bob’s superyacht can reach destinations that would otherwise require a different approach entirely. “If you don’t have an expedition yacht, you cannot see it,” he says of some of the places they have visited.

The Tuamotu Archipelago in French Polynesia are among those that have left a lasting impression. Bob recalls diving in the atolls in the morning and afternoon as the tide turned “we’d watch the sharks stack up to feed during the tide change and it was just incredible.” Another memorable dive was in Chuuk Lagoon, where about 50 ships had been sunk during World War II “they have wrecks from 60 to 200 feet and actually got the bends (decompression sickness) on my third dive down,” luckily VivieRae II has a hyperbaric chamber onboard.

Then there was Vanuatu, where VivieRae II was welcomed by a remote community, their tender was met by dugout canoes emerging from the mangroves. “The community had seen very few outside visitors in years; they welcomed us with fruits and flowers.” To anchor, fish or dive across Polynesia, the tradition is to ask permission from the chief; to do so it is customary to bring a gift. Bob and his crew had brought Kava, a plant of which you grind up the root and it has a sedative effect. Being a valuable commodity in the region, the gift was accepted and shared with the visitors: “we did a lot of Kava ceremonies all throughout Polynesia,” Bob laughs.

Experiences such as these have become fundamental to Bob’s ownership. Rather than observing a destination from a distance, the yacht has enabled Bob, together with family and friends, to spend time in communities and environments largely untouched by conventional tourism.

Into the wild

Wildlife, however, has arguably produced some of the greatest memories along the way. In Raja Ampat, Bob and his crew snorkelled alongside whale sharks. In the Maldives came encounters with giant manta rays, while elsewhere Bob recalls seeing a giant hammerhead shark and, only days later, a tiger shark. 

Yet while having seen some of the most beautiful animals on the planet in their natural habitat, the standout is the Galápagos Penguin. Underwater, the small penguins are almost unrecognisable from their awkward movements on land. “They’re like bullets,” Bob recalls. “It’s like little kids having fun.”

While snorkelling, the penguins would race directly towards their masks before changing direction at the last moment, darting between swimmers with extraordinary agility. “You thought, ‘Oh, they’re going to crash,’ and then they turn and go.”

The Galápagos offered something different from almost anywhere else VivieRae II had visited. Sea lions approached the yacht, giant tortoises moved through the landscape and red- and blue-footed boobies remained seemingly unbothered by visitors. Bob describes being ashore as though he was “walking through a zoo with no fences.”

These encounters represent exactly why Bob wanted an explorer yacht in the first place: access not only to different destinations, but to experience the natural world in a way impossible for most.

A yacht with a family name

As VivieRae II travels to the most remote corners of the world, the vessel carries a lot of meaning. Just like his previous vessel, the superyacht is named after Bob’s first granddaughter, Vivienne Rae.

Family and friends have been an important part of the cruising programme since the very beginning. Having shared countless legs of the journey with the people closest to him, Bob admits that being onboard alone feels unnatural. On one occasion, Bob arrived in Fiji a couple of days ahead of everyone else, “sitting on the aft deck by myself, I found the experience so weird.”

That sense of sharing extends into the yacht’s interiors. Rather than being conceived simply as a showcase, the spaces onboard have had to support Bob’s particular style of ownership: long periods at sea, groups of friends and family coming and going, and months spent far from established yachting centres. The substantial interior volume that first attracted Bob to Nordhavn remains an important part of the yacht’s appeal: creating a comfortable home around a platform engineered for serious passagemaking.

It is that balance – between capability and liveability – that has allowed VivieRaeII to become more than transportation between destinations. After thousands of nautical miles, she has become the constant around which an extraordinary collection of experiences has accumulated.

Now, with VivieRae II for sale, Bob is looking towards his next chapter: A larger, custom 45-metre explorer yacht. There are still places on the map which he hasn’t explored, with Ascension Island in the South Atlantic high on his list.

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