Nicostasia

A design brief can tell you who a boat was really built for, and Nicostasia's was written around a family who wanted a boat that worked as hard as it looked good. Van der Valk built her in 2018, twenty-six metres in length, to a brief shaped by her owners' own wishes rather than a standard yard layout. Guido de Groot handled the design, inside and out.

Build and provenance

Van der Valk built both hull and superstructure in aluminium, a construction choice that keeps weight down without giving up the strength a boat of this size needs offshore. She is classed to a recognised maritime safety standard, a mark that signals a build inspected against formal code rather than left to the yard's word alone. Guido de Groot shaped both the exterior lines and the interior styling, so the boat reads as one design rather than a hull with someone else's rooms dropped inside.

Layout and accommodation

Nicostasia sleeps eight guests across four cabins: an owner's cabin, a VIP, a double and a cabin with bunks, a spread built to sleep parents, another couple and children under one roof. Three crew share two cabins of their own, enough hands to run a twenty-six-metre boat properly without guest space being given up for them.

Performance and engineering

Twin MTU 10V 2000 M93 engines give her 1,502 horsepower combined, enough for an 18-knot cruise and 23 knots at full throttle. A 10,500-litre fuel tank and a 2,500-litre water tank point to real time away from a marina rather than a boat built only for day trips, and twin 26kW Northern Lights generators keep her running at anchor with the engines off.

Where she lies and how to see her

Boatcrowd sets up every viewing of Nicostasia in person and is there for each one, and once an offer is accepted we organise the survey and the sea trial that follow before anything is signed off.