The owner of Ingeborg confesses to being ‘madly in love’ with his new Belize 66 Daybridge. “I didn’t expect one could get quite so excited and attached as this to a boat,” he says, from Connecticut in the US. Hearing his story though, it’s little wonder: the path that led to his acquisition of Ingeborg is rooted in heritage and paved with passion.
Born in India to parents of diverse European descent, he was raised across Asia before being educated in the UK and the US. As a 14-year-old he learned to sail in Germany and ever since he has found a way to fit boating into his life, wherever in the world his business takes him.
“I never really had a home country,” he admits. “One thing that attracted me to the Belize is very much its wanderer spirit. It is in its Riviera-typical blue water DNA; the long-range capability due to space, storage, stowage, and tank holdings; and also its wanderer styling. It’s a dream vessel in more ways than one.”
Ingeborg, the masterful Belize 66 Daybridge
Dipping his toes in
Ten years ago, he bought his first power boat: 12 years old, 22-foot and with a single engine. Essentially it was a craft to help get his children, then three and six years old, accustomed to the water and boating.
“I started becoming really interested – almost obsessive – about boat building.” This led him to BoatTest.com and its well-known Captain Steve. Over the past 20 years BoatTest’s professional captains have reviewed 3,000 yachts. In 2015, Captain Steve reviewed the Riviera 6000 Sport Yacht.
“He was extremely positive about it and I just fell in love with it without ever having seen it myself. As chance would have it, I had to travel to Australia for work and so I made an appointment at the Riviera factory,” he says. “By then I must have been on about 70 different boats at shows, and I had sea-trialed a whole bunch – there always seemed to be a trade-off between comfortable living and seaworthiness, but not with Riviera. I saw the workmanship and was floored. There was a 5400 Sport Yacht in the water and it was beautiful, but I felt the 6000 Sport Yacht was the one for me.”
LEFT: The Ingeborg, at home on the north-eastern coast of the US. RIGHT: Tripping the light fantastic aboard the Belize 66 dream boat.
The leap to Belize
In October 2019, he flew down to the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show to review the 6000 Platinum Edition Sport Yacht, coinciding with the world premiere of the Belize 66 Daybridge.
“I completely fell in love with the Belize. It had everything about the 6000SY but felt more like a long-distance home that you could stay on for weeks and months at a time, much more of a wanderer boat to go places with.”
“It was one of the biggest material decisions of my life, so I reached out to Captain Steve personally by email. He called me back in less than 10 minutes and he was so enthusiastic, he was gushing.”
LEFT: A sunset view from the daybridge of the Belize 66. RIGHT: ‘Wandering’ at wide open throttle aboard this luxurious floating home.
It’s striking to walk into a space which is so beautifully built. There is so much care taken in every detail and nuance; the layout is extremely harmonious.
The Ingeborg spirit
Ingeborg is named after the owner’s mother whose passing last year accelerated his purchasing decision, and whose name relates to the protective spirit associated with oceans in Nordic culture.
“It’s striking to walk into a space which is so beautifully built,” he says. “There is so much care taken in every detail and nuance; the layout is extremely harmonious. It’s spectacularly seaworthy, there’s not a creak. It’s like a tank in an extremely refined environment, very quiet and extraordinary in even spirited seas.”
The Belize 66 Daybridge offers sumptuous interiors for all occasions
“At first I was intimidated by the largeness of it. It’s 70 feet overall but the IPS joystick control makes everything easy. It’s an extremely good-natured boat and she quickly becomes predictable. The 1,000 horsepower engines respond remarkably quickly and handling them is intuitive.”
Supported by a training skipper, the owner first took the helm in Stuart, Florida. Over six days they travelled north to Connecticut, narrowly missing Hurricane Isaias.
“Even though I was supported by a training skipper, I didn’t let go of the controls once for the entire six-day trip up north,” he says. “It would have been near-impossible to pry me away from the helm in the first place, but it is just such an easy boat to handle, underway and whilst docking.”
“The first day was glass, the second a bit rougher and third was crazy. We turned off the autopilot and the stabilisation systems and I used nothing but throttle and wheel. At the end of that long day, I felt I’d really learned the boat.”
The Belize 66 Daybridge Ingeborg stands proud at the many harbours she visited on her delivery journey up the east coast of the US
Waypoints ahead
“It’s a beautiful and elegant ship and everything feels like a ship on the Belize: the massive cleats, the large tanks, the extensive storage, you can’t count the number of fridges and freezers. It has everything that you would associate with a larger boat; everything’s there ready for a long passage, but it can be handled with a pair of hands. My 16-year-old daughter loves to sail and the two of us can run the boat beautifully between us.”
Like most wanderer spirits, the owner is at home wherever his feet are planted at any moment.
“Our entire family loves this boat. I can see us part of the year in the turquoise waters of the south and then part of the year in the dark blue waters off Maine. And maybe with more experience we’ll expand to the Bahamas and ultimately the British Virgin Islands, the Dominican Republic, Turks and Caicos and so on … anywhere it will be a home, it’s a traveller’s boat.”
