MY LEGEND 77M review

LEGEND is what happens when a shipyard takes the phrase 'expedition yacht' literally. She began as MV GIANT, an ice-breaking tug, and between 2014 and 2015 ICON Yachts and Verkerk Yachting Projects rebuilt her into a 77.4 m explorer - renewing more than 100 tonnes of steel and aluminium and stretching the stern by 3.6 m in the process. The result was one of the first yachts in the world to carry Lloyds 1A Ice Class, and ICON delivered the whole conversion in a timeframe that still looks quick a decade later: launched March 2015.

The numbers read like a small cruise ship. Twenty-six guests sleeping across thirteen staterooms, thirty-six for day cruising, and thirty crew to run it all. That guest count is roughly double what a conventional 77 m yacht offers, and it changes what the boat is for: multi-family expeditions, charter groups, scientific parties - things a twelve-guest yacht simply cannot host. Her high-grade steel hull and aluminium superstructure sit on a full-displacement ice-breaking form that tops out at a brisk 16 knots and cruises at 13.

The toy list borders on absurd, in the best way. An EC135 helicopter and a Robinson light helicopter. A C-Explorer 3 submarine rated to 200 metres. Two luxury tenders, a fast rescue boat, two fully enclosed SOLAS lifeboats, a 37-foot Targa for summer work, plus jet skis, dive gear and windsurfers in storage. After a day under Arctic ice you retire to a Balinese spa - a sentence that describes exactly one yacht.

Diana Yacht Design handled the refit naval architecture and exterior, with the interior arranged by Legend Beheer. Expedition operators have run repeated charters aboard her - Cookson Adventures among them - which says more about her real-world capability than any brochure could.

Be clear-eyed about what she is: a converted tug with a 6.5 m draft, an unapologetically vertical bow and running costs to match her thirty crew. She will never win a beauty contest against an Espen Oino newbuild. What she offers instead is honest capability per guest that almost nothing else on the charter market can touch - a genuine go-anywhere ship where the ice class is on the certificate, not in the paint scheme.