MY LOON 68m review

LOON matters to ICON Yachts the way a first album matters to a band. She began as M/Y ICON, the yard's first build, and rather than let their debut age quietly the shipyard brought her back to Harlingen and performed a five-metre transom extension - taking her to 67.61 m - in only six months. In yacht-refit terms that is sprinting pace, and it is the number that anchors the whole story: this yard turns major structural work around fast.

The reward for the surgery sits right on the new stern: a spectacular five-metre infinity swimming pool, the kind of feature normally reserved for newbuilds twice her age's junior. Around it ICON added a proper wellness circuit - a large Hamam sauna seating six, an expanded gym, showers and a dedicated dive store - which quietly repositions the boat from cruiser to destination.

Inside, the changes are less photogenic but arguably more transformative. The upper salon lost its dividing walls and became completely open-plan, running the full 11.4 m beam, with state-of-the-art TVs hidden away so the architecture stays clean until movie night. The main-deck salon gained a cinema installation, and the central staircases were refinished in brighter tones with softer materials - small touches that lift the whole interior mood. The interior direction came from ICON Yachts working with the Owner's team, on Vuyk Engineering naval architecture and Redman Whiteley Dixon's original exterior lines, which survived the stretch remarkably intact.

The unglamorous engineering is where the refit shows its thoroughness. New Scania generator sets went in with dedicated sound shielding, and the bow thruster was uprated to match the longer hull - the kind of detail a cosmetic refit skips and an honest one budgets for. A complete Alexseal repaint finished the rebirth.

What the shipyard's own specification leaves unsaid - guest count, cabin plan - keeps a half-point off an otherwise compelling package. But as proof that a yard can re-engineer its own first build into a contemporary 68 m with a pool most 80s cannot match, LOON is the strongest advertisement ICON has.