Charlotte Devereux says if she’d known then what she knows now, she might never have bought the boat. Not just any boat, mind you.
Sea Breeze III is a 1976 superyacht originally owned by Graeme Hart. With five levels of mahogany elegance updated with Charlotte’s glamorous, mid-century-Hollywood touches, the 105-foot vessel is the stuff of summer island-hopping dreams. But taking the boat on wasn’t exactly a sea breeze.
The entrepreneur and her software businessman partner Simon Greenwood, a grinder for the 1987 KZ7 Team New Zealand, had been looking for a boat through which she could fulfill her dream to run a floating boutique hotel, when they first spotted it in Australia, falling for its stately yet dated nautical charms.
“I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it,” says Charlotte, throwing her long, sea-salt curls over her shoulder. We’re onboard and sitting at the mahogany dining table on gold swan dining chairs reupholstered in blue leopard print.
Charlotte has a youthful, open-book vibe, dressed in bright red pants and a sweatshirt; she’s the type to hug you hello even if you’ve only just met. “I was thinking visually, not about everything that had to be done, the things that are not so exciting, like installing collision bulkheads and extending stairs and ceilings. It was massive.”
The couple engaged with a specialist classic boat builder, in a renovation process that was meant to take six months but blew out to two years.
During that time Sea Breeze was berthed at Whangārei, so the couple rented a little bach as they worked toward launching in time for the America’s Cup. Then Covid arrived, and progress shuddered to a halt.
“On the last day I was doing a clean, and I got a vacuum cleaner out of the cupboard and there was this dusty painting with spiderwebs all over it,” Charlotte recalls.
It was an Alexander Turnbull. Two figures, standing next to a dinghy, rendered in earthy browns and oceanic blues. It couldn’t have been more complementary for the wall space outside the starboard bathroom, and when the owner agreed to sell it to her, it felt like an omen that things were finally coming together.
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Advertise with NZME.During the post-lockdown sprint to meet the deadline, Charlotte worked with Josh Emett to come up with a sumptuous on-board menu, and initiated a partnership with Mumm Champagne. Then just as the boat finally went in the water, ready to make the trip to Auckland, a tsunami warning hit Whangārei.
“Everybody abandoned their cars on the side of the road and were climbing up the hill,” Charlotte recalls. “We sat up there all day thinking we might be coming back and there’ll be no Sea Breeze. After all this, and it’s not Covid that stopped us, it’s a tsunami!”
The Whangārei wave was famously inconsequential, and Boutique Superyachts was born. From its debut at the Louis Vuitton Cup, Sea Breeze established itself as the Auckland party boat, but from the outset, Charlotte knew she wanted to offer something that wouldn’t just leave guests with a hangover.
Twenty-five years earlier she’d established The Devereux, a boutique hotel in Remuera, for which she decked out each of the rooms with a different country theme.
The mum of three later co-founded the Egg Maternity clothing line with her mother, the late Colyn Devereux-Kay, and co-founded skincare brand Girl Undiscovered in LA, in order to seek out a natural answer to her daughter’s skin issues at the time.
Charlotte was just as keen to incorporate wellbeing and balance into Sea Breeze’s luxurious packages. Her wellness retreats allow guests to join Sea Breeze for the day (or longer), indulge in on-board yoga classes, hike or forage on islands from the Hauraki to the Bay of Islands, have a massage on top deck and invigorate themselves with an ocean dip a nod to her love for Wim Hof’s cold water therapy followed by a soak in the spa.
She’s easily distracted, she confesses, hence her love for yoga, particularly kundalini, a practice she discovered in LA. “I’ll do downward dog while writing out my to-do list. But the breathwork and chanting in kundalini keeps me focused.
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Advertise with NZME.“And it has these incredible holds that are great for blood flow it’s very much a beauty ritual in that sense because it has your skin glowing at the end.”
Guests can then retire to their glamorous bedrooms, where Japanese silk obi have been repurposed into cushions, or relax in the onboard living room where the original mahogany coffee table has been lacquered with a specially cut slab of 1930s-style pink onyx.
“I’ve always loved the quirky,” she says. “I didn’t want to have something so typically nautical; I love textures and pattern, and I love the mid-century modern style. I was really looking at bringing in those elements, but also working with what I had.”
With its deliberately clashing patterned fabrics, from the blinds to the black and white carpet custom made from recycled fishing nets, Sea Breeze’s interior speaks to Charlotte’s confidence around colour and style. Design has always come naturally, she says, just has her entrepreneurial spirit.
She was greatly influenced by her mother, Colyn, herself an interior designer, the founder of Les Floralies (now Matakana Botanicals), a philanthropist and revered member of Auckland’s fashion society.
“She had fantastic style. I grew up with her taking me around art galleries and furnishing shops from a young age. So I saw what she did, not just in our house, but for family and friends. She was always helping with style and coming up with gorgeous ideas.”
Colyn’s mother had a doll company that she eventually sold, her business nous trickling down through the next two generations. It’s given Charlotte the grit to make it through tough times in business, she says.
“It’s funny because people often look at us and say, you’ve got a superyacht, you must have this amazing lifestyle, and they don’t realise how hard we actually work on board. We’re very hands-on. So while it’s been an amazing journey, it definitely hasn’t been easy. Thank goodness we finally get to have a full summer where we can really enjoy it. There’s lots of positivity and excitement ahead.”
