Every summer of the Van Aelst family’s life has been organised around water. They would wake early and take turns behind the boat: waterskiing, wakeboarding, arguing about who got the flattest set. By midday the ropes were away and the afternoon belonged to swimming, lunch and aperitif on board. In the evening they tied up at a restaurant on the quay.

They went looking for a boat that could do all of that with grace. None ever did.

There was always a compromise, and they simply chose which one to live with. The boats that were good for watersports were, frankly, ugly: mouldable shapes covered in cushions, with a wakeboard tower looming over everything, boards and vests strapped to it like laundry. The beautiful ones, with real Riviera character, could not handle a chop and had nowhere to attach a rope at height. Joris, by then studying Naval Architecture and Transportation Design, went looking properly. The boat they wanted did not exist.

So they stopped shopping and started drawing, and the design drew enough interest that they built a company around it. B-Craft is Belgian by ownership and Dutch by construction, and both matter to the founders.

Joris was by then working as a designer in the superyacht industry, and it was immediately obvious that the boat they were drawing was exactly what a tender garage was missing. Nobody had properly solved the wakeboard tower’s height, so those boats do not fit, and even when a tower folds down, loading becomes a time-consuming puzzle for the crew, which often leaves a sports tender unused. A family holiday problem turned out to answer an industry one. B-Craft adjusted measurements and weights specifically for tender garages and trailer transport.

Six years followed: research, design, testing and long conversations with partners across Europe. The result is the ‘Akoya’, 8.6m long, 2.55m wide, with a 430 hp Volvo Penta Forward Drive, and the first boat built in Europe with a forward-facing propeller, which transformed how she handles.

The heart of it is the ‘Rig’, B-Craft’s patented, automated ski pole, and the answer to the contradiction the family lived with for years. A wakeboarder needs height for the rope; a skier wants a lower point, further toward the centre. A beautiful boat needs a clean silhouette, and a tender needs to fit under a low ceiling. The Rig gives full height or depth when wanted and retracts completely underneath the deck when it isn’t. Boards and wet gear go into two large aft compartments, next to the shower. Two minutes after the last run, the Akoya is a tidy day cruiser.

The rest of the boat follows the same logic: everything hidden until it is wanted. The anchor, the dining table, the bimini, the swim platform, the sunbeds, the engine hatch, all of it moves, all of it controlled from the helm or a phone. There is a cocktail bar, underwater lighting, hot water, magnetic crockery, multiple charging ports and a chessboard in the table.

What the founders could not do was mould their way there. Intricate detail cannot be pressed out of a tool; it has to be made by people who know what they are doing. So B-Craft went to Dutch partners with genuine pedigree. Utilitas, venustas, firmitas, in harmony, or not at all.

The hardest part was never the engineering. It was being taken seriously: a young designer and his father, in rooms full of established names. Some told them it could not be done.

They built it anyway.

The prototype is B-Craft’s showboat. The founders invite anyone on board to witness her brilliance, or simply to have the very best of times. That was always the point.

B-Craft also offers the Akoya Cabin, Tahiti 12m, and the Akoya Custom Limousine.

www.bcraftboats.com
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