Interview of the month On board with Lenny Recanati, owner of sailing yacht Vivid by Cecile Gauert Two circumnavigations and 130,000-plus miles over 12 years… Lenny Recanati has lived sailing life to the full with his 27 metre sailing superyacht Vivid. The globetrotting entrepreneur shares the many highlights with Cécile Gauert. “It’s about nature. It’s about the fact that you turn off the engine and just sail with the waves and the wind and nothing else. It is the fact that, by the force of nature, the boat is moving, which is incredible.” Lenny Recanati loves being at the wheel, adrenaline pumping through his veins, forgetting whether it is cold or hot and losing track of time. “Nothing comes close to this,” he says. He likes the intimacy of his boat, the closeness it fosters with family and friends, and reaching out of the way places. He enjoys being a goodwill ambassador with his boat and crew, who help children in faraway villages. He always takes a camera and captures images of the scenery and animals but also of colourful markets and ceremonies. He’s fascinated with other cultures and doesn’t allow differences in language to get in the way of good conversation, be it in Papua New Guinea, where he met a local chief, or on a tobacco farm in Cuba, where, in 2008, he smoked the best cigar of his life, rolled by the godfather of Cuban cigars, Don Alejandro Robaina himself. Lenny Recanati, owner of sailing yacht Vivid Recanati has spent a decade exploring the world on board Vivid Issue 6 >> 06 He’s done this for more than a decade, on and off, aboard the one and only boat he’s ever owned. He says that, apart from his children, his experiences on board Vivid have been the highlight of the past 12 years of his life. Yet he is thinking of parting ways with the boat, which is listed for sale, a prospect that fills him with mixed emotions. Recanati invested heavily in her upkeep, following a massive refit at Jongert in 2011/12 with another one that included new rigging in the summer of 2016. He’s just flown to New York from his home in Tel Aviv with his wife, Shira, and we’re meeting 35 floors above street level. The view is that of avenues glowing red from the brake lights of cars stretching to a horizon hidden by glass and concrete. There isn’t a mast or a sail in sight. Yet it isn’t such an incongruous location for a meeting to discuss Vivid and the trips they’ve taken around the world. New York is where he was born and he has family here. He returned to earn a master’s degree in business administration from Columbia University, after a boarding school education in the UK and undergraduate studies in economics in Israel, where he grew up and did his military service. He then put his education and experience in various industries to good use and followed in his family’s entrepreneurial footsteps.
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