La Datcha

The Idea

Stories are how legacies last generations.

Every category has its icons, and the icons are made by storytelling. Calypso became Calypso because Cousteau put a camera on it. La Datcha is built for that scale of story.

We are deliberately rejecting the walkthrough video the yacht world is drowning in, and making something with a real arc, real stakes, and the restraint of a documentary — the pilot for a series that follows La Datcha across the world, one voyage at a time, on a channel of her own.

The brief, in one line

La Datcha is the centerpiece of expedition yachting.

Who's at Play

The partners, and what each brings.

The Vessel

Owner · via Nova Yachts

The named subject and the hero of the film's capability.

Expedition Partner

EYOS Expeditions

Ben Lyons, CEO

The world's leading expedition-yacht operator: routing, permits, ice pilots, and the expedition team. Providing on-camera models — and founder Tim Soper aboard as expedition leader.

Platform & Audience Partner

LINX Experience

linxexperience.com

Carrying the film and the vessel's story to a new generation of luxury travelers through the LINX trust network.

Production Studio

Stein Studios

in collaboration with EYOS Expeditions

Owns the production end-to-end — story, crew, post, and the channel launch.

The heroes of this story are La Datcha and EYOS Expeditions.Everything we shoot serves them

The Film · Episode 01

An eight-to-ten minute cinematic film.

The question we're handing you is simple, and it is open:

How — and why — is La Datcha the centerpiece of expedition yachting, told through Kevin Koenig and Tim Soper?

This is an open brief. We are not handing you a locked script. We are handing you the ingredients — the vessel, the people, the place, and its profound history — and asking you to come back with the most extraordinary film this story can be. The pilot is the audition for everything that comes after it.

One Direction We Sketched

Three centuries of explorers, buried under the ice.

This is the direction we put to La Datcha — offered here as an example, not an instruction:

Open in a hostile, beautiful environment — sweeping landscapes, ice, and silence. La Datcha rises through it: luxury, power, and capability where almost nothing else can go. Kevin Koenig, who has narrated this world from the outside for sixteen years, steps inside it for the first time. Tim Soper walks him through the layers of human ambition the Arctic has swallowed — whalers, a doomed balloonist, the airship men who flew north and didn't return. The Arctic does not perform for visitors. La Datcha is the vessel that makes every encounter possible — and she is, unmistakably, the leader of her category.

The exact itinerary and the final story are open. What follows are the ingredients to build something better than this sketch.

Ingredient · The Vessel

Why La Datcha is the centerpiece.

First of her kind. Hull No. 1 of Damen's SeaXplorer 77 line (delivered 2020) — the yacht that defined the modern go-anywhere expedition class. 77m, ice-class, IMO Polar Code.

Two helicopters and a submersible. An enclosed twin-heli hangar for true heli-ski operations, plus a 3-person Triton sub rated to 500m. She doesn't just reach the wild — she lets you ski it from the air and explore it below the waterline.

Forty days off-grid. Range and autonomy to run from Antarctic ice to tropical reef on a single deployment — full dive center, on-board hospital, mudroom, decompression chamber. A self-sufficient expedition base disguised as a superyacht.

Built by the expedition operators themselves. EYOS embedded 150+ expedition design criteria into the build. Twelve guests, nineteen crew.

One unmistakable silhouette. The bronze hull is color-matched across the yacht, tenders, jet skis, and even the submarine — the most recognizable shape in expedition yachting. She has worked Antarctica, the Arctic, Kamchatka, Patagonia, Greenland, French Polynesia.

Reference for the team: ladatcha.com · La Datcha on YouTube (the Tinkoff Collection channel) — for vessel footage and her own films.

Ingredient · The Expedition Partner

EYOS Expeditions.

The world's leading private expedition-yacht operator — the team that makes the impossible logistically possible.

Founded 2008 by Rob McCallum, Tim Soper, and John Apps — "Expedition Yacht Operations Specialists." 1,200+ expeditions delivered across the Arctic and Antarctica, a record no competitor matches.

Full-stack expedition logistics: itinerary design, the hard permitting, ice pilots, and onboard expedition leaders — pole to pole and into the remote tropics.

The Five Deeps pedigree. EYOS ran logistics for Victor Vescovo's first crewed dives to the deepest point of all five oceans — and the first dive to the Titanic in 14 years. They also helped write the IAATO rulebook for Antarctica.

CEO Ben Lyons — the first American hired as an officer by Cunard in 160+ years, and a working ice pilot. On this film, EYOS provides the expedition team and on-camera models, with co-founder Tim Soper aboard.

Ingredient · The Historian Aboard

Tim Soper.

EYOS co-founder and three-decade polar expedition leader — the on-camera authority who can stand on a Svalbard beach and tell its history as a family story.

From divemaster to founder. Joined his first expedition vessel at 18, went back for a degree in Ocean Science, and has spent 30+ years in the field — co-founding EYOS in 2008.

Pole to pole, literally. From the geographic North Pole to a record furthest-south for any vessel; ~100 Antarctic Peninsula voyages and 20+ seasons. He discovered a previously unknown Emperor Penguin rookery and led world-first Northwest Passage expeditions.

He helped write the rules. Condé Nast "Top Travel Specialist" every year since 2017; helped IAATO develop the procedures that govern the poles; a founding voice of Yachts for Science.

Why he carries the film: founder gravity, real storytelling depth, and the lineage anchor for Svalbard's history. Authority without performance — exactly the register this film wants.

Ingredient · The Witness

Kevin Koenig.

The most fluent voice in marine journalism — stepping inside the yacht world for the first time after two decades narrating it from the outside.

Sixteen years on the masthead as Executive Editor of Yachting Magazine, widely called the preeminent marine journalist — with bylines that cross out of the trade press into NYT, WSJ, GQ, Esquire, and Robb Report.

Three Assouline books — Ocean Wanderlust, Burgess Yachts, Benetti Yachts — the genre's prestige imprint. ~290,000 followers as @theyachtfella, built on writing, not stunts.

A marine-science backbone. He can read a glacier face or an ice-strengthened hull and know what he's looking at — and he has never been to Svalbard or aboard La Datcha. His discovery is real; his questions are the audience's questions.

The narrative engine: a voice that has narrated this world from the outside meets a place that does not care about it. Whether the persona survives the latitude — or finds a quieter, truer voice — is the human stake of the film.

"The Arctic does not perform for visitors. The place is the production value — and the history is the script."

Ingredient · Svalbard, the Place

The wild facts.

78° North

Longyearbyen sits at ~78°N. From late April to late August the sun never sets — film golden hour at 2 a.m., in cold, low, raking light. That light is the signature look of the place.

More bears than people

~3,000 polar bears across the Svalbard–Barents region vs. ~2,400 people. The rule in June: keep 500 metres, always with an organized bear-watch. The discipline of arriving without disturbing is itself cinematic.

The full Arctic cast

Walrus haul-outs (males to ~1,500 kg), the overwintering Arctic fox, the world's smallest reindeer, beluga ("sea canaries"), and bowhead whales that live 200+ years — the very species the 1600s whalers hunted to collapse.

Cliffs that roar

Bird mountains stacked with tens of thousands of guillemots, little auks, kittiwakes, and puffins — a sensory set-piece of sound and smell, fertilizing sudden green slopes in a grey land.

Ice and a moving ground

Glaciers cover ~60% of Svalbard. The permafrost is thawing — buildings in Longyearbyen are being relocated. The land itself is visibly in motion.

A place that rewards small

2025 rules cap large vessels and ban drones in protected areas. A 12-guest yacht like La Datcha moves where the cruise ships can't — quietly, and on her own terms.

Ingredient · Svalbard's Exploration History

Three centuries of ambition.

Four hundred years of human reach, compressed into a single week of sailing. Any of these can anchor the story.

Smeerenburg · 1619

"Blubber Town" — a Dutch whaling station at ~79.7°N, ~200 men a season rendering bowhead fat into lamp oil. Hunted out by ~1660. The original boom-and-bust; the brick oven foundations are still in the ground.

Andrée's balloon · 1897

Three Swedes flew a hydrogen balloon toward the Pole from Danskøya. Found frozen 33 years later — their photographic negatives still developable. The most haunting image available: a man reading Andrée's diary off a phone with full signal, while Andrée had none.

The airships · 1926 & 1928

From Ny-Ålesund, Amundsen and Nobile flew the Norge over the Pole — the first verified crossing; the mooring mast still stands. Two years later Nobile's Italia crashed, and Amundsen himself vanished searching for survivors.

Pyramiden

A Soviet ghost town under Norwegian sovereignty — abandoned in 1998, the world's northernmost statue of Lenin still watching an empty square. Charged, cinematic, and emblematic of the Arctic's swallowed ambition.

Longyearbyen · the end of coal

The world's northernmost town. Gruve 7, Norway's last coal mine, closed in 2025 — ending a century of coal. A town reinventing itself in real time.

The throughline

Every one of these reached for permanence; the latitude kept almost none of it. Where does ambition go to be remembered? — a question for the team to answer, or to better.

Style & Tone

The camera is a witness, not a performer.

This is the non-negotiable that separates this from every walkthrough in the category.

Light

Natural only. The midnight sun does the work. No artificial field setups.

Movement

Static or very slow. Let every frame breathe — 5–10 second holds. No split-second cutting.

Sound

Restraint. Silence is the sound design — especially in the glacier bays. Score enters late.

Truth

Zero AI imagery, ever. Real crew, real weather, real work. The authenticity is the film.

Tone: Aman quiet · Bourdain truth · Herzog awe. Toward the owner: positive, forward-looking, legacy-minded.
Reference films: The Rescue · Encounters at the End of the World · Last and First Men · The Alpinist.

Deliverables & Production Reality

What we make, and what we're walking into.

Deliverables

8–10 minute cinematic film · 60-second teaser · high-resolution stills gallery — exactly as shared with La Datcha, all delivered in high resolution for her charter, brokerage, and brand marketing.

Home

The new La Datcha channel + EYOS distribution; launched across yacht-show venues (Monaco, Explorer Summit, Palm Beach) and the partners' social reach.

Where & when

Svalbard, departing Longyearbyen. Four days onboard · target June 29 – July 3, 2026 (end-of-June window, flexible).

Itinerary

Open. The exact route is being set with EYOS and the vessel — build the arc with substitution flexibility; the place is the production value.

Onboard

A working film production — a small elite crew, the EYOS expedition team, Tim Soper, the host, and a limited number of guests who understand it is a film shoot, not a charter.

The Invitation

Let's tell this story together.

You have the vessel, the partners, the people, the place, and its history. These are the ingredients. What we're looking for is the team that can hold all of it across four hard Arctic days and bring back a film worthy of being Episode 01 of a legacy.

La Datcha · EYOS Expeditions · Stein Studios · Summer 2026