Interior designer Victoria Sass starts every project by learning about a space’s story. It’s an appropriate formula for her studio, Prospect Refuge, named after a design theory that explains why clients choose certain environments over others.
Taking that philosophy and turning it inward, you would find an upbringing that bucks convention. The 40-year-old grew up in sunny Santa Cruz, Calif., famed for its Endless Summer surfer culture. “My childhood was pretty bohemian,” she says. Not only did her parents drive a Volkswagen van, but they also lived out of it while visiting national parks.
Now with three kids of her own in Minneapolis, Sass and her husband, Torben Rytt, couldn’t agree on the best way to explore the country. Rytt, a 45-year-old tech consultant raised just outside of Copenhagen, was born to parents who met at a boat show. Every summer, his family would sail for weeks on end. He wanted to teach their kids—13-year-old Walter, 8-year-old Irene and 3-year-old Duncan—how to tack and jibe.
Sass didn’t like the technical nature of a sailboat, and Rytt objected to a camper van over safety concerns. An impasse, to be sure. But negotiations continued.
The couple compromised on a 1983 Viking 44 Motor Yacht that Rytt found in a nearby river town on the Mississippi. “He knew that I wanted this certain aesthetic,” Sass says. “I wanted it to feel ‘summer hippie,’ like you could strap a tomato plant to the bow, and it would look totally at home.”
Before that could happen, the newly named Freya needed a refit. After purchasing the boat for $100,000 at the end of 2020, the couple moved her to a marina on the St. Croix River, a tributary of the Mississippi that acts as a natural border between Minnesota and Wisconsin. They worked with the marina’s finishing shop to repaint the hull, switching it from maroon to bright blue. Worn black awnings were replaced with an updated pair that matched the color scheme. A dilapidated carpet was ripped up and replaced by a teak parquet sole that Rytt installed. Toilets and plumbing were updated too, with Sass opting for some vintage fixtures.
In fact, her relentless approach to preserving the older styling drew some raised eyebrows. “From the hull color to the canvas top, it never failed; whatever I chose, they were like, ‘No one’s picked that in over 30 years … let me go see if they even still make it,’” Sass says. “But at the end of the day, she looks like she belongs to herself. It feels cohesive.”
For most boat owners, interior design choices are influenced by three pillars: comfort, practicality and resale value. Sass navigated by a different north star. “I don’t do many projects for myself,” she says. “But Freya’s story, it was very personal.”
Instead of a cookie-cutter palette, Freya’s salon mixes Danish nautical lights with a colorful shag rug and an Ikea sectional sofa covered in blankets and patterned throw pillows. For the galley’s elevated seating, Sass upholstered the banquette in mossy green faux leather. The result is equal parts personal to the couple: Scandinavian woodland cabin meets vintage bohemian.
Rytt, meanwhile, took lessons to learn how to operate the vessel. It didn’t take long, considering his sailing background and the additions of bow and stern thrusters on the boat. Still, that first season was revelatory, with fuel gauges failing and a fuel line springing a leak. They snagged a rope around the propeller near St. Paul and had to limp back to the marina on one engine through a series of locks.
“It seemed like something would go wrong every time we took the boat out in the beginning,” Rytt says.
Operating a 44-foot motoryacht wasn’t the only steep learning curve they encountered; Sass also received a crash course in refitting. “There’s nothing more restrictive that I’ve ever experienced than designing on a boat,” she says. “There is no off-the-shelf solution for most things. So it’s fun, but it’s hard.”
She acknowledges that there was some MacGyvering early on, such as painting stripes on the original wallpaper in the head. She had to call on some of the “most adventurous tradespeople” in her list of contacts, experts who were willing to design custom solutions for a yacht. One was Kristen Falkirk, who designed the handmade black and mint-green ceramic tiles for the counter and backsplash. Another was Christine Ann Novotny, a weaver who designed the colorful window coverings in the master stateroom.
Three years and about $250,000 later, Freya is looking nearly finished. “Buying a newer boat that needed less work would of course have been much easier and cheaper, but that wasn’t the goal,” Rytt says. “We wanted something different.”
The family has since cruised all the way to Iowa, and Freya has been profiled in the New York Times. Sass says her advice to fellow boaters interested in creating their own style is to be brave. “Choose an upholstery color that just brings you joy, and isn’t necessarily one of the three greatest hits, and then see where that takes you,” she says.
In the future, the family plans to take Freya around the Great Loop. But for now, they’re enjoying exploring river towns at their own pace, and doing projects as they come up. “There’s still stuff on the list, but I think we’ll maybe take a year off and sort of see how it feels,” Sass says. “Boats just need constant love, don’t they?”
This article was originally published in the May/June 2024 issue.
