A warship yard delivers Aisha, a 40.8m custom yacht for family life

A naval builder takes a private commission

Anadolu Shipyard, known as ADIK, sits at Tuzla on the Istanbul waterfront and traces its origins to a family commercial yard in the 1950s. Since 2008 it has delivered 20 naval platforms to the Turkish Navy and six to the Qatar Emiri Naval Forces, among them TCG Bayraktar and TCG Sancaktar. Aisha is a different kind of job for that workforce.

She is not the yard's first yacht, which is how the delivery has often been read. Anadolu built the 34.4-metre Gacela in 2000, the 29-metre Handem in 2003 and the 28-metre Fortuna Blue in 1989. What Aisha is, at 40.8 m, is the largest yacht Anadolu has produced, and the first at a size where the established European custom yards are the competition.

The credits, and where the sources split

Red Yacht Design, which keeps offices in London and Istanbul, drew both the exterior and the interior. Naval architecture is credited to Notilus, worked up alongside the Red Yacht Design team, and Eureka Yachts ran the project. SuperYacht Times files the naval architect as Notilus Design, while BOAT International, YachtBuyer and the designer's own page all give Notilus Engineering.

Design took nine months and construction started at Anadolu in July 2022. The hull was turned in November 2023 and hull and superstructure were complete by May 2024. She was launched in March 2026 and reported delivered on 24 July. That is a little over four years from first steel to handover on a one-off.

360 GT and a 1.9-metre draught

Aisha measures 40.8 m with a 9.1 m beam and 360 GT, built in aluminium above and below the deck line, classed by RINA and flagged in Malta. Draught is given as 1.9 m by the directories and 2.1 m on the designer's own page. YachtBuyer lists her length overall as 39.75 m against 40.8 m everywhere else, so the LOA is not settled either.

The shallow draught is the specification that earns its keep. Under two metres opens the shallow Aegean and Adriatic bays, the Bahamian banks and the river berths that a 40-metre drawing three metres has to look at from outside. On a yacht built for family cruising and not ocean passages, that is worth more than a knot of speed.

The brief was room, not pace

The client asked for volume without giving up seakeeping. A full-beam owner's suite sits forward on the main deck with its own office and his-and-hers bathrooms. The main saloon runs to about 60 square metres with a tilting window linking it to the galley. The sundeck opens to roughly 120 square metres, with a dining table for 12, a bar and barbecue and a service lift up from the galley.

Below, two double and two single cabins carry Pullman berths and the singles convert to doubles, so she sleeps 10 guests across five staterooms without committing to a charter layout. Crew accommodation is for eight. YachtBuyer's specification table says eight guests in four cabins, which contradicts its own body text and every other source.

Modest range, Mediterranean job

Two MAN D2862LE diesels give 1,081 kW or 1,449 hp each, 2,162 kW and 2,898 hp in total, on twin screws. Top speed is about 19 knots and the economical cruise is 15. At that cruise the yard puts the range at 1,500 nautical miles, which covers a Mediterranean season and island runs and does not cross an ocean.

That is a deliberate trade and it should be priced as one. Nothing has been published for Aisha and she is not for sale. A comparable 2026 40-metre from another Turkish yard, also drawn by Red Yacht Design, is currently asking EUR 17,950,000. For a buyer weighing a new 40-metre custom build, Aisha shows Anadolu can now deliver at that length.