Arcadia's third 24m A80 goes to a repeat owner, 4.3kW of solar

A third hull, and a customer who came back

Arcadia Yachts has launched the third A80 from its yard at Torre Annunziata, on the coast south of Naples. The boat was commissioned by clients who had owned Arcadia yachts before, and they specified her through the Arcadia Bespoke programme instead of taking the standard interior. She measures 23.98 metres overall on a 6.95-metre beam. That places her in the length band where a good many owners take on permanent crew for the first time.

A repeat order tells you more than a first one does. These buyers had lived with the product, and they went back to the same yard for a third boat, which is the plainest evidence available that it held up in use. It also cuts against the direction of the wider order book, where the average yacht under construction now sits at a record 48.5 metres and the sub-40-metre end keeps losing share. A yard taking repeat business at 24 metres is working a segment the headline figures say is thinning.

What 23.98 metres is carrying

The A80 sleeps ten guests in five cabins, with four crew in two more. That is a lot of accommodation to fit under 24 metres, and it is the specification that lets an owner take two families out without chartering something bigger. Maximum draft is 1.69 metres and displacement under full load is 78 tons. Tankage runs to 8,000 litres of fuel and 2,100 litres of fresh water.

The draft figure is the one worth reading twice. At 1.69 metres she can lie close in along the Amalfi coast or the Balearics, in water that sends a 30-metre displacement yacht back out to the mooring field. Owners who spend the season at anchor rather than alongside tend to register that before they register the top speed. It also keeps her clear of the queue for the deep berths that command the highest rates in August.

Solar on the roof, and the generator underneath

Arcadia has built the A80 around glass and a large upper deck, and the roof carries about 4.3kW of solar panels, in the latest generation the yard fits. The glazing is the part of the proposition an owner sees, because it is what the saloon looks out through. The panels are the part that turns up on the running account.

Solar at this scale does not move the yacht. What it does is carry part of the hotel load, which is the electrical demand of lights, refrigeration, pumps and air handling while she sits still. Every hour that load comes off the panels instead of a generator is an hour of less noise on the aft deck and less time on the service clock. For an owner who anchors for lunch and stays through the afternoon, that is the difference between a quiet boat and a humming one.

Two pods, 900hp each, and a 19-knot ceiling

Power is a pair of Volvo Penta IPS 1200 units rated at 900hp each in standard form. Arcadia quotes a maximum of about 19 knots and a cruise of about 16. Those are yard figures recorded in favourable conditions with light tanks, so the working numbers sit below them. Nobody buys this boat for the speed, and the yard has never pretended otherwise.

The pods earn their keep at the dock and in the layout. Pod drives bring a 24-metre onto a quay without the thruster wrestling a shaft boat needs, which matters when the owner handles her in flat water. They also release volume aft that shaft lines and a conventional engine room would consume, and that volume is part of why five guest cabins fit. The cost is a drivetrain that wants yards which stock the parts and technicians who know it.

The brief started in the galley

The Bespoke programme let the owner drive the specification, and it began with the galley, built around appliances they picked themselves rather than the yard's standard fit. Their trade is food; they work as a chef and as a critic. A galley laid out by someone who cooks professionally is a different room from one laid out by a naval architect, in worktop height, extraction and the space to work around a hot pass. It is the clearest illustration of what the programme is for.

The rest of the boat followed the same route. Hull and interior accents were done in a custom colour the yard calls Maine Blue, and the saloon has white parquet flooring with leather-lined walls. Hand-cut carpets drawn from the movement of the sea run through the interior, with Bardiglio Nuvolato marble in the guest accommodation, original 1960s mirrors, a traditional chart table and a flag locker. A hull specified this closely to one household is harder to place on the brokerage market later, and buyers of heavily personalised boats price that in.