Azimut's 26m Seadeck 9 flagship heads to Cannes, hybrid-ready
A flagship built around the aft deck
The Seadeck line is Azimut's answer to owners who spend more time on the water than under way, and the new 26-metre Seadeck 9 is its flagship. The whole aft end is given over to a stepped pool deck that drops in terraces toward the sea, with fold-down side terraces that widen the boat at anchor. Alberto Mancini drew the exterior, and the first hull came out of Azimut's Avigliana plant ahead of its public debut.
Inside, Matteo Thun and Antonio Rodriguez kept the look light and low, with long horizontal glazing that pulls the water into the saloon. The point of the boat is the transition from inside to outside rather than any single grand room, which is a design brief owners in this size have been asking builders to take seriously for years.
Wired for hybrid, priced as a production boat
The Seadeck 9 sits on a hull developed with the studio Names and is built to take Volvo Penta's IPS hybrid system, so an owner can run in and out of harbour and lie at anchor on battery before the diesels come on. That matters less for fuel saved on a single passage than for where a 26-metre boat can go as ports tighten their rules on emissions and noise at the quay.
None of this is one-off engineering. It is a series boat, sold from a price list, which is the difference between the Seadeck 9 and a semi-custom yacht that reads the same on deck. A buyer gets the outdoor plan and the hybrid option without commissioning a hull, and can see the result at Cannes rather than on a render.
Why the volume flagship is the one to watch
Most owners do not buy a 60-metre yacht. They buy in the low-to-mid twenties, and that is the band where builders fight hardest on design and resale. Putting its newest deck thinking and a hybrid platform at the top of a volume range, rather than reserving them for a bigger custom line, is Azimut defending the part of the market that actually turns over.
For a buyer weighing a new build against a recent used boat, the question the Seadeck 9 poses is whether a hybrid-ready platform holds its value better than a conventional one over the next few years. The Cannes Yachting Festival in September is where that gets tested against the crowd, and where the order book for the model will start to show.