Benetti's 80m FB291 enters outfitting, a repeat owner's second build

Main structures done, and Livorno takes over

The hull and superstructure of Benetti FB291, the 80-metre full custom known in the yard as Project Ironman, reached the builder's Livorno shipyard this week with the primary structural work behind it. Benetti confirmed the transfer on 31 July, describing the yacht as having completed her main structures and entering outfitting. That is the moment a steel box becomes a yacht: systems, joinery, glass and finish go in from here, and the yard's schedule stops being a welding problem and becomes a procurement one. Delivery holds at 2028, late in the year per Megayacht News.

The milestone matters more than the photographs. Structural completion is the point at which a full custom stops absorbing surprises cheaply, because every change from here has to be cut back into finished steel. It is also where the delivery date acquires weight: a yard reaching outfitting two years out is running an ordinary custom cycle, not a recovery one. Benetti has held the same 2028 date since announcing the sale in July 2024.

A second Benetti for an owner still using the first

FB291 was sold in July 2024 by Joe Foggia of Northrop & Johnson, acting for the owner, with support from Benetti's Americas office in Fort Lauderdale. The buyer is a repeat Benetti client, and the brokerage described the brief as recreating, at far greater scale, the environments the family already use aboard their current Benetti. That is an unusually specific starting point for an 80-metre custom, and it explains the emphasis on open deck.

The brief centred on large outdoor entertaining areas for a multi-generational family, with inside and outside spaces meant to run together rather than sit in separate zones. "Working with Benetti on the 80m Project Iron Man is a pleasure, thanks to our positive past sales and building experiences," Foggia said at the time of the sale. Giorgio M. Cassetta, whose studio drew the yacht, framed the commission as a relationship: "We are honored to create a new, beautiful design for a client that showed us his love from our very first meeting five years ago."

Six decks, steel, and one studio for both ends

The yacht runs to six decks on a steel hull. Cassetta Yacht Designers holds both the exterior and the interior, which is less common at this size, where owners often split the two. The exterior shows a plumb bow and a gently sloping stern, with alfresco dining and lounge space stacked through the decks. Megayacht News read a bare-metal hatch and three windows aft as a fold-down side and a beach club, though Benetti has not confirmed that.

Benetti has not published gross tonnage, beam, guest or crew numbers for FB291. A buyer comparing it against other 80-metre offers should note that absence rather than fill it in. What the yard has published is where the boat sits in its own range: below the three Benetti full customs past 100 metres, Luminosity and IJE at 108 and Lana at 107, but firmly in the part of the book built one at a time rather than to a series.

From 376 GT to a full custom, and what that changes

The project carries the same name as Ironman, a 42-metre Benetti Fast 140 delivered in 2018 and recorded at 376 gross tonnes: GRP hull and superstructure, 12 guests in six cabins, seven crew, 23 knots flat out and 1,800 nautical miles at 12. Benetti and its broker say the FB291 owner is stepping up from a Benetti he still uses, without naming the earlier boat. The shared name is the only public thread between the two hulls.

The distance between those two yachts is the part a prospective buyer should sit with. A 42-metre planing GRP boat under 500 gross tonnes and an 80-metre steel displacement custom are not the same asset with a different number on the transom. Crew payroll, class and flag obligations, berth availability at the length, annual running cost and the eventual resale pool all move to a different band. It is the jump that turns a large yacht into a programme.

What an owner watches between here and 2028

With the steel complete, the risk on FB291 moves into the supply chain. Outfitting a custom of this size means long-lead interior items, glass and integrated systems ordered years ahead that cannot be substituted late without visible compromise. The owner's own team, working alongside Cassetta on the interior, now carries more schedule exposure than the yard's steelworkers do. Slips at this stage are rarely announced as slips; they arrive as a quieter handover date.

Five years will have passed between the first meeting Cassetta describes and a 2028 handover, and roughly four between the sale being announced and the boat leaving Livorno. That is the real price of a full custom at 80 metres, and why the semi-custom end of Benetti's own book sells on slots rather than drawings. For a buyer weighing the two routes, FB291 marks what bespoke asks in time, and what it returns in a boat drawn around one family's habits.