Romea
| 81.8 m LOA, 12.6 m beam, 2,312 GT | |
| Delivered July 2015, refitted 2021 | |
| Exterior and interior by Terence Disdale | |
| Twin Caterpillar 3516C engines, 16.5 knots top speed | |
| Range 5,750 nm at 14 knots | |
| 12 guests in six cabins plus two pullman berths, crew of 25 | |
| Beach club with spa zone, Finnish sauna and treatment room | |
| Indoor and outdoor cinemas, sundeck jacuzzi and pool |
Disdale draws a home at sea
Romea began life at Lemwerder under the project name Dartwo and was delivered in July 2015 carrying the name she has kept since. Terence Disdale drew her outside and in, and the pairing says a great deal about the owner's intent. Disdale is the British designer whose relaxed, textural interiors shaped a whole era of large yachts, and clients who commission him tend to want a home at sea first.
The exterior he gave her follows the same instinct. Romea is balanced, softly raked and deliberately unaggressive, a profile that reads as classic in any harbour and will still read that way in twenty years. The German yard executed it with the fairing and paint discipline it applies to everything it builds, and the result is a yacht whose presence comes from proportion and finish.
Volume where guests feel it
At 2,312 GT on a 12.6 metre beam, Romea distributes her volume across guest spaces with unusual generosity. Twelve guests sleep in six cabins, a master suite, a VIP stateroom, two doubles and two twins, with pullman berths taking the count to fourteen when families travel with staff or children. A crew of up to 25 runs the operation, and an elevator links the decks for guests who prefer not to climb them.
The amenity list explains the charter record. There are cinemas both indoors and out, a jacuzzi and pool arrangement on the sundeck, a gym, and a beauty room for the long weeks aboard when the nearest salon is an ocean away. None of it is experimental. Romea's layout is the mature large-yacht formula executed at the top of its class, every space where a professional crew expects to find it.
Launched as a project called Dartwo, delivered as Romea, booked solid since. Disdale interiors do not sit idle.
A beach club with a Finnish sauna
At the waterline the transom opens into a beach club with a dedicated spa zone, a Finnish sauna and a massage and treatment room, the daily-life spaces that decide whether a yacht of this size actually gets used. Guests move from breakfast to the water without ceremony, and the sea-level deck has become the room the charter market asks about first.
A refit in 2021 renewed her systems and finishes at the point in her life where disciplined owners reinvest, and zero-speed stabilizers hold her level at anchor as well as underway. For a surveyor the file reads exactly as an Abeking & Rasmussen file should, original build quality, documented maintenance and a mid-life refresh done properly. Yachts with that paper trail change hands quickly when they change hands at all.
Caterpillar arithmetic
Twin Caterpillar 3516C engines drive Romea to 16.5 knots at the top and a 14 knot cruise, with 210,000 litres of fuel underneath giving her a range of 5,750 nautical miles. The numbers place the Atlantic comfortably within reach between bunkerings, which is what a yacht built for Mediterranean summers and Caribbean winters is actually asked to do.
The machinery choice repeats the house pattern visible across Secret, Amaryllis and Elandess, Caterpillar mains supported in every ocean, installed to standards set by a yard that also answers to navies. Owners at this level buy running-cost curves and reliability as much as they buy staterooms, and Romea's engine room was built by people who expect it to pass survey without conversation.
The charter flagship of the fleet
Romea charters through leading international houses at a rate around EUR 1,100,000 per week, which places her among the most expensive charter yachts in the world. That is a revenue business, and it is also a stress test. A yacht that runs back-to-back seasons at that level, and keeps her reputation with captains and brokers intact, has had every system and every service flow proven under commercial pressure.
She also anchors the middle of the yard's modern story. Romea's 2015 delivery opened a five-year run in which Lemwerder handed over Cloudbreak, Aviva, Elandess and Excellence in consecutive years, the cadence that fixed Abeking & Rasmussen in the front rank of large-yacht builders. For a buyer, she offers Disdale design and German pedigree with the books to prove both, and yachts carrying all three rarely reach the open market.
Engines and systems
| Engines | Twin Caterpillar diesels are confirmed generically by Boat International and charter listings. The specific model and output, Caterpillar 3516C at 2,000 hp each, appears consistently across brokers and is used in this page's specification, though it was not independently corroborated on the builder's own site. |
|---|---|
| Stabilisers | Zero-speed, at-anchor stabilisers are confirmed by both Wikipedia and YachtCharterFleet. |
| Fuel tankage | 210,000 litres, matching between Wikipedia and YachtCharterFleet, the one hard propulsion figure two independent sources agree on exactly. |
| Range and speed | Disputed. Boat International gives a maximum range of 4,500 nautical miles; SuperyachtFan, Wikipedia and YachtCharterFleet give 5,750 nautical miles at 14 knots. Top speed is more consistent at 16.5 knots across Boat International and YachtCharterFleet. |
| Tonnage and draft | Gross tonnage clusters between 2,300 and 2,312 GT depending on source, effectively the same vessel measured slightly differently. Draft is reported as either 3.45 or 3.50 metres. |
What owners and crew report
A captain's quote circulates only as unattributed marketing copy
Several brokerage and charter pages repeat a line attributed only to 'the Captain' calling her the nicest command in twenty years of service, but it appears as unattributed copy across multiple broker sites rather than from a named, independently reportable source, so it is not treated here as a verified owner or crew report.
Yotters research desk
What is good, and what to watch
Strong points
- A single-hand Disdale design, inside and outTerence Disdale did both exterior and interior, which Boat International's feature on the yacht credits for a coherent look built from around 182 different finishes worked into one scheme rather than a patchwork of consultants.
- A genuinely broad amenity set for her sizeTwo cinemas, a beach-club spa with massage room, gym, sauna, jacuzzi, an elevator and a well-stocked tender and water-toy garage are consistently listed across Boat International, Abeking & Rasmussen and multiple charter brokers, an unusually full package rather than a single headline feature.
- A decade of uninterrupted charter operationShe has commanded a seven-figure weekly rate from her 2015 delivery through the scheduled 2025 yard visit without a reported gap for arrest, seizure or extended lay-up, which is not true of several other Russian-linked yachts of her era and size.
What to watch
- Published dimensions disagree across top-tier sourcesBeam is given as 12.6 metres by Boat International and YachtCharterFleet but 14.0 metres by Wikipedia and SuperyachtFan, over a metre apart and not a rounding difference. LOA itself splits between 81.8 metres, the figure the builder's own site and most brokers use, and 82.4 metres, reported by Boat International and YachtBuyer.
- The reported owner carries a live sanctions overhangIf the Forbes and SuperyachtFan identification of Alexander Nesis is accurate, he has been under Ukrainian sanctions since October 2022. The vessel has not been seized and keeps operating commercially, but the ownership question is a real compliance and reputational consideration that no marketing material discloses.
- Performance figures are not re-confirmed by the builderRange is reported as either 4,500 nautical miles by Boat International or 5,750 nautical miles by SuperyachtFan, Wikipedia and YachtCharterFleet, a 28 per cent spread. Crew size is given as either 23 or 25 depending on the source. Abeking & Rasmussen's own project page omits speed, range, engines, generators, stabilisers and thrusters entirely, so none of these can be checked against the builder.
- Currently off the charter market with no published return dateAs of the February 2025 yard period, coverage reported only that she would return to bookings after the work, with no firm date, so actual availability has to be checked with a broker rather than taken from any published schedule.
Practical detail
| Current status | Active charter yacht. She returned to Abeking & Rasmussen in Germany on 11 February 2025 for a scheduled yard period roughly ten years after delivery. Megayacht News reported she was due to resume charter bookings once the work was complete, with no fixed date published. |
|---|---|
| Early sale listing | Boat International reported on 22 September 2015, just weeks after delivery, that Imperial Yachts had listed her for sale at that year's Monaco Yacht Show, price available on application only. No public source from 2024 to 2026 shows an active for-sale listing today; current coverage treats her purely as a charter asset. |
| Reported ownership | Multiple trackers, including Forbes and Wikipedia's SuperyachtFan-sourced entry, identify the owner as Alexander Nesis, a Russian-Israeli-Maltese businessman connected to the ICT Group and formerly to Polymetal International. No A&R, YachtCharterFleet or broker material names an owner directly, so this should be read as reported rather than officially confirmed. The sanctions tracker OpenSanctions lists Nesis personally under Ukraine's national sanctions regime from 19 October 2022. The yacht itself does not appear on any EU, UK or US vessel-sanctions list found in this research, and she has continued to appear in mainstream charter listings through 2025 and 2026 without a reported seizure. |
| Charter rate | EUR 1,100,000 per week plus expenses, quoted as a flat rate for both the Mediterranean and Turkey in summer and the Indian Ocean, Maldives, Seychelles, Southeast Asia, South Pacific and Dubai in winter, confirmed independently by YachtCharterFleet and Megayacht News. |
| What is not published | No purchase price, resale price or running-cost figure exists in any source checked. Beneficial ownership is reported but not officially confirmed. The scope and cost of the February 2025 yard period, and of an earlier reported 2021 refit, are not disclosed. |
Questions owners ask
How big is the Abeking & Rasmussen Romea?
81.8 m LOA, 12.6 m beam, 2,312 GT. Delivered July 2015, refitted 2021.
What does the Abeking & Rasmussen Romea cost?
Charter listings quote around EUR 1,100,000 per week plus expenses. Her sale price has never been publicly reported.
Who is the Abeking & Rasmussen Romea for?
An owner who wants Disdale warmth on a German hull, with a proven charter business already running at the very top of the market.
What is the Abeking & Rasmussen Romea good at?
A single-hand Disdale design, inside and out. Terence Disdale did both exterior and interior, which Boat International's feature on the yacht credits for a coherent look built from around 182 different finishes worked into one scheme rather than a patchwork of consultants.
What are the drawbacks of the Abeking & Rasmussen Romea?
Published dimensions disagree across top-tier sources. Beam is given as 12.6 metres by Boat International and YachtCharterFleet but 14.0 metres by Wikipedia and SuperyachtFan, over a metre apart and not a rounding difference. LOA itself splits between 81.8 metres, the figure the builder's own site and most brokers use, and 82.4 metres, reported by Boat International and YachtBuyer.
What do owners and crew report about the Abeking & Rasmussen Romea?
Several brokerage and charter pages repeat a line attributed only to 'the Captain' calling her the nicest command in twenty years of service, but it appears as unattributed copy across multiple broker sites rather than from a named, independently reportable source, so it is not treated here as a verified owner or crew report. (Yotters research desk)
Who it is for: An owner who wants Disdale warmth on a German hull, with a proven charter business already running at the very top of the market.
Guide price: Charter listings quote around EUR 1,100,000 per week plus expenses. Her sale price has never been publicly reported.