Cantiere delle Marche's Mon Coeur Is the Smallest Hull in Its RJ Line

The smallest hull CdM has put an RJ badge on

Mon Coeur left Cantiere delle Marche's sheds this week, roughly ten weeks after she was floated out of the yard's hall in Ancona on 29 May 2026. She is the first hull of the RJ102, a new addition at the bottom of CdM's RJ Class explorer range, and at 31 metres overall with a 7.3-metre beam and a full-load displacement of 250 tonnes, she is markedly smaller than any RJ before her. Twin Caterpillar C18 Acert engines, rated Tier III and delivering 533kW each, drive her to a cruising speed of 10 knots with a quoted range of more than 3,500 nautical miles on a 30,000-litre fuel load.

That places her well below the rest of the family. CdM's RJ130 runs 39.4 metres and the flagship RJ155 stretches to 45 metres, so Mon Coeur is roughly eight and fourteen metres shorter than the two hulls that used to define the line's entry point. She is also larger and more overtly ocean-capable than CdM's Darwin Class 86, the yard's smaller, more traditionally styled 26-metre explorer. The RJ102 sits in the gap between the two families: an owner gets the RJ line's blue-water pedigree - steel hull, aluminium superstructure, the same design partnership behind the bigger boats - without committing to a 39-metre-plus build.

Paszkowski's puzzle: a full-size presence in a smaller package

Exterior designer Francesco Paszkowski, who has drawn several of CdM's larger RJ and Deep Blue hulls, has said the brief was specifically about scale: 'how do you preserve the commanding presence and go-anywhere confidence of a larger yacht in a rather small package.' His answer keeps the family's visual language - recessed windows, a flared bow, a sinuous stern - on a hull two size classes down from where CdM has used it before. The stern opens onto a wide stair to the water, and floor-to-ceiling windows and transparent gunwales carry natural light through the lower decks, a detail more usually reserved for CdM's bigger builds.

Interior designer Giorgio M. Cassetta, who also worked on CdM's larger Deep Blue 115, built the layout around what he called 'a base camp for a couple exploring the world', styled as 'understated and elegant, yet warm and richly detailed', with an owner-operated galley and bespoke, organically shaped furniture rather than a stock catalogue interior. The boat sleeps nine guests across four suites, including the owner's cabin and a further cabin fitted with a pullman berth for a fifth guest or a child, with a crew of five running her. An upper-deck dip pool, a sun pad and dedicated toy storage round out the outdoor spaces - features that on a 31-metre hull usually come at the cost of interior volume, which is the trade CdM is explicitly selling here.

What the range and fuel numbers actually buy

The published cruising figures are 10 knots and 3,500-plus nautical miles from a 30,000-litre tank, on twin Caterpillar C18 Acert Tier III diesels rated at 533kW apiece. Both the yard's own announcement and BOAT International's launch report, which draws directly on CdM's release, agree on that range figure; a third-party fleet-data listing site quotes 4,500 nautical miles for the same hull, a figure neither the builder nor the trade press has repeated, so it is not carried here.

Set against CdM's own smaller Darwin Class 86 - a 26-metre explorer with a 42,600-litre tank that is rated for 6,770 nautical miles at the same 10-knot cruise - the trade is explicit: Mon Coeur is a larger, faster-feeling, more heavily equipped boat, but she carries less fuel and covers meaningfully less distance between refuelling stops than the smaller boat in CdM's own range. An owner who wants the RJ line's presence and systems at a manageable size gets it; an owner whose priority is maximum unsupported range in a small hull is better served by the Darwin.

A yard three and a half months into new ownership

Mon Coeur's delivery lands not long after Cantiere delle Marche itself changed hands. CLP2, an investment vehicle backed by the Loro Piana family and by Carisma, the family office of Giovanni Cagnoli, completed its move to majority shareholder on 29 April 2026, buying out the remaining stake held by FIL Bros, the vehicle representing Tom Schroeder and his team. Co-founders Vasco Buonpensiere and Ennio Cecchini, previously president and chief executive, kept minority shareholdings and stayed on in executive roles - Buonpensiere is quoted in Mon Coeur's own launch announcement as CdM's chief executive.

For a buyer evaluating a build slot, warranty support or resale backing at a yard, an ownership change this recent is a fact worth having rather than a footnote. CLP2 has said it intends to continue CdM's existing four-year business plan, and the yard has reported performance running ahead of its own projections since the investment began in 2025 - both reassuring signals, but both self-reported by the new owner rather than independently confirmed. Mon Coeur is, in effect, the first RJ-line delivery to reach an owner under CdM's new shareholder structure.

What is not yet known

CdM has not published a price for the RJ102, and the owners are not named in the yard's own materials, which quote them only anonymously: 'working with CdM to create Mon Coeur has been an absolute joy and truly the journey of a lifetime.' One fleet-data listing site states the boat was built for an Australian client; that claim has not been corroborated by CdM, BOAT International or any other trade title checked for this story, so it is reported here as unconfirmed rather than fact.

There is no independent sea trial yet, and no owner report beyond the yard's own press quotes - unsurprising for a hull delivered this week, but worth stating plainly rather than dressing up a launch quote as lived experience. CdM has also not said whether Mon Coeur is a one-off commission or the first of a production run; a prospective buyer with genuine interest in the RJ102 should be asking the yard directly about build-slot lead times and whether a sister hull is already in the order book, since none of that is public yet.