Bering Yachts

A Raleigh-Registered Company That Started Building in China

Alexei Mikhailov founded Bering Yachts in 2007 and began construction of a 50 foot all-metal hull in Foshan, southern China, betting that full-displacement steel and aluminum construction could be built at a fraction of the price European yards charged for the same format. After six-plus hulls left the Foshan yard, Bering moved its main production to Antalya, Turkey in 2017 and later added a second shipyard in Burgas, Bulgaria to add capacity. The company's holding structure keeps a registered global head office in Raleigh, North Carolina, with additional Bering Group offices in Germany and Australia, while the yachts themselves are built entirely in Turkey and Bulgaria.

Bering's product line spans three families it calls Expedition, Explorer and Yachtship, running from a 50 foot production hull up to full-custom yachts of 145 feet and beyond, and the yard says it has now built more than 50 hulls. Every model shares the same underlying brief: a full-displacement steel hull under an aluminum superstructure, sized and tanked to cross an ocean rather than hop between marinas, at a price Passagemaker once summarised as roughly USD 11 a pound of finished boat, well under what a comparable Dutch or German steel yard would charge for the same displacement.

One Platform, Renamed Twice: From the Bering 80 to the Bering 88

The yacht covered here began life as the Bering 80, and its first hull, Beyond Capricorn, was delivered in 2016 and 2017 and still charters and resells today, most recently listed around EUR 4.8 million after a EUR 300,000 price cut. Bering relaunched the same platform under the name Bering 88 for its second hull, My Way, in March 2026, and completed sea trials on a third hull in the summer of 2026. Founder Alexei Mikhailov has been direct about why the model kept its underlying design rather than starting over: "It's actually the same concept, the same platform. If it's a successful platform and a good boat, you can just update and perfect it, change the exterior styling," he told Boat International.

Independent commentary on Bering's engineering has been more favourable than its resale reputation. A sea trial account from the yacht newsletter Yacht Buoy praised the Bering 88's redundancy, twin engines, dual generators, triple air conditioning compressors and rigid stainless steel piping, writing that it read "less like a private, luxury motor yacht and more like a small ship." Trawler Forum members, by contrast, rate Bering as a serious option for steel construction in the 65 foot and up range for buyers unwilling to pay Dutch or German prices, while also noting the brand still trails an established name like Nordhavn on resale recognition, a gap that shows up in the slow, discounted resales some earlier Bering hulls have logged.