A105

A Flagship-Scale Hull From a Yard Known for Smaller Boats

Arcadia Yachts built the A105 as an enlargement of its A100+ platform, and by 2020 the yard had built and sold at least four hulls, most recently to a repeat Turkish client buying his second Arcadia through the dealer Tezmarin, a sale Yacht Harbour reported as evidence of the brand's push into new markets including Turkey, the Balearics and Australia. The third hull, named Sea Coral II, was delivered to her owners in May 2019 and later crossed the Atlantic for an extended Caribbean season, a passage Boat International cited as proof the semi-displacement hull handled sustained open-water cruising rather than just calm Mediterranean days.

The model's highest-profile recognition came in 2019, when the hull RJ won Arcadia the Semi-Displacement or Planing Motor Yachts, 30 to 32.9 metre category at the World Superyacht Awards, with judges praising her abundant glazing and connection to the water on a design Boat International separately profiled for its acoustic engineering. That is an independent-jury result rather than a builder's own claim, and it landed within a year of the model's first delivery, an unusually fast validation for a yard better known for smaller boats.

A Solar-Glazed Roof and an Engine Room Built to Be Heard as Little as Possible

Hot Lab, the Milan-based studio behind Arcadia's whole current range, drew both the exterior lines and the interior of the A105, continuing the flush, single-level main deck and expansive glazing the yard has used since its earliest solar-hybrid models. The signature feature is the convertible skylounge, a 35 square metre glazed gallery topped with solar panels, which lets owners run hotel loads such as lighting, refrigeration and ventilation from stored solar power alone when at anchor, without starting a generator. Official technical figures put the boat at 31.57 metres LOA, 7.76 metre beam and 2.16 metre draft, with a full-load displacement of 145 tonnes, built in fibreglass above and below the waterline except for the veranda structure, which is aluminum.

Boat International's feature on the acoustic engineering, reported directly from Arcadia's design team, described floating floors and ceilings built from sound-insulating Laricross and okoume panels, an engine-room bulkhead lined with varying densities of glass wool and mineral wool to absorb a broader range of frequencies, and 80 millimetre expanded PVC insulation running from the bow to the engine-room bulkheads. One design choice drew independent scrutiny rather than praise: Barche a Motore's Maria Roberta Morso, reviewing the boat in person, called the open metal staircase from the main-deck lounge to the top deck 'highly original' and 'daring', noting it has no handrail, a detail a family buyer weighing rough-sea use should ask about before ordering.

An 11 metre wide terrace, a solar roof that runs the hotel loads in silence, and a price Arcadia has never once put in writing.

Modest by Design: Speed, Range and Fuel Burn

Arcadia's own technical data lists a maximum speed of about 16 knots and a cruise of about 14 knots from the standard twin MAN V8-1000 diesels, and Yacht Class magazine's sea trial, conducted by Philippe Leblond, recorded a similar spread with fuel burn rising from 4.6 litres per nautical mile at 9.5 knots to 11.8 litres per nautical mile at 13 knots. Leblond's own verdict on the pace was not a complaint: this speed, albeit modest, is perfectly in line with this Arcadia's philosophy, a yacht where to enjoy spending time sailing, he wrote, framing the semi-displacement hull's low burn as the point rather than a shortfall against faster planing rivals of the same length.

That efficiency buys real range: Leblond's trial and separate brokerage figures both put her at roughly 1,500 nautical miles without refuelling on a 15,600 litre fuel tank, enough for an Atlantic crossing at a sensible pace, a passage Sea Coral II's owners made good on in 2019 when they took the boat from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean. Two 45 kilowatt generators and a roof-integrated solar array, which Arcadia credits with up to 4.5 kilowatts of hotel-load power, mean the boat can run air conditioning, lighting and refrigeration at anchor for stretches without either engine or generator running, a genuinely quiet-at-anchor capability rather than a brochure line, though this research found no independent, third-party verification of how much of that solar capacity is realised in ordinary Mediterranean sun.

Living Aboard: A Full-Beam Suite and Rooms That Open to the Sea

Standard accommodation is a full-beam master suite plus one double and two twin cabins on the lower deck, for eight guests total, with five crew in three cabins aft, per Arcadia's own technical data. The main deck saloon is the boat's signature space: full-height sliding windows open roughly two-thirds of their length and the side sections drop away entirely, so on Sea Coral II, Boat International reported the lounge and cockpit combining into a single covered terrace spanning close to 11 metres of beam, open to the water on both sides. A flexible cabin off the saloon converts between playroom, second office or an extra berth, a configuration owners have used differently hull to hull.

Interior fit-out varies by owner more than most production yachts this size: Sea Coral II's owner chose blue carpets, orange accent furniture and a personally selected sofa fabric palette, while other hulls run darker, more minimal schemes, reflecting Arcadia's semi-custom order process rather than a fixed factory interior. The convertible skylounge under the solar roof adds a further covered entertaining deck above the flybridge, and Arcadia's stated zero-speed and underway stabilisation system is aimed specifically at keeping that upper deck comfortable at anchor, though this research found no published material naming the stabiliser's manufacturer.

What the Market Says: Awards, Resale and the Unanswered Price Question

The silence on new pricing is total: none of the launch coverage, the technical data sheet or Arcadia's own overview page states what a new A105 costs, and this research found no distributor quote either, consistent with a yard that builds each hull to a semi-custom order rather than off a fixed price list. What the resale market shows instead: YachtBuyer's Market Watch data puts the average time on market at 365 days for the small number of A105s that have been listed, with asking prices moving only about 1 percent from the original figure over that period, evidence of a boat that holds its asking price once listed rather than one that gets chased down. A six-year-old hull was listed from EUR 6.754 million, and broker aggregation elsewhere puts the model's average resale figure closer to USD 9 million, a wide enough spread that a buyer should treat any single number as a starting point for negotiation, not a market price.

The model's independent-jury record is genuine rather than manufacturer-selected: the World Superyacht Awards judged RJ against every other launch that year in her size and hull-type category, not against a shortlist Arcadia curated itself. Against that, a buyer should weigh the open questions this research could not close: no yard document gives a running total of A105 hulls built (Yacht Harbour's reporting confirms at least four sold by 2020, but Arcadia's own site does not update a total the way some builders do), and no generator, thruster or watermaker brand appears in any published specification this research found, an unusual gap for a semi-custom yacht at this price point and one worth raising directly with the yard before ordering or buying used.

Para quién es: An owner who wants genuine flagship-scale, light-filled entertaining space and quiet at-anchor running more than outright speed, and who is comfortable negotiating a semi-custom price with no published reference point.