Feadship Launches Its Secretive 80m Project 716

A Four-Year Build Finally Leaves the Shed

Feadship's Project 716 left its build hall in Aalsmeer this month, the culmination of a contract that has run since 2022. The 79.8-metre motor yacht was constructed in steel at Feadship's Scheepswerf Slob facility, the group's dedicated hull-building yard, before being towed north for outfitting. That move happened in spring 2025, when the bare hull, still in yard-grey primer, was walked down the Nieuwe Waterweg on a low-loader barge under tow, a routine sight for Dutch ship spotters but a rare one for anyone outside the industry, since Feadship has said almost nothing publicly about the project since the contract was signed. The August 2026 launch is the first time the yacht has appeared with her superstructure complete, aluminium topsides fitted over the steel hull below.

Feadship works this way by design: the group splits hull construction from outfitting across separate facilities, then reassembles projects at whichever of its yards suits the size and the owner's brief. An 80-metre commission of this kind routes through Aalsmeer, the yard responsible for the largest hulls in the current order book, including the rest of 2026's deliveries. Four years from signed contract to a hull in the water is standard for a fully bespoke Feadship rather than slow: sister project Destiny, the 101-metre delivered earlier this year, ran a broadly similar build clock. What is unusual is how little of that four years has leaked into public view.

The Numbers Feadship Will Confirm

Feadship and the trade press that track its build slips agree on the hard numbers. Project 716 measures 79.8 metres length overall with a 13.5-metre beam and a 3.3-metre draught, giving a hull volume of roughly 2,450 gross tons under Lloyd's Register measurement, the classification society Feadship has used across its recent large-yacht program. That means the vessel carries third-party survey at every stage of build rather than a yard's own sign-off. She is built in steel below the waterline with an aluminium superstructure above it and teak decks, the standard Feadship combination for yachts over roughly 70 metres, where steel's extra strength and lower long-term maintenance are judged worth the added weight against pure-aluminium construction.

Propulsion is twin MTU 16V 4000 M63L diesel engines, a workhorse unit used widely across large Feadship and Lurssen builds, giving a top speed of 17 knots. That is a modest figure for an 80-metre: several fast-displacement yachts in the same length class, including some of Feadship's own recent launches, clear 18 to 20 knots, which suggests 716 was drawn for range, interior volume and a quiet ride rather than outright pace. Naval architecture and exterior styling credits have not been released, unusual for a yacht this far along; Feadship typically names its design partners well before launch.

The Identity Feadship Won't Confirm

What sets 716 apart from Feadship's other 2026 launches is not the hull but the silence around it. Destiny's 101 metres and Milky Way's swimming-pool-led brief were both discussed in detail by the yard and by the owners' representatives well before delivery. Project 716 has had none of that: no nationality has been attached to the owner, no interior designer has been credited, and Feadship's own press office has issued nothing about the launch beyond what trade photographers caught on the day. That is a deliberate choice: Feadship's build contracts routinely include confidentiality clauses at an owner's request, and a project this opaque this late in construction signals an owner who asked for, and is getting, a harder wall than most.

The contrast with the rest of this year's 80-metre-class market is useful context for a buyer weighing a Feadship commission against a more publicized rival. Bilgin's 82-metre Project Bond, sold in March 2026, was announced with its owner's name, his eighteen-yacht history and his design team named in the same release. Feadship's approach costs the yard some marketing reach, there is no owner story to tell, no interior to photograph for magazines before delivery, but it is precisely what a small number of ultra-private clients pay a premium custom yard to guarantee. For a prospective owner, the signal is less about this specific yacht and more about what Feadship will and won't disclose on request.

What a Fully Custom Feadship Commission Buys

Feadship is currently building around 18 yachts across its Dutch yards, and 2026 has been an unusually productive year for the group: Destiny (101 metres) and Milky Way (89.6 metres) have both delivered, and 716 is now the third large hull to leave a shed this year. That throughput matters to anyone comparing yards for a commission of this size; it demonstrates Feadship can move several 80-metre-plus, fully bespoke projects through build simultaneously without the schedule slippage that has hit some rivals. Lloyd's Register classification, carried across the current program, brings independent survey rather than self-certification, a detail worth checking on any yard's paperwork before signing.

Fully custom at Feadship means the hull, layout and systems are drawn from a blank sheet for one owner, in contrast to the speculative or semi-custom platforms other yards now favour: Heesen's 55-metre steel line or Sanlorenzo's Steel series, for example, both reuse a proven hull to cut build time and cost. That freedom is also the source of the four-year clock: nothing about 716's structure, tankage or general arrangement was pre-decided before her owner's brief arrived, so every change had to be engineered rather than selected from a catalogue. Buyers who value speed to delivery over a blank sheet look elsewhere; buyers who want the sheet blank pay in years, not just money.

What's Still Missing Before Delivery

Sea trials have not yet been reported, and Feadship has given no date for handover beyond later this year; nothing has been confirmed by the yard. No price has ever been published for a Feadship yacht at any size; the yard has never disclosed a contract value for a new-build in its history, and 716 is no exception. Interior imagery, cabin count and guest capacity, all routinely released by other yards well before a launch of this size, remain unpublished for 716, as does any name for the yacht beyond her yard number.

For an owner weighing a Feadship commission against a competitor, that list of unknowns is itself useful information: it shows exactly how much control an owner can retain over what the world learns about their yacht, right up to and past the point of launch. Nobody outside Feadship and the owner's circle has sailed, crewed or reviewed 716, so there are no independent reports to weigh against the yard's own account, a gap that will close only once sea trials begin and the yacht starts appearing, however briefly, in a marina somewhere.