Feadship's 83m Project Solent Moves Into Outfitting

What actually happened to Project Solent, and where is she now?

Project Solent, Feadship's hull 830, technically launched on 15 April 2026 at the NMC facility in Alblasserdam and has now been moved to the Royal Van Lent outfitting hall in Kaag, where her interior, systems and finish work will be completed ahead of a summer 2027 delivery.

Feadship builds its largest hulls in two stages that most buyers never see spelled out. The steel and aluminium hull itself is constructed at NMC, a specialist hull yard in Alblasserdam, then floated or towed to one of Feadship's own facilities for outfitting - the far longer phase in which engines, generators, tanks, HVAC, audiovisual systems and every piece of McKeon's and Whiteley's design get fitted into the empty shell. Project Solent's hull, at 83 metres and 2,707 GT across four decks, technically launched at NMC on 15 April 2026 and has since arrived at the Royal Van Lent facility in Kaag, the outfitting yard BOAT International and SuperYacht Times both name in their coverage of the move.

That gap between 'launched' and 'delivered' is the single most misread word in yacht-building coverage. A technical launch means the hull floats and can be moved under tow; it says nothing about whether a single cabin has been fitted out. For Project Solent, Feadship is quoting roughly fourteen months of outfitting between the April 2026 hull launch and a summer 2027 handover - time spent almost entirely inside the Kaag sheds, out of public view, which is why buyer-facing coverage tends to go quiet between a hull-launch story and the delivery photos.

Who designed Project Solent, and what does that split tell a prospective buyer?

Project Solent pairs an outside exterior stylist, Malcolm McKeon of MMYD, with an outside interior designer, Mark Whiteley of MWD - the arrangement Feadship's build-to-order model is built around, in which the yard supplies engineering and construction while the owner brings in independent design talent of their own choosing.

Malcolm McKeon, whose firm MMYD drew the exterior, described the design philosophy in terms he has used before across his other superyacht work: clean, enduring lines, and the view that 'true elegance lies in restraint and proportion,' as quoted in BOAT International's coverage of the outfitting move. Mark Whiteley of MWD is credited with the interior design, a separate commission from a separate studio - Feadship itself does not claim in-house authorship of either the exterior or interior on this project, which is standard practice for the yard's fully custom tier but worth stating plainly, since production builders increasingly fold styling into their own in-house teams.

Representing the owner through the process is Cecil Wright Partners, whose founder Chris Cecil-Wright called it 'a privilege to be guiding this exceptional project from inception through to delivery.' The buyer is described only as a repeat Feadship client; neither the buyer's identity nor the reason for the repeat order has been disclosed by any of the outlets covering the move, and Yotters has not been able to independently confirm either detail beyond what Feadship, BOAT International and SuperYacht Times have already published.

How does Project Solent fit into Feadship's current workload, and what does that mean for a new buyer?

Feadship has 17 yachts on order or under construction at the same time Project Solent moves through outfitting, a backlog that signals both strong demand for the yard's bespoke model and a long wait for anyone signing a contract today.

Feadship has built its reputation on a small, closely managed slate of projects rather than series production, so a concurrent order book of 17 yachts is a meaningfully full house for a yard of its type. It says the current wave of demand for fully custom 70-metre-plus yachts has not slowed, even as several production and semi-custom yards elsewhere in the industry report the opposite - order books that stretched during the 2021-2023 boom now flattening or, in a few cases, contracting.

For an owner weighing a Feadship commission against a semi-custom alternative from a yard with spare capacity, the practical consequence is queue position, not price. Project Solent's own timeline - hull ordered, sale confirmed by September of the prior year, technical launch in April 2026, delivery in summer 2027 - is the closest thing to a public benchmark for how long a slot at Feadship currently takes to move from signature to water, and it is worth comparing against whatever schedule a rival yard is quoting before a contract is signed.

What does a custom Feadship in this size actually cost and take?

Feadship, like most fully custom builders at this scale, does not publish contract prices, so the honest answer for an 80-metre-plus commission is that no independently verified figure exists for Project Solent - only the schedule and the size of the order book are public.

Neither Feadship, Cecil Wright Partners nor either design studio has stated a contract value for Project Solent in any of the coverage Yotters has reviewed, and that silence is standard for the segment: fully custom builds above roughly 70 metres are almost never priced in public, because each hull's cost depends on a client's own equipment, material and finish choices in a way a catalogue model's price never does. Any figure attached to this project by a third party without Feadship's own confirmation should be read as an estimate, not a fact, and none is reproduced here for exactly that reason.

What is public is the trade a buyer is actually making: roughly two years from a confirmed sale to delivery, a design team assembled from outside specialists rather than an in-house studio, and a build slot inside a 17-boat order book at a yard with no announced plan to expand that capacity the way some rivals have. That combination - schedule certainty over price transparency - is the standard shape of a Feadship commission, and it is worth naming plainly rather than dressing it up as something else.

What happens between now and delivery in summer 2027?

Outfitting is where a Feadship project spends most of its calendar time: mechanical, electrical and audiovisual systems, insulation, and every joinery element of McKeon's exterior and Whiteley's interior are fitted into the hull over roughly fourteen months before Project Solent's summer 2027 handover to her owner.

The next milestones that typically become public for a project at this stage are sea trials, usually run in Dutch or North Sea waters close to the yard before delivery, followed by a handover event and, in many cases, a first public showing at a European boat show in the year after delivery. None of those dates have been announced for Project Solent, and Feadship has not indicated whether this hull will follow that pattern.

For now, the confirmed facts stand on their own: an 83-metre, 2,707 GT hull built at NMC and now fitting out at Kaag, styled by McKeon and Whiteley for a repeat client represented by Cecil Wright Partners, due in summer 2027, inside a 17-strong Feadship order book. Everything past that - price, identity, final specification - remains exactly what the yard has chosen not to disclose, and Yotters will follow the project as further details become public rather than filling the gaps with speculation.