Heesen's Setteesettanta is the first with her bridge on deck four

A second order, launched at the end of July

Heesen launched Project Setteesettanta, hull number YN 20857, at its Oss facility in the Netherlands on 22 July 2026, with sea trials following in the North Sea over the following weeks. Construction began in 2023 and delivery is scheduled for the end of December 2026. The owners are described by both the yard and Boat International only as experienced yacht connoisseurs and returning Heesen clients, commissioning their second full-custom build with the shipyard; neither company has published their names.

The hull is all-aluminium and built to Heesen's fast-displacement formula, at 57 metres and 920 gross tons with a shallow 2.3-metre draught. That draught is the more useful number to an owner than the length: a fast-displacement yacht this size that draws barely more than two metres can anchor in shallow bays and cross sandbars that keep a conventional 57-metre yacht further offshore, without giving up the range and sea-keeping that a planing hull of the same size would sacrifice.

Why the bridge moved, and what it freed

The detail that makes this launch worth an owner's attention is not the length or the tonnage, it is where Heesen put the wheelhouse. Setteesettanta carries four decks including a dedicated owner's deck and a separate observation deck, and her bridge sits on the fourth of those decks rather than Heesen's usual lower position. It is the first time the yard has built a yacht this way. Naval architects normally keep a bridge as low and as central as a hull allows, for the closest possible sightline to the waterline during docking and close-quarters work, so raising it a full deck is a deliberate trade rather than a styling choice.

What that trade buys the owner is written into the rest of the general arrangement. Heesen's own account of the layout describes the observation deck sitting above the guest accommodation, in space a lower bridge position would otherwise have taken. YachtBuyer's published specification adds a 200-square-metre private owner's terrace, a touch-and-go helipad on the foredeck, and 180-degree glazing around the owner's suite. None of those figures come from an independent surveyor, so they should be read as the yard's own numbers until an owner or broker publishes something that checks them, but they are consistent with a boat designed around giving one deck almost entirely back to the person paying for it.

Cristiano Gatto's twelfth Heesen interior

The interior is by Cristiano Gatto Design, in its twelfth collaboration with Heesen, with Gatto also acting as the owners' representative through construction, a dual role that put the same person defending the owner's brief on site and drawing the rooms it produced. 'To see this project finally afloat is deeply moving,' Gatto said at the launch. 'Every element of her interior was conceived from scratch and refined down to the finest detail, with nothing left to chance.'

The accommodation itself is conventional for a yacht this size even where the deck plan is not: an owner's apartment, one VIP cabin and four further guest cabins across six staterooms, for up to twelve guests. Thirteen crew run the boat, a ratio close to one crew member per guest that reflects both the four-deck layout and the additional systems, from the helipad to the stabilised platform, that a fast-displacement full-custom build this size now carries as standard rather than as an option.

The numbers behind the fast-displacement claim

Two MTU 16V2000M72 diesels, rated at 1,440 kW each, give Setteesettanta a top speed of 18 knots and a cruising range of 3,900 nautical miles at 12 knots, both figures confirmed independently by Heesen's own release and by YachtBuyer's specification sheet. That range at a modest cruising speed is the other half of the fast-displacement case: an owner gets a hull that can still push to 18 knots when the schedule demands it, without the fuel burn of a planing yacht cruising at the same speed for the long Atlantic or Pacific legs an owner using this kind of range actually sails.

Heesen has fitted Quantum electric-hydraulic hybrid stabilisers, a detail so far confirmed only in the shipyard's own release rather than a second outlet, so it should be treated as the yard's word until independently reported. Everything else in this section, the engines, the speed, the range and the draught, is corroborated across at least two of Heesen, Boat International and YachtBuyer, which is the bar this desk sets before publishing a hard number as fact rather than a claim.

What is not yet known

No price has been published for Setteesettanta, by the yard or by either outlet that has covered her, and neither has a delivery-day name: Heesen yachts typically shed their project code for a proper name only at handover, so a buyer researching this boat under 'Setteesettanta' should expect that name to disappear once she is delivered at the end of December. There is no independent owner report of any kind yet, and there cannot be: she has not finished sea trials, let alone been handed over, so every word of her performance and layout so far comes from the yard and the two outlets that visited the launch.

For a prospective buyer studying her as a reference for their own full-custom order, that leaves two honest gaps to flag rather than paper over: nobody outside Heesen has yet driven her or tested her fuel figures against the yard's claimed range, and nobody outside the owner's circle has confirmed what the deal for a similar deck arrangement would cost on a fresh commission. Both are normal for a yacht four months from delivery, not a reason to discount the story, but a buyer should ask the yard directly rather than assume the launch-day numbers are the final ones.