Perseus^3

The Second Hull in Perini's 60-Metre Series

Perini Navi delivered Perseus^3 to her owner in April 2015, built in aluminium at the Perini Navi-Yildiz yard in Turkey to a design developed by the builder's own office in Viareggio, Italy. She is the second yacht in Perini's 60-metre series, a line developed around a conventional single-masted sloop rig rather than the three-masted DynaRig the yard is best known for on yachts such as Maltese Falcon. At 60 metres length overall and 11.4 metres beam she measures 498 GT, modest tonnage for her length because a sailing hull carries far less enclosed volume than a motor yacht of the same size. The naval architecture came from Perini Navi's own design team working with Ron Holland Design, a partnership the yard used across several of its largest sloops.

The project set out to prove that a single very tall rig, rather than Perini's multi-mast DynaRig used on Maltese Falcon nine years earlier, could still deliver record-setting sail area and real performance at 60 metres. She carries a carbon fibre mast standing about 75.8 metres, among the tallest ever fitted to a yacht, and was the first Perini sloop built with a carbon fibre bowsprit, a feature that let her set a far larger downwind sail area than earlier yachts in the series. Sea trials ahead of delivery recorded speeds just over 16 knots in 21-knot true wind, with the yacht beating upwind at more than 12 knots in the high 30s of apparent wind angle, figures Perini Navi and the trade press both reported at the time of her launch.

A Rig Built to Race, Not Just to Cruise

The total sail wardrobe runs to roughly 10,000 square metres, including a 1,804 square-metre Code Zero built on the largest torque cable Future Fibres had produced at the time and a 2,602 square-metre A2 spinnaker reported as the largest single sail ever built for a yacht, bigger than the combined sail area of all fifteen sails carried by Perini's own Maltese Falcon. Steering is handled by a twin-rudder system with its own dedicated control system, engineered in-house by Perini Navi rather than bought in, a detail the yard highlighted at delivery as central to keeping the yacht controllable at speed under such a large rig.

None of that sail area could be handled by hand. Variable-speed electric winches and furlers, synchronised by what Perini Navi calls its Automated Sail Handling System, drive jib winches capable of 40 metres a minute of line speed under loads of up to 30 tonnes, and the yard says the system cuts tacking and jibing time by more than 75 percent compared with its previous generation of large sloops. That investment in automation is also why a yacht this size can still be actively raced: her crew describe going into regattas most seasons with new sails and adjusted ratings chasing a few more knots, treating her as a genuine racing yacht rather than a static show boat with a rig fitted for effect.

In-House Interiors, Then a Liaigre Refit

At delivery the accommodation was designed entirely in-house by Perini Navi's own interior team, laid out across five cabins for up to twelve guests: a full-beam owner's suite, two VIP cabins and two twins that convert with Pullman berths, one of which uses a sliding wall to split a further full-beam stateroom into two separate cabins when required. Two opening beach platforms and a pair of 6.2-metre carbon fibre custom tenders rounded out the guest-facing spaces, features brokers still list as distinguishing her from sisterships in the same series.

In 2022 the yacht went through a refit that changed her character below decks. French designer Christian Liaigre reworked the interior in a lighter, more contemporary palette of white, dusty blue and grey set against wood panelling and contemporary art, replacing most of Perini's original in-house scheme, and the saloon now carries a full upright Steinway piano. The same refit rebuilt her original twin MTU main engines rather than replacing them, and she remains classed ABS A1 Commercial Yachting Service, the same notation she carried at delivery, so the structural and engineering side of the refit was conservative even as the interior changed completely.

A Working Racer: From the Bucket to a World Voyage

She is a genuine campaigner rather than a yacht that merely carries a big rig for looks. In February 2024 Perseus^3 won the Millennium Cup division of the New Zealand Millennium Cup in Auckland outright, taking two of three races and beating the three-time defending champion, the 34.2-metre Royal Huisman Sassafras, into second place; she also collected the regatta's Spirit of the Regatta rum barrel. Her captain, Burger van der Walt, who has run the yacht since 2016 and was aboard during her build, says the crew treat every regatta as a chance to improve on the last: 'We love to race, it's a chance to push Perseus^3 to her best,' he told SuperYacht Times ahead of the 2026 St Barths Bucket, adding that new sails and a revised rating were expected to find the boat a few more knots that season.

Between regattas, her current owner took the yacht further than most 60-metre sloops ever travel. From 2023 the yacht went exclusively private for a multi-year voyage that, according to van der Walt, ran 'from the beaches of Brazil to the winds of Patagonia, rounding both Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope, exploring the Pacific, voyaging through Australia, to Indonesia and Madagascar and finally South Africa, before making our way to the Mediterranean,' returning to the charter market only at the end of last summer. That is a genuine ocean-going resume rather than a marketing claim, and it puts real sea time behind the sail-handling system's promise of a yacht a shorthanded crew can actually manage on a long passage.

The Perini Navi Story Behind the Boat

Perseus^3 herself changed hands once, sold in an in-house Edmiston deal at the end of October or start of November 2020 (broker accounts differ by a few days) after 945 days on the market against a last asking price of EUR 25,995,000; the actual sale price was never disclosed, and no public price was ever put on what she cost to build new in 2015 either. A few months after that sale, the yard that built her ran into serious trouble: a restructuring plan was rejected and the Court of Lucca declared Perini Navi bankrupt on 28 January 2021, the culmination of financial difficulties that had begun as early as 2017 and survived a change of majority owner in 2018 without being resolved.

The Italian Sea Group won the yard out of bankruptcy in December 2021 for EUR 80 million, taking on the Viareggio and La Spezia shipyards along with a building complex in Pisa, and has since relaunched the Perini Navi name with new sailing yacht deliveries and, from 2025, a motor yacht line. That matters for anyone weighing a hull from Perseus^3's generation: the original manufacturer that would normally support a boat like her did not trade for the better part of a year, and continuity of parts, drawings and warranty support through that gap has not been publicly detailed by either the old company or its successor. It is a genuine open question worth raising with a broker or surveyor before buying an early Perini hull, this one included.

Design

A chi si rivolge: An owner who wants a serious, still-competitive racing sloop rather than a static rig for effect, and who is prepared to go shorthanded on long passages because the sail-handling automation genuinely does the work of a much larger crew.

Prezzo indicativo: No new-build price was ever made public at her 2015 delivery. She last changed hands in an in-house Edmiston deal in late 2020 after 945 days listed at a final asking price of EUR 25,995,000; the sale price itself was never disclosed.