Maverick sells, her 479GT still rivals yachts 10 metres longer

A resale that closes in silence

On 5 August 2026, Burgess confirmed the sale of Admiral's 39.8-metre Maverick, brokered on the buyer's side by Mark Woodmansey and Jiyu Xie of Burgess, and on the seller's side by Charles Jones, Brandon Kummer and Steven Andereck of Kitson Yachts, with Jones also representing Burgess. Neither firm disclosed the closing figure. Admiral, the yard behind her, is the superyacht division of The Italian Sea Group, built at La Spezia, and Maverick was the first hull in the yard's Admiral Impero 40 series - a line built to compete on interior space rather than length, which is exactly the pitch both brokers repeated at sale. The 2013-built tri-deck had been on the market long enough to leave a paper trail: a last asking price of EUR 10,899,000 with VAT paid, itself the result of a further EUR 501,000 cut that Boat International had reported only weeks earlier.

The pattern is now the market's default rather than an outlier. Northrop and Johnson's own H1 2026 tally, published 16 July, counted 326 pre-owned superyachts sold for USD 3.51 billion, with the average deal size up roughly a quarter year on year - a market where headline asking prices circulate freely but the number that actually changes hands almost never does. For an owner pricing a similar-age yacht, Maverick's public cuts are the more useful data point than any final figure would have been: EUR 10.899m was what a 13-year-old 40-metre needed to reach before a buyer committed, not the number Admiral or her outgoing owner might once have hoped for.

479GT that plays above her length

Maverick's case for an eight-figure asking price on a 40-metre hull rests on volume rather than length. At 479 gross tons on a 39.8m hull with an 8.4m beam, Luca Dini's exterior and Admiral Centro Stile's interior architecture were drawn specifically to push tonnage past what her length alone implies - the line repeated by both Burgess and Kitson Yachts in the sale announcement is that her interior 'rivals that of many yachts over 50 metres.' It is a claim worth testing rather than repeating: a 50-metre yacht typically runs 700 to 900GT, so Maverick's 479GT sits well short of that band, and 'rivals' reads closer to 'narrows the gap' than to parity.

The tri-deck layout backs the claim more than the raw tonnage figure does. Five cabins sleep 11 across a full-beam master with its own study, three doubles and a twin, a configuration unusual on a yacht under 40 metres and one that carried her to a category win at the 2014 World Superyacht Awards, the 2014 ShowBoats Design Awards and that year's International Yacht and Aviation Awards. A further line in charter marketing - that Cacos V, her name at launch, was recognised as the quietest motor yacht in her class - traces back to yard and charter-broker copy rather than an independent acoustic test, and neither Burgess nor Kitson Yachts repeated it at sale, so a buyer should treat it as heritage colour rather than a verified specification.

The engineering a new owner inherits

Power comes from twin MTU 12V 2000 M94 diesels, giving a 20-knot top speed, a 14-knot cruise and a quoted range of 4,950 nautical miles at 10 knots - enough to cross the Atlantic without a fuel stop, relevant on a yacht that splits her year between the Mediterranean and the Caribbean rather than staying in one basin. She is built in aluminium, hull and superstructure both, at a light-for-her-class displacement of roughly 1,063 tonnes, a construction choice that favours speed and fuel burn over the steel-hull heft more common on 40-metre-plus motor yachts. The hull went through a refit in 2022, nine years after her 2013 delivery, though neither broker's listing itemises what that refit covered - engines, generators, paint and interior soft goods are all plausible and none is confirmed.

That gap matters more on a resale than it would on a newer yacht. A 2013 hull sold in 2026 is entering its second decade under new ownership, and the sale announcement discloses no independent survey or sea trial result from the point of closing - standard practice for a private resale, but worth stating plainly: every technical figure published about her current condition traces back to the selling broker, not a third party. A buyer at this price point should expect to commission a survey of their own before treating the specifications above as current rather than as-built.

Why the charter business survives a change of hands

Maverick was still working as a charter yacht through the sale, listed at EUR 168,000 to 182,000 a week in summer with comparable winter rates, on a season that runs the French Riviera, Corsica and Sardinia from May to September before repositioning to Antigua, the Bahamas, St Barts and the Virgin Islands for winter. Nine crew support up to 11 guests, and a toy inventory built around two Sea-Doo WaveRunners, waterslides, a floating pool, seabobs, wakeboards and paddleboards is exactly the kind of charter-week booking a new owner is most likely to keep running rather than replace.

That is the practical case for buying a resale over placing a new-build order: a 2013 Admiral with a working charter book and a 2022 refit already behind her earns from day one, where a comparable new 40-metre would sit in a yard for two to three years first. Set against Northrop and Johnson's finding that new-build sales in the 30 to 40-metre bracket rose 18 per cent year on year even as overall new-build volume fell, Maverick's buyer chose the faster, cash-flowing route into the same size class that other 2026 buyers are paying a premium to build from scratch.