Perini Navi's Norfolk Star Sells for EUR 4.45m After Eight Years

A ketch that had already crossed oceans twice

Perini Navi delivered Norfolk Star in 1996 from its Viareggio yard, one of the aluminium ketches that built the Italian builder's name in blue-water sailing yachts long before it became a group name attached to Admiral and Tecnomar. By the time Gary Widdowson found her on show at the Monaco Yacht Show in 2018, she had already circumnavigated the world twice under earlier owners - a working history, not a showroom yacht, and one of the reasons he chose her over other Perini ketches on the market that year.

The other reason was her layout. Norfolk Star carries three cabins - a master suite and two twins, one with a Pullman berth, for six guests total - rather than the four smaller cabins Perini fitted to sisterships of similar length. Widdowson wanted the boat for himself and his wife Beverley with a small crew, not for chartering to capacity, and a hull already proven over two circumnavigations meant he was buying seakeeping that had been tested, not promised.

Eighteen months in a French yard, finished weeks before the world shut down

Norfolk Star's most recent full refit predates Widdowson's ownership by two years: Perini's own service history for the yacht records a repaint and a full engine room overhaul in 2016. Once he owned her, Widdowson sent the boat into a yard in France for what was planned as a nine-month refit and ran to eighteen, finishing in early spring 2020 - technical systems and finishes brought up to a standard he judged fit for the long voyage he had planned next. That 2020 refit fitted a new main engine, two new generators, a PLC monitoring system and an Inmarsat VSAT dome, along with a new 505 Williams tender, Doyle sails and Reckmann rigging - a fuller scope than most brokerage listings ever itemise.

That voyage was a crossing to the South Pacific. It never happened. The refit finished just weeks before COVID-19 closed borders and marinas across the routes he would have needed, and the trip Widdowson had rebuilt the boat for was shelved indefinitely. Norfolk Star instead stayed closer to home for the seasons that followed - a reminder that a refit's timing can be undone by nothing the owner or the yard did wrong.

What EUR 4.45 million buys in a 1996 Perini

The yacht that sold on 12 August carries a Volvo Penta TAMD 162A engine, a cruising speed up to 12 knots and a range of 3,850 nautical miles at 10 knots on 7,374 square feet of sail area - enough canvas to make the engine a supplement rather than the primary means of covering distance, in keeping with Widdowson's own account of preferring wind to motors. Below decks, the interior is finished in cherry wood with a walnut dining table, and the main deck cockpit seats and dines eight guests either side of a dual-function layout that switches between the two uses through the day.

Burgess's Jamie Small and Northrop & Johnson's Sean McCarter represented the seller; Thanos Andronikos of Octana Yacht Services represented the buyer. None of the three brokerages, nor Perini's own sale record, discloses the actual agreed price - only the EUR 4.45 million last asking figure is public, and the buyer's identity has not been released. A prospective buyer of a similar hull should expect that gap between asking and agreed price to stay closed to outsiders on almost every comparable sale.

Selling a Perini while Perini's own future is up for auction

The sale closes just as the brand that built Norfolk Star is itself for sale. Perini Navi has been one of the six brands inside The Italian Sea Group since the two companies merged, and TISG has been under Article 44 crisis-resolution protection before the Business Court of Florence since 1 July 2026, with a consortium called Polo Nautico Carrara and financier-backed rivals both bidding to keep Admiral, Tecnomar and Perini Navi together, while Azimut Benetti and Ferretti Group have separately flagged interest in specific brands rather than the whole group.

None of that uncertainty touched Norfolk Star's sale directly - a 1996 hull already fully paid for and refitted does not depend on its original builder's solvency the way a yacht still under construction does. But it is the backdrop any buyer of an existing Perini Navi should now weigh: warranty support, parts sourcing and who answers the phone for a technical query all depend on which bidder, if any, ends up owning the Perini Navi name, and none of the current bidders has said publicly what after-sales support for yachts already delivered will look like once a deal closes.

What this means for a buyer eyeing a legacy Perini

Norfolk Star's case for a buyer is a proven one: two circumnavigations before Widdowson, eight years of use afterward, and a refit finished to a standard good enough that its owner planned an ocean crossing around it. Her three-cabin layout is a genuine point of difference against sistership Perinis built for six or eight guests, and her sail area is large enough that the Volvo Penta engine is there for windless days and marina manoeuvring rather than daily propulsion.

Against that: the TAMD 162A is a legacy Volvo Penta unit, and a buyer should confirm parts and service support for it independently of anything happening at yard level. And with Perini Navi's parent company mid-insolvency and mid-auction, the honest position for anyone buying a Perini Navi hull this year is that nobody, including the bidders themselves, can yet say who will be answering warranty and parts questions for the brand twelve months from now. The Doyle sails and Reckmann rigging fitted during that 2020 refit are themselves now five years old, and a surveyor should treat them as consumables approaching a mid-life inspection rather than assume they carry the same life left in them as when they were new.