Riva's biggest yacht ever, Sairu, resells two months after delivery

Riva's flagship returns to the market

Sairu, the first hull of the Riva 54 Metri, has been listed for sale at EUR 42,000,000 through Will Bagshaw of Edmiston and Konstantin Kolpakov of Arcon Yachts. At 54.84 metres she is the largest yacht Riva has ever built, an aluminium flagship out of the Ferretti Group's Superyacht Division in Ancona. She was formally presented to the world on 26 June 2026, which puts this listing barely seven weeks after handover.

Neither broker has said why she is for sale so soon, and the identity of the seller has not been made public beyond the fact that the original buyer was Kuwait-based. That silence is itself a data point: a yacht returning to market within two months of delivery is unusual enough that most buyers will ask the question before they ask about the fit-out. It may be a change of circumstance, a speculative order placed to be flipped, or simply an owner who used the boat once and decided it was not what he expected. None of that has been said on the record, so none of it can be assumed.

From fast runabouts to a 55-metre ocean-goer

For most of its history Riva built small, fast boats in fibreglass, not full-custom superyachts. The 54 Metri is the marque's first attempt at ocean-going scale, developed by Ferretti Group's strategic product committee under Piero Ferrari and built in aluminium rather than the GRP used across the rest of the range. Construction on the first hull began in 2023, and Riva announced the project at the Monaco Yacht Show that September with plans for a small series rather than a one-off.

The order book moved faster than the build schedule. A second 54 Metri was sold at that same Monaco show in September 2023, with delivery originally pencilled for 2026, and Riva has since said work has started on a third hull. The first buyer came through Alain Maaraoui of Sea Pros Yachts, Riva's exclusive dealer in Kuwait. Three confirmed hulls sold before the first one even reached the water is a genuine vote of confidence in the model - which makes Sairu's fast turnaround back onto the market a more interesting anomaly than a routine listing would be.

Ten guests, five cabins, one deck kept for the owner

The accommodation plan sleeps ten guests across five cabins: a full-beam owner's suite forward on the main deck, and four further cabins on the lower deck. Crew can run to nine. Officina Italiana Design, the studio behind decades of Riva's smaller boats, worked with Ferretti's own engineers to carry a recognisably Riva profile onto a much bigger canvas - a low, horizontal silhouette with long glazed bands rather than the tall, boxy superstructure common at this length. More than 370 square metres of outdoor deck is spread across four connected levels.

The photographs from her presentation show what that space is used for: a beach club aft with a transformable hydraulic platform and a small pool, a spa pool set into the sundeck, and a sheltered aft lounge under a hardtop with sofas and a dining table for ten. Four electric Naiad Dynamics stabiliser fins do double duty - they hold the yacht steady at anchor and underway more quietly than a hydraulic system, and because the electric units are more compact they let the hull draw just 2.25 metres, shallow for a yacht this size and useful for owners who want anchorages a 55-metre boat usually cannot reach.

Speed, range and the 499-tonne calculation

Sairu is powered by twin MTU 12V2000 M96L diesels, giving a top speed of 18 knots, a cruising speed of 14 knots, and an economical speed of 11 knots that stretches her range to 3,600 nautical miles - enough for an Atlantic crossing or a full season moving between the Mediterranean and the Caribbean without a fuel stop. None of that is unusual for a yacht this size. What is worth explaining is her tonnage: at 499 gross tons, Sairu sits one ton under the threshold that triggers the SOLAS Convention's full safety and crew-certification regime for vessels of 500 GT and above.

That is not an accident of hull shape. Industry estimates cited by Forbes and by yacht consultancy RN Marine put the extra cost of crossing 500 GT, once the added safety equipment, crew qualifications and management overhead are accounted for, at around 20 percent on top of the build price. The 2026 Global Order Book lists 932 yachts under construction below 500 GT - the large majority of everything being built - and 156 of those are specifically designed to land as close to 499 GT as naval architects can manage. Sairu's number is not a quirk of her design; it is the industry default at her size, and one more reason a buyer comparing her to a nominally larger yacht should look at enclosed volume, not just the metres on the bow.

What a buyer of a seven-week-old flagship actually gets

The asking price is EUR 42,000,000. What Riva or the original owner paid to commission her has not been published by either the yard or the current brokers, so there is no public baseline to measure that figure against - a buyer working out whether EUR 42 million is a fair ask for a seven-week-old flagship has to do it without knowing what she cost new. Running costs have not been published either. The industry's rough guideline of 10 to 15 percent of purchase price a year, the figure BOAT International and most managers quote for a modern, lightly used yacht this size, would put Sairu's upkeep somewhere between EUR 4 million and EUR 6 million annually once crew, insurance, berthing and maintenance are included - an estimate, not a yard-confirmed number.

There is also no independent sea trial on record. Every performance figure attached to Sairu, including the ones in this listing, still traces back to Riva's own numbers rather than a third-party test. That is normal for a yacht this new - nobody outside the yard has had her long enough to publish one - but it is worth saying plainly rather than dressing up a manufacturer's figures as an independent verdict. With a second 54 Metri due to deliver later in 2026 and a third under construction, a buyer who decides Sairu is not the right boat will not be waiting long for a newer, if equally untested, alternative to come to market instead.