Bering 88

From Beyond Capricorn to the Bering 88, One Hull Renamed Twice

Bering Yachts founder Alexei Mikhailov built the first hull of this platform, Beyond Capricorn, as a Bering 80, delivered in 2016 and 2017 and still afloat today, most recently listed for sale near Sanremo, Italy at roughly EUR 4.8 million. Bering kept the same 23.95 metre hull, the same full-displacement steel construction and the same 26.20 metre length overall when it relaunched the design as the Bering 88, delivering the second hull, named My Way, in March 2026. A third hull completed its first sea trials in the summer of 2026, this time off the Turkish coast near Antalya, where Bering's main shipyard now sits.

Mikhailov has said plainly that the renaming reflects an update, not a redesign: "It's actually the same concept, the same platform. If it's a successful platform and a good boat, you can just update and perfect it, change the exterior styling," he told Boat International when the third hull's trials were reported. That approach carries a real risk for a buyer trying to read the model's history: a 2016-built Bering 80 and a 2026-built Bering 88 are close enough in hull form and systems that most of what an owner of one learns applies to the other, but different enough in exterior styling and equipment fit that a listing calling itself either name needs to be checked hull by hull rather than assumed.

A Steel Hull Built for Redundancy, Not Speed

Bering builds the 88 with an A-36 marine grade steel hull and bottom plating, 10mm on the bottom and 8mm on the sides according to the specification sheet for an earlier hull in the series, under a superstructure in 5 to 4mm aluminum, divided into six watertight compartments by five bulkheads. Full load displacement is 225 metric tons on a hull with 8.10 metre beam and 2.40 metre draft. Twin Cummins QSM11 diesels drive her, rated at 350 hp each continuous duty by Bering's own specification sheet for a sister hull (700 hp combined), through ZF W350-1 marine gearboxes with a 3.95:1 reduction, Seatorque ST-300 shafts and 5-blade NiBrAl propellers; a separate press summary of the current model states 450 hp per engine, a gap likely explained by a different duty rating rather than a different engine, but not reconciled in any single published document.

The third hull's 2026 sea trial, run in 15 to 20 knot winds, held a cruising speed of 8 knots and is expected to return a range beyond 5,000 nautical miles once fully worked up, on a fuel capacity Bering quotes at 39,755 litres. An independent account of that trial, published by the yacht newsletter Yacht Buoy, described the boat as running with no squat at speed, excellent trim and a dry swim platform throughout, and singled out her Seatorque shafting system for virtually eliminating vibration through the hull, a detail that matters on a boat meant to be lived aboard for weeks at a time rather than driven hard for an afternoon.

It reads less like a private luxury motor yacht and more like a small ship, an independent sea trial account concluded after logging no squat at speed and a dry swim platform in 15 to 20 knot winds.

Room for Eleven and a Genuine Working Galley

Interior volume runs to roughly 164 square metres of guest space plus about 45 square metres each for crew and technical areas, on a hull with 230 gross tons of enclosed volume. The master stateroom alone runs to 32 square metres in the superyacht-specification layout, and the boat carries a raised pilothouse deck with a separate office and head, a layout choice Bering has used across its explorer range since long before the 88 name existed. A 5.2 metre tender stows for offshore work, and the guest count tops out at 11 with 5 crew, split across accommodation that Bering's own sea trial photography shows finished in dark wood panelling rather than the brighter Scandinavian palettes more common on European-built explorer yachts of similar size.

The galley is full-beam with a central island, sized, in Bering's own description, to feed 11 guests on a long passage rather than a weekend, and sits alongside a main saloon and dining table arranged for guests to eat and socialise together rather than splitting cooking, dining and lounging into separate rooms, a deliberately un-fussy layout for a boat whose selling point is distance covered rather than entertaining space. A dedicated, teak-floored gym compartment is built into the hull below decks rather than added to a flybridge as an afterthought, and the foredeck carries its own lounge seating, visible in delivery photography taken with the snow-capped Turkish coastal mountains behind the third hull during her trials near Antalya.

A Younger Brand Than Nordhavn, and the Resale Numbers Show It

Trawler Forum members researching steel explorer yachts in the 65 foot and up range regularly name Bering as a serious option for buyers who want steel construction without paying Dutch or German yard prices, a reputation the brand has built gradually since its first hulls left the Foshan, China yard in the late 2000s. That same forum discussion is equally direct about where Bering still trails the established names: it lacks Nordhavn's decades of advertising presence and owner community, a gap that shows up in resale liquidity rather than in the boats themselves.

The clearest evidence is in the numbers rather than the opinions. A 2008-built Bering 55, a smaller model than the 88, was first listed at USD 850,000 and sold in 2009 after 610 days on the market; the same hull resold in 2017 for USD 495,000 after 2,859 days listed, and again in July 2023 for just USD 167,500 after a further 888 days unsold. Beyond Capricorn, the flagship first hull of this very platform, has fared better, currently asking roughly EUR 4.8 million after a EUR 300,000 reduction, but no Bering 88 specifically has yet been resold, so how the newer name holds its value against Bering's own older hulls remains untested.

Price on Application, and Almost Nothing Published About It

None of the major listing sites, including YachtWorld, Boat Trader and Boatshop24, show a published new-build price for the Bering 88, and YachtBuyer's own market tracking found no pre-owned Bering 88 available anywhere in the world at the time of writing, which makes a used benchmark impossible to set from the model itself. The nearest real data point is Beyond Capricorn, the original Bering 80 hull that the 88 directly descends from, currently listed near Sanremo, Italy at EUR 4.8 million after a EUR 300,000 cut from her prior asking price, for a 2017-built, 2018-refitted hull quoted with a 9,000 nautical mile range at 7.5 knots, a further-ranging figure than the newer 88's own quoted 5,000-plus nautical miles.

That gap between two closely related hulls' quoted ranges, one at 9,000 nautical miles and the newest sea-trialled hull expecting just over 5,000, is exactly the kind of detail a buyer needs to verify against a specific hull's own fuel and equipment fit rather than take from either builder's marketing copy or a single brokerage listing, since the underlying platform, tank volumes and load condition all affect the number and none of the public sources reconcile the difference.

Design

Для кого: An owner who wants a genuine ocean-crossing steel trawler with commercial-grade engineering and redundancy, and who is comfortable buying into a brand that is still younger and less resale-liquid than Nordhavn, on a platform whose exact specification has already changed names twice.

Ориентировочная цена: Bering has never published a new-build base price for the 88; every listing found is price on application, and YachtBuyer's market tracking shows no pre-owned Bering 88 currently for sale anywhere. The nearest comparable figure is Beyond Capricorn, the platform's original Bering 80 hull, asking EUR 4.8 million (reduced from EUR 5.1 million) for a 2017-built, 2018-refitted example. Sources: Bering Yachts, YachtBuyer, Boat International.