Silver Yachts' New H780 Cat Ranges 4,000nm at 11 Knots

A 26-Metre Explorer Built for Two Speeds

Silver Yachts announced the signing of Project H780 on 12 August 2026, a custom 26-metre aluminium catamaran for a private family client, with construction starting that same month at the yard's Jiangmen facility in China and delivery set for 2028. The hull is roughly 12.9 metres in beam, wide even by catamaran standards, and is designed around two distinct operating profiles rather than one compromise cruising speed.

At a fast passage setting she is rated for 2,000 nautical miles at 25 knots; switched to her long-range setting, that stretches to 4,000 nautical miles at 11 knots. That is an unusually wide spread for a 26-metre yacht: most explorer designs at this length pick one number and hold it, while H780 is built to cover both a quick weekend crossing and a genuinely remote, weeks-long passage on the same hull without the owner needing a second boat.

The Owner's Brief: Family Cruising Far From Support

Naval architecture and exterior design are by Ker Yacht Design, led by founder Jason Ker, who described the commission plainly: "This is a genuine explorer, developed for experienced owners intending to cruise extensively and spend long periods away from normal support." That framing, spending long periods away from normal support, is doing real work here: it is naval-architect language for a boat meant to be self-sufficient, not a boat meant to be seen at a dock. Ker's background is in performance sailing before it was in explorer motor yachts: his 55-foot racer Aera won every inshore race of the 2003 Admiral's Cup and the outright Sydney to Hobart in 2004, and he later led the design team for Team Shosholoza, South Africa's first America's Cup challenge. Ker Yacht Design's move into cruising has followed the same performance logic, with a run of lightweight, hybrid composite catamarans from 50 to 115 feet built to carry that racing-derived hull efficiency into long-range cruising rather than round-the-buoys speed.

Design Unlimited, led by creative director Mark Tucker, is handling the interior. Tucker called it "an exciting project" centred on "creating a home away from home," language consistent with what Silver Yachts has fitted to its brief: exceptional storage and tender capacity, including a 7.5-metre enclosed tender kept in its own lifting dock rather than slung on davits. For a family planning extended time aboard rather than short charters, storage and a proper tender garage matter more than a headline top speed.

Where H780 Sits in Silver Yachts' Catamaran Line

Silver Yachts already has a proven reference point in this size class: the 35.9-metre SpaceCat, also known as Infinite Cat, delivered in 2022 to a design by Espen Oeino with interiors by Pulina Exclusive Interiors. That yacht built its reputation on sheer living space, more than 534 square metres across three decks, and picked up mainstream attention after appearing in the third season of HBO's The White Lotus. She has since sold, brokered by Mark Woodmansey of Burgess and Michel Chryssicopoulos of IYC on the sell side.

H780 is a different brief from a different designer. Where SpaceCat's 35.9 metres and Oeino's exterior were built to maximise onboard space and presence, Ker's 26-metre hull is smaller, built specifically around the range-versus-speed trade-off, and aimed at an owner who wants to go further and stay out longer rather than host more people closer to shore. Silver Yachts is not replacing SpaceCat's formula with H780; it is adding a second, more expedition-focused model alongside it.

What's Not Yet Public

Silver Yachts has not published a price, a gross tonnage figure, an engine make or model, or guest, cabin and crew counts for H780. That is normal at the signing stage of a two-year custom build, but it leaves real gaps for anyone comparing this commission against a competing yard's brochure numbers today: there is no way yet to price H780 against a similarly specified catamaran, and no confirmed hotel-load or guest-capacity figure to weigh against the 2,000-to-4,000-nautical-mile range claims.

With delivery not due until 2028, a prospective owner considering a similar commission has real time to press Silver Yachts and Ker Yacht Design on the numbers still missing: engine selection and fuel burn at both rated speeds, tankage that actually delivers the claimed range, and a firm guest and crew count before committing to a two-year build slot in China rather than at a European yard closer to most owners' home ports.

The Explorer-Catamaran Segment Is Getting Crowded

H780 is signing into a segment that has gone from a niche to a genuine production category in a few years. Sunreef Yachts, the Polish builder now operating from both Gdansk and the UAE, is the only dedicated catamaran yard to make BOAT International's Global Order Book 2026, sitting sixth overall in the 24-metre-plus ranking on the back of a 10 percent revenue increase and a EUR 40 million net profit in 2025. Sunreef has since unveiled its 65-metre Sunreef Explorer concept at 1,800 GT, billed as the largest luxury catamaran ever designed, and set a public target of EUR 1 billion in annual revenue by 2030 under a plan the yard calls Beyond 2030.

None of that is Silver Yachts' direct competition at 26 metres, but it is the backdrop H780 is being sold into: multihull builders scaling fast, adding capacity on two continents, and pitching range and volume as the category's core pitch, exactly the ground Ker Yacht Design is contesting with the H780 brief. A buyer weighing this commission against a Sunreef or another yard's explorer catamaran is choosing between a builder still proving a first-of-type 26-metre hull and yards that are rapidly scaling an established one, and the two-year wait to 2028 delivery is time for that broader field to move again.