A $2m Refit Sold Sunseeker's Captain Morgan III in 90 Days

A Fast Sale for a Slow-Moving Size Bracket

Captain Morgan III, the 40.05-metre Sunseeker 131 Yacht, sold on 13 August 2026 after roughly three months on the market, according to SuperYacht Times and BOAT International, both citing a last-known asking price of EUR 13,500,000. Ben Ritchie of Y.CO represented the seller and Alex Head of International Yacht Brokerage Monaco represented the buyer, two independent brokerages closing from opposite sides of the deal rather than a single house handling both. Neither the final sale price nor the identities of buyer and seller were disclosed, which is standard practice at this level of the market but leaves a buyer with no public benchmark for how far the EUR 13.5 million figure actually moved before the ink went on.

Three months is fast for a 35 to 40-metre production motor yacht. Brokers who track this bracket describe resales at this size more often running past a year, and public listing services show several sister Sunseeker 131 hulls still on the market after considerably longer stretches. Neither this desk nor its named sources could verify a single reliable production-wide average time-on-market figure for the model, so none is used here; what is verifiable is that Captain Morgan III moved markedly faster than the anecdotal norm brokers quote for her size and age, and the reason is not subtle. It is the refit.

The Refit Was Built for Charter, Not for a Brochure Photo

Delivered from Sunseeker's Poole yard in May 2020 with interiors by the yard's in-house design team working with Candy & Candy, Captain Morgan III went through a six-month refit completed in 2025 that her selling agents put at roughly USD 2 million. The work covered a full interior renewal alongside mechanical work: engine and generator rebuilds, an overhauled AV system, and a Starlink connectivity installation, the kind of upgrade that matters more to a paying charter guest streaming and working aboard than it does to a private owner. Marketing around the relaunch described the refit as done "with charter in mind, not as an afterthought," language from the selling broker's own promotional copy rather than an independent review, and this desk treats it accordingly: as the seller's framing of the work, not a verified guest verdict.

That framing lines up with how the yacht has actually been offered. She runs a winter and spring season in the Caribbean and Bahamas, with brokers advertising a planned Mediterranean expansion to build toward year-round availability, a positioning aimed squarely at the charter fleet rather than a single-owner cruising boat. No independent charter guest review of Captain Morgan III under her new interior has surfaced yet; she came out of the yard too recently for one to exist, and this desk found none to report.

What EUR 13.5 Million Buys: The Numbers Behind the Boat

The Sunseeker 131 Yacht is a GRP semi-displacement flagship, not a steel explorer, and Captain Morgan III carries the model's standard twin MTU 12V 4000 M93 diesels, rated by her listing agents at 3,138hp each for 6,276hp combined, driving her to a listed 24 knots flat out and an 11-knot cruise. Sunseeker's own current spec sheet for the 131 line quotes a slightly higher 25 knots and a 1,600 nautical-mile range at 12 knots, against the 1,500 nautical miles her own listing cites at the same cruise speed; the two sources also disagree on draft, 2.7 metres against Sunseeker's 2.85 metres. None of the gaps is large, and all are typical of the difference between a builder's catalogue figure for a model line and an individual hull's as-built listing, but a buyer confirming any of these numbers should ask which one applies to the specific vessel rather than assume the brochure.

She sleeps 12 guests across five cabins, one owner's suite plus two doubles and two twins, served by six en-suite or day heads and a crew of eight, with a gross tonnage of 341. The beach club, built into the stern garage when it is not stowing the tender, carries a floating platform and a toy chest that her brokers list as running to seabobs, e-foils, jet skis and paddleboards alongside a slide, and the flybridge above carries a forward jacuzzi, sunpads and a full bar. None of that is unusual for a flagship at this length; it is the standard the 35 to 40-metre charter bracket now competes on, which is exactly why the mechanical and connectivity work in the 2025 refit, rather than the toys, is the part of this sale worth an owner's attention.

Where the 131 Sits in Sunseeker's Range, and Against the Market

The 131 Yacht is Sunseeker's largest production model, built in a run that YachtBuyer's fleet data puts at 16 hulls since the line's introduction, spanning roughly 2016 to 2024, with new and recent-build asking prices clustering between USD 13.8 million and USD 15.5 million across the listings this desk checked. That is a small enough run to make Captain Morgan III's sale a genuine data point for the model rather than a rounding error in a mass-production line, and it sits her against sister hulls, including at least three other 131s this desk found listed for sale in 2026 through separate brokerages, at broadly comparable asking prices for boats without her refit.

For a buyer, the comparison that matters is not Captain Morgan III against a larger steel explorer, a different category entirely, but against her own sister ships on the market now. A five-year-old GRP flagship with a fresh engine rebuild, new connectivity and a charter-ready interior sold in roughly three months at an asking price in the middle of the model's typical range. Whether that price held, discounted, or drew a premium is not public, but the speed itself is the signal: in a size bracket where resales commonly drag, a documented, charter-focused refit appears to have been worth more to a buyer than raw novelty or a lower asking figure would have been on an untouched sister hull.

What Is Not Published, and What an Owner Should Ask

The gaps in this sale are as informative as the facts. The final price is not public. The buyer's identity and intended use, private cruising, charter, or both, are not public. And the exact scope of the USD 2 million refit beyond the categories named by the selling broker, engines, generators, AV, Starlink and interior, has not been itemised anywhere this desk could find, so an owner weighing a similar investment on a similar-age hull has a rough budget figure but no line-item breakdown to plan against.

What is answerable is the strategic question underneath the sale: does refitting a five-year-old production flagship for charter pay off faster than simply listing it as-is? On this single data point, yes, measured in time on the market rather than in dollars recovered, since the sale price was never disclosed. One sale is not a trend, and this desk found no second, directly comparable refit-then-sale case among the 131's sister hulls to confirm the pattern holds. An owner should treat Captain Morgan III as encouraging evidence for that strategy, not proof of it.