Trinity's Mirabella refit finishes 3 months late, price undisclosed

A six-and-a-half month plan became eight and a half

The current owner bought Mirabella in May 2025 and had her at Reviva Refit within four months, a buy-then-rebuild timeline rather than a buy-and-cruise one. Mirabella hauled out at Reviva, the refit division of the Turkish yard Mengi Yay, at the beginning of October 2025, having arrived at the Tuzla facility in mid-September under the project code R15. The yard and the owner's representative had set 15 April 2026 as the delivery date, a six-and-a-half month programme. The yacht was actually redelivered on 15 July 2026, three months later than planned and eight and a half months after the first tools went on board.

Neither Reviva nor the owner's representative, Rob Dolling of Verpeka Dolling Superyachts, has published a reason for the slip. Ramazan Mengi, Reviva's refit operations director, described the scope rather than the delay: "R15 asked for paint, systems, joinery and structural work at once, our people carried all four across the line together." Running four disciplines in parallel rather than in sequence is a common way yards compress a schedule, and it is also a common way one delayed trade drags the other three behind it, which is consistent with a three-month overrun nobody has explained.

What eight and a half months actually bought

The scope was a full-boat refit, not a cosmetic one. The hull and superstructure were stripped and repainted in a climate-controlled shed. The electrical and electronic infrastructure was substantially renewed, covering bridge electronics, audio-visual systems and interior and exterior lighting. Interior joinery was stripped back and refinished in walnut tones, with new upholstery and furniture throughout the yacht's five staterooms, which sleep 11 guests across four kings and a twin with a pullman berth.

On deck, the swim platform was reconfigured to house an integrated transformer inside a new watertight chamber, a structural modification rather than a bolt-on, and a bespoke Jacuzzi replaced the original on a redesigned sundeck alongside new seating across every deck level. Mirabella's original propulsion, twin 2,250 hp Caterpillar diesels giving 3,500 nautical miles at 12 knots, was not replaced, so the refit bought systems, structure and finish rather than range or speed. The yacht returns to charter service under her existing specification.

Reviva has become Trinity's yard by default

Trinity Yachts was founded in 1988 by the Olympic sailor John Dane III, building on the hull of what had been Higgins Shipyard, a commercial and military builder dating to the Second World War, at a yard in New Orleans that survived Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the 2008 downturn before it stopped taking new orders. The company was sold to Harvey Gulf International Marine in 2015 and has not launched a new yacht since 2016. Its roughly three-decade back catalogue, custom yachts including names still active on the brokerage and charter market such as Cocoa Bean, Unbridled and Mine Games, now has no builder to return to for warranty work, spares sourcing or a refit informed by the original build files. Reviva has stepped into that gap, and Mirabella is not the only Trinity hull proving it.

Berthed alongside Mirabella through the same period was Grand Rusalina, a 59.6-metre Trinity delivered in 2006 to an exterior by Geoff Van Aller with an interior by Ricky Smith Designs, sleeping up to 16 guests over a 6,000-nautical-mile range. She was in for her fourth consecutive year of returning to Reviva, this time under project code R11.4 for a mechanical overhaul of her engines and auxiliary machinery alongside a five-year RINA classification survey, plus a full exterior repaint and new upholstery. A 37.4-metre Bering B121 was also mid-refit at the same yard. Reviva states this was its 15th redelivery since the programme began in 2017, formalised under the Reviva name in 2024, which is a specific and checkable claim rather than a marketing figure, though no third party has audited it.

What this means for the owner, not just the yard

An owner weighing a yacht from a defunct builder is really weighing two separate questions this refit answers only partly: can the boat be brought current, and can it be done to a schedule you can plan a charter season or an owner's cruise around. Reviva answers the first convincingly, fifteen redeliveries and a repeat Trinity client are a real track record, not a pitch. It answers the second badly. A three-month slip against a published date, with no explanation offered by either the yard or the owner's side, is exactly the kind of risk a buyer needs priced into any refit quote before signing, and it was not priced into this one publicly.

The other gap is money. Nobody involved, not Reviva, not Dolling, not any broker listing tied to the yacht, has published what an eight-and-a-half month, four-discipline refit on a 47.9-metre yacht actually costs, and the brokerage listings for comparable Trinity yachts still on the charter market are silent on it too. For an owner comparing a refit against a new-build order or a younger secondhand yacht, that is the single number that would let the comparison actually be made, and its absence means every prospective Reviva client is negotiating without a public benchmark. Mirabella was too recently redelivered, on 15 July, for any independent owner, charter guest or crew account of the finished result to exist yet; what is published so far comes entirely from the yard's own side.