At the last year’s International Yacht and Aviation Design Awards in London, the first Wally Cento sailing yacht ‘Hamilton’, owned by Sir Charles Dunstone, won against Kestrel Superyachts Ltd’s Kestrel 106 charter yacht ‘Kestrel’, taking a worthy second place in the class for all new sailing superyachts between 30 and 45 metres. Both hit the water in 2012, Hamilton explicitly for the race course and Kestrel for extremely comfortable high performance cruising with family and friends. Both yachts were exceptionally well received by the world’s yachting media and both are now for sale by highly unconventional means.
Luxury charter yacht Kestrel at speed off Cannes - Photo by Ocean Images
These 2 magnificent yachts from opposite ends of the sailing spectrum are due to meet head to head again in a rather unlikely fashion at the end of February 2014.
27th February – Clash of Titans?
Both yachts are marked to be offered for sale to the highest bidder, superyacht ‘Hamilton’ to the highest bidder without reserve by 28th February 2014, and ‘Kestrel’ yacht by online auction run by specialist online auctioneers Sweeney Kincaid, concluding on 27th February. In a market where yacht sales are now slowly recovering, both owners are trying ‘outside the box’ sales methods to attract a larger audience and both potentially offer exceptional value to the buyer.
WallyCento superyacht Hamilton
Peter Cooke, Managing Director of Kestrel Superyachts, commented as follows: ‘The superyacht sector shows stronger signs of recovery, but the brokerage market is still full of older 30-40 metre yachts, and we wanted our groundbreaking new Ron Holland designed yacht to stand out from the crowd where most of the boats for sale are just shades of each other. We are offering something entirely different, a beautiful classical blend of the very best attributes of motor yacht, sailing yacht and beach house in a high performance, high volume aluminium hull.’
He continued: ‘We have found this differentiation hard to achieve through conventional brokerage methods due to the profusion of boats for sale, so we decided to pioneer what we believe is the first online auction of a sailing superyacht, and without a yacht broker’s direct involvement. The hidden reserve will be very competitive indeed for an effectively new yacht of global quality, and there is a strong chance that someone will secure this very accomplished yacht for a fraction of her replacement cost. Kestrel can be viewed in Palma, Majorca prior to bidding by arrangement with the auctioneers‘
‘It is fascinating to see Hamilton going down a similar route, albeit more of closed auction and still through the brokerage community. I suspect that both stories will have happy endings for both sets of buyers and sellers. The yachting industry is watching with considerable interest to see whether these exciting new methods of selling Superyachts will change how the market operates in the future.’
Sweeney Kincaid have many years of successful experience of online auctions, and in fact no longer hold any ‘physical’ auctions, with all sales taking place on the web. They plan to offer further superyachts for sale in 2014.
