The right yacht. A clearer course.

A brokerage house, not a listing service

Acquamarina S.r.l. is an independent brokerage house with its registered office in Via del Lauro, in the centre of Milan. We work across Italy and the wider Mediterranean, in the segment where mistakes become expensive: premium motor yachts and superyachts between roughly 15 and 40 metres.

Independence is not a slogan here; it is the structure of the business. We are not tied to a shipyard, a charter fleet or a captive inventory we need to move. When we recommend a yacht, it is because the evidence supports it — not because we have a commercial reason to place it. When we advise against one, the reasoning comes with it: the survey risk, the pricing history, the tax question, the refit that is closer than the seller suggests.

Our clients are entrepreneurs, investors and private owners — people who are sophisticated about capital but do not need to be experts in gearbox hours or flag-state paperwork. That is our job. We handle the search, the analysis, the negotiation and the coordination of surveys, sea trials and documentation, through to closing and handover. You handle one decision, made properly.

And because we are a small house by intention, you deal with a person, not a process. The name on the engagement is the name in the room.

What we do

Service 1 — Yacht Acquisition

Representation for buyers, from brief to handover.

Buying a yacht through the seller's broker means negotiating against the only professional in the room. We change that arithmetic. Acquamarina acts for you: we translate your plans — where you will cruise, who will be on board, who will run the boat — into a precise operational brief, then search the public market and the off-market layer beneath it. Every candidate is assessed on evidence: asking price against comparable sales, specification against your programme, condition and history against the age of the boat. We coordinate the survey and sea trial, structure the negotiation, and manage documentation through to closing. You see fewer yachts with us. That is the point.

Service 2 — Yacht Sales

Your yacht, positioned and sold properly.

A yacht does not sell because it is advertised; it sells because it is positioned. Before your yacht appears anywhere, we establish what the market will actually pay — from comparable transactions and current competing inventory, not optimism — and we prepare the boat to withstand a buyer's scrutiny: presentation, specification, service records, documentation. Then we choose the route to market together: a full public campaign, a quiet placement among qualified contacts, or a fully off-market sale that never appears on a screen. We qualify buyers before they step aboard, manage viewings, negotiate on your instructions, and coordinate survey, contract and closing to the final handover.

Service 3 — Buyer Advisory

Independent judgement before you commit capital.

Sometimes the most valuable engagement is the one that happens before any yacht is chosen — occasionally before the decision to buy at all. Our advisory work examines the whole ownership equation: what a given size and type will really cost to run, berth and crew; how VAT and documentation affect the purchase; where the refit exposure sits in a boat of that age; and what the resale market is likely to look like when you eventually sell. It is the conversation the industry rarely offers, because it can end with "not yet" or "not this one". We consider that a success, not a lost sale.

Service 4 — Off-Market Search

The market you don't see on the portals.

A meaningful share of interesting yachts never reaches the public market. Owners sell quietly for reasons of privacy, timing or simple preference — and those boats change hands through direct approaches and professional networks. Acquamarina conducts discreet searches on behalf of buyers: identifying yachts that match the brief, approaching owners confidentially, and managing the conversation so that neither side's position is exposed. Discretion here is not decoration; it is negotiating strategy. The less the market knows about your search, the stronger your position when you find the right boat.

Service 5 — Transaction Coordination

From accepted offer to clean handover.

The period between a handshake and a closing is where yacht transactions are won, lost or quietly degraded. Surveys must be instructed and interpreted, sea trials arranged and attended, findings negotiated, contracts aligned with what was actually agreed, VAT and registration documents verified, funds moved safely, and the handover itself organised — down to inventories, codes and crew introductions. Acquamarina coordinates each of these steps and keeps them on schedule, working alongside your legal and tax advisers. The objective is simple: no surprises after signature, and a first day of ownership that feels like the beginning of something, not the end of a fight.

Why Acquamarina

We have no fleet to fill, no shipyard to please and no inventory that has to move this quarter. That single structural fact changes every recommendation we make. An intermediary who profits only when a particular boat sells will always, in the end, be selling you that boat. Because our engagement is with you, we are free to compare the whole market — including yachts other brokers represent and yachts not publicly for sale at all — and free to conclude that the best decision this season is patience. Independence is not an attitude. It is an incentive structure, and ours points at you.

Forty listings in your inbox is not service; it is the transfer of work from the broker to the client. We operate the other way around. We start from your programme — cruising grounds, guests, crew, budget for running costs as well as purchase — and reduce the market to the few yachts that genuinely fit it. Each one arrives with reasoning attached: why this boat, why this price, what we would question, what we would negotiate. If we cannot explain why a yacht deserves your time, it does not get your time. Fewer options, properly argued, produce better decisions than abundance ever does.

Yachting is an industry of beautiful photographs and confident adjectives. We deal in the other material: comparable transactions, time on market, price reductions, service records, engine hours, survey findings, VAT documentation, flag and registry papers. An asking price is a claim, not a fact — the beginning of the analysis, never the end of it. Two apparently identical yachts can differ by hundreds of thousands of euros in real value once history and paperwork are read properly, and by more than that in what they will cost to own. Our recommendations are written so that you can see the evidence and challenge the reasoning.

Discretion is often reduced to "no advertising". It is more useful than that: it is the deliberate control of information as part of negotiating strategy. A seller who is visibly in a hurry loses money; a buyer whose enthusiasm is known loses leverage; an owner whose boat is publicly for sale too long watches its perceived value erode. We manage who knows what, and when — quiet sales that never touch a portal, searches conducted without your name attached, viewings arranged away from curious eyes. Confidentiality is a professional obligation for us. Information control, though, is something more: it is an advantage.

Acquamarina is a house, not a network. The person who takes your brief is the person who searches the market, stands next to you at the survey, argues your position in the negotiation and answers the phone when something needs solving at ten in the evening. In transactions of this size, accountability that is spread across a team dissolves precisely when it is needed most. Ours is concentrated by design. You will always know who is responsible for your file — and that person's name does not change between the first conversation and the handover.

A different way to read the market

The yacht market looks transparent — thousands of listings, prices attached — and is anything but. Asking prices routinely sit far from transaction prices, and the distance varies by builder, size and season. The most interesting boats are often absent from the portals entirely. Identical-looking listings conceal entirely different realities of maintenance, ownership structure and tax status. Reading this market well is not a matter of browsing more; it is a matter of knowing what the numbers mean.

That is the discipline Acquamarina brings. We track what actually sells and for how much, how long comparable yachts wait, and where sellers have quietly repositioned. We treat every specification sheet as a document to be verified rather than believed. And we pay as much attention to a yacht's exit — its future marketability when you sell — as to its entrance. A yacht is not only a purchase; it is a position you will one day need to leave. We think about both doors before you walk through the first one.

Seeing a yacht is not evaluating a yacht

Anyone can arrange a viewing. You step aboard, the teak is scrubbed, the fenders are new, the saloon smells faintly of polish — and the boat makes its argument directly to your instincts. Viewings are designed to be persuasive. They are also, on their own, almost useless as a basis for a decision.

Evaluation is different work. It happens in engine rooms and service files as much as on aft decks: hours against calendar age, the gap between scheduled and actual maintenance, the osmosis or corrosion story a hull tells at survey, the generator that was replaced — or pointedly wasn't. It happens in documents: build specification against present equipment, VAT status with the paper to prove it, registry, liens, the continuity of ownership. And it happens in the market: what this exact model, in this condition, has actually changed hands for.

Our rule with clients is simple: enthusiasm is allowed, but it goes last. First the boat must survive the file. When it does — and the right ones do — you can fall for it with a clear conscience, knowing the decision would look as good on paper as the yacht did in the marina.