Last year, ONBOARD explored how sailing superyachts, though a minority in build numbers, were quietly setting the pace for the industry’s sustainability standards and design culture. Twelve months on, that shift has not slowed. If anything, it has sharpened into something more philosophical. The conversation has moved beyond what yards are building, and into why, and for whom.This year, ONBOARD speaks with five yards carrying that conversation forward: KM Yacht Builders, Balk Shipyard, YYachts, JFA Yachts, and Fountaine Pajot | Dufour. Between them sits a striking range of approaches, Dutch aluminium expedition craft, Polish-rooted refit specialists, German carbon-composite purists, French multihull pioneers, and a yard built entirely around the art of the ReCraft. Yet acrossevery conversation, a common thread keeps surfacing: owners want less noise, less complexity, and more truth in how their yachts perform.
A Changing Brief: What Owners Are Really Asking For
Five years ago, the design brief for a sailing superyacht often began with square metres and guest cabins. That starting point has shifted.At KM Yacht Builders, Jildou Huisman has watched the emphasis move toward rangeand resilience. “Our customers place an even greater emphasis on expedition capability, safety, and redundancy, while also increasingly valuing sustainable technologies such as hybrid propulsion,” she says. “Their yachts are designed not only to travel farther, but to do so with maximum reliability, comfort, and self-sufficiency.”
YYachts has seen a similar reordering of priorities, though framed around a return to sailing itself. Founder Michael Schmidt and Head of Design Francesca Modica describe a brief that has come full circle. “The biggest change is that owners are once again talking about sailing,” they explain. “Five years ago, many projects started with discussions about interior volume, guest accommodation and onboard amenities. Today, more owners are asking how the yacht sails, how easy it is to handle and how much time they can spend actually enjoying the experience rather than managing a complex floating infrastructure.” Clients now want yachts that run on smaller crews and demand less upkeep, they add, and weight and efficiency have become part of nearly every conversation. “Sustainability is part of the conversation, but often the most sustainable yacht is simply a lighter yacht that requires fewer resources to build and operate.”At JFA Yachts, the brief has moved less dramatically, but two details stand out.“I don’t see a large difference in owner brief,” the yard notes. “Maybe more solar panels and more sensors for sail tuning.” More telling is the rising interest in scale: JFA, a specialist in large multihulls, reports a steady uptick in enquiries for exactly that category, a sign that what was once a niche request is becoming mainstream.Fountaine Pajot | Dufour points to a brief that now extends well beyond the design table and into the build process itself. Erwan de Vuillefroy, the yard’s Product and Operational Marketing Manager, highlights the growing role of the captain in shaping a project from the inside. “We therefore encourage the captain to be involved throughout the build so that they know the yacht inside and out before delivery,” he says, noting that owners are also kept close to the process through regular updates and photographs as construction progresses.
The New Cruising Purist
If the brief has changed, so has the buyer behind it. Across several of this year’s conversations, yards describe a client base less interested in spectacle and more interested in substance, owners chasing what KM Yachtbuilderscalls a “pure” cruising experience.For KM Yachtbuilders, this isn’t a new trend so much as a long-held identity. “Our owners have always leaned more towards the ‘pure’ side of sailing than the luxury side,” says Huisman. 
“In fact, this philosophy inspired the introduction of our semi-custom Pure range in 2015. They are sailors who value adventure, independence, and authentic experiences over excess. At the same time, they demand a yacht that is safe, reliable, and capable of taking them to the most remote corners of the world.”YYachts sees a related but distinct profile emerging, owners arriving from elsewherein the luxury world and discovering that more isn’t actually more. “We are seeing a growing number of entrepreneurs and business owners who have already experienced every form of luxury,” Schmidt and Modica observe. “What they are looking for now is authenticity. Owners value intelligent solutions, ease of handling and thoughtful design over complexity.” Many of these clients, they add, have already owned motor yachts or larger production boats, and have arrived at a simple realisation: “true luxury is not necessarily having more systems, more crew or more space.
“In fact, this philosophy inspired the introduction of our semi-custom Pure range in 2015. They are sailors who value adventure, independence, and authentic experiences over excess. At the same time, they demand a yacht that is safe, reliable, and capable of taking them to the most remote corners of the world.”YYachts sees a related but distinct profile emerging, owners arriving from elsewherein the luxury world and discovering that more isn’t actually more. “We are seeing a growing number of entrepreneurs and business owners who have already experienced every form of luxury,” Schmidt and Modica observe. “What they are looking for now is authenticity. Owners value intelligent solutions, ease of handling and thoughtful design over complexity.” Many of these clients, they add, have already owned motor yachts or larger production boats, and have arrived at a simple realisation: “true luxury is not necessarily having more systems, more crew or more space.It is having the freedom to sail wherever you want, with the people you choose, while remaining connected to the sea… For them, sailing is not a backdrop to luxury, it is the luxury.”JFA Yachts frames the same shift through the lens of propulsion rather than psychology. “We are convinced that the only way to have a green boat is to go for asailing yacht, so we are expecting more clients jumping into the sail boat market, but this is coming very slowly,” the yard says. The arrival of dependable electric propulsion, paired with sail, is what finally makes a genuinely pure cruising experience viable at scale, and JFA expects that combination to draw in a wider poolof owners over time.
The Eternal Tension: Performance, Volume, and Weight
Ask any naval architect what makes a sailing superyacht difficult to design, and the answer eventually comes back to the same word: weight. This year’s conversations make clear that the old trade-off between a fast hull and a voluminous one hasn’t disappeared, it has simply become a more sophisticated negotiation.At KM Yacht Builders, the starting point is structural rather than aesthetic. “Safety isalmost always the starting point of our design process, which explains why so many owners are drawn to aluminium yachts,” says Huisman.
Only once that foundation isset does attention turn to the interior. “From there, attention turns to the interior arrangement, where practicality takes precedence over sheer volume. Our owners value smart, functional spaces that enhance comfort, efficiency, and self-sufficiencyduring extended cruising and offshore expeditions.”YYachts takes the firmest line on this question of any yard interviewed, treating weight not as one factor among many but as the defining constraint. “The fundamental tension remains the same: weight,” Schmidt and Modica say. “Every owner wants the comfort and volume of a motor yacht, while also wanting the sailing performance of a lightweight yacht. The reality is that physics still matters.” They point to two decades of sailing yachts quietly growing heavier as interiors and systems expanded, producing, in their words, a boat that “looks like a sailing yacht but behaves more like a motor yacht under sail.” Their answer is design discipline rather than new technology: “every design decision should be measured against its impact on weight…The future of sailing yacht design is not finding ways to add more, it is having the discipline to leave unnecessary things out.”JFA Yachts, working at the build stage rather than the drawing board, sees the sametension play out in the shed. “As a shipyard, weight is the issue, and a sailing boat needs to be seriously monitored during construction to reach the weight targets,” the yard notes, suggesting the question is best put to naval architects directly, but confirming that weight discipline is enforced long after the design is signed off. Fountaine Pajot | Dufour, building largely in the multihull space, frames the tension slightly differently, less a fight between speed and space than one between volume and seakeeping.
“Having a seaworthy and high-performing yacht remains fundamental. It is part of our DNA,” de Vuillefroy says. “The main challenge lies in maximizing onboard volumes to provide owners with as much living space and natural light as possible.” The yard’s response has been to invest heavily in hull development, work that the brand says allows it to “improve comfort while maintaining excellent seakeeping capabilities and offshore performance.
Materials: Convention, Carbon, and What Comes Next
Materials remain one of the clearest signals of where a yard’s values sit, and this year’s responses show an industry still anchored to aluminium and composite, even as newer fibres edge toward relevance. KM Yachtbuilders makes the strongest case yet for aluminium as a sustainability material in its own right, not merely a structural one. “Aluminium offers several important advantages. It is lightweight, exceptionally durable, and fully recyclable, making it an attractive choice for environmentally conscious owners,” says Huisman. “In fact, our yachts are built using approximately 70% recycled aluminiumas standard, significantly reducing their environmental footprint without compromising strength or performance.”YYachts, by contrast, builds its case around carbon composite as the technology that unlocks everything else. “Carbon composite construction continues to be the most important technology in modern sailing yacht building,” Schmidt and Modica say. “The benefits go far beyond performance.
Weight reduction improves efficiency, reduces loads, lowers energy consumption and ultimately enhances every aspect of the sailing experience.” Their criticism is reserved not for materials but for what gets built around them: an industry, they argue, that “still relies too heavily on complexity,” accumulating systems and equipment that add weight without adding value. “The most advanced yacht is not necessarily the one with themost technology. Often it is the yacht that achieves the same result with less.”JFA Yachts occupies a useful middle ground between the two positions, defending aluminium’s conventional reputation while acknowledging composite’s rise. “Aluminium, even if she looks conventional, is for us still the best material, she is light, she can be recycled,” the yard says, before noting that “composite on large boats, including the use of carbon, is popping up,” with clear gains in weight and performance offset by the resource intensity of moulding and the acoustic challenges of carbon, which requires extra insulation.
On newer natural fibres, JFA iscandid about the limits: “new materials such as flax fibre and basalt are still under development. Could be used on pieces with lower strength… but unfortunately not possible to use these materials for full hull or deck.”Fountaine Pajot | Dufour points toward where those limits may eventually give way. The yard expects the next generation of builds to lean further into “recycled and recyclable resins, as well as natural fibres replacing traditional fiberglass wherever possible,” de Vuillefroy says, changes the brand frames as compatible with, rather than a compromise against, the performance and durability the segment demands.
Refit’s Rising Share
With fewer specialist sailing yards left standing, two yards in particular described refit not as a fallback, but as a discipline now central to their identity. At KM Yacht Builders, refit has always sat alongside new build rather than beneath it. “We have always been a shipyard with all yacht-building disciplines under one roof, and yacht refits have long been an important part of our business,” says Huisman.
What has changed is scale: “Over the past four to five years, we have seen a significant increase in demand for refit projects, particularly involving larger yachts. As a result, our dedicated refit division has nearly doubled in size.”Balk Shipyard has built its entire identity around this category, branding its approach as the “ReCraft.” The yard describes a market defined as much by scarcity as by appetite.
What has changed is scale: “Over the past four to five years, we have seen a significant increase in demand for refit projects, particularly involving larger yachts. As a result, our dedicated refit division has nearly doubled in size.”Balk Shipyard has built its entire identity around this category, branding its approach as the “ReCraft.” The yard describes a market defined as much by scarcity as by appetite.“This is a specialist market, and while owners are investing more heavily in refits, they are incredibly selective about who they entrust with this investment,” the yard explains. “The fact that there are fewer sailing yacht shipyards means those still operating are busy, capacity is limited, and lead times are long.” For owners unwilling to wait years for a new build, the calculation is straightforward: “Choosing to ReCraft a pedigree sailing yacht through Balk Shipyard, owners save up to 75% of precious time, and money, compared to building a completely new vessel.” The yard points to a recently redelivered 50-metre-plus pedigree Dutch-built sailing yacht as proof of the approach in action, alongside a pipeline of new enquiries and bookings. Crucially, Balk frames this not as a pivot but as a sharpening of focus: “We are not changing our offering but reinforcing our core strengths. Balk Shipyard delivers complete transformations while respecting the pedigree and story of a vessel. We write the next chapter for our clients.”
The Next Generation of the Build
Asked to look furthest ahead, every yard in this year’s feature pointed toward some version of the same idea: a sailing superyacht that asks for less, not more.KM Yachtbuilders frames the shift in generational terms. “We are seeing a shift towards a younger generation of owners who are increasingly conscious of their environmental impact and the legacy they leave behind,” says Huisman. “They want to explore the world under sail, operate as autonomously as possible, and do so with respect for the oceans, nature, and the communities they visit. Their philosophy is simple: leave nothing behind but footprints in the sand.”Balk Shipyard sees its own category, modernised refit, as part of that future rather than a stopgap before it. “We anticipate that a proportion of the next generation of sailing yachts will, in fact, be the yachts we have today, modernised and brought upto the standards of tomorrow,” the yard says, pointing to growing conversations about the environmental cost of new construction as a driver behind that thinking. “For some owners, extending the life of a proven vessel to an exceptional standard is the more suitable option.” YYachts offers the most pointed articulation of the philosophy running through this year’s conversations: subtraction as innovation. “The next generation of sailing yachts will be lighter, simpler and more owner-focused,” Schmidt and Modica say. “The real shift will be philosophical rather than technological… Owners will increasingly ask: Do I really need this system?
Do I really need this complexity? Does it improve the sailing experience?” Their conclusion doubles as something close to a mission statement for the segment: “The industry has spent decades adding things to yachts. The next decade will be about knowing what to leave out.” JFA Yachts looks toward the rig itself as the next frontier. “The next generation will use new type of rig and full automation,” the yard predicts. “There is very few innovative rig yet, but for sure this will grow”, a reminder that even in a segment focused on simplification, there is still room for genuine technical reinvention.Fountaine Pajot | Dufour anticipates a build defined by quietly smarter systems rather than visibly different yachts. The yard expects “more efficient and increasingly compact energy solutions” to meet growing onboard power demands, from air conditioning to watermakers to onboard spas, alongside continued movement toward “recycled and recyclable resins, as well as natural fibres.” The aim, de Vuillefroy says, is “reducing environmental impact while maintaining the high standards of performance, comfort, and durability expected in this segment.”
WRAPPING UP
Read together, these five conversations describe an industry converging on a surprisingly unified idea, even as each yard arrives there by a different route. KM Yachtbuilders gets there through aluminium and expedition resilience. Balk Shipyard gets there by extending the life of yachts that already exist. YYachts gets there through carbon, weight discipline, and a philosophy of deliberate subtraction. JFA Yachts gets there through propulsion and rig innovation. Fountaine Pajot | Dufour gets there through hull design and the quiet evolution of materials. What unites them is a shared scepticism toward complexity for its own sake, and a shared conviction that the best sailing superyachts of the next decade will be defined less by what they add than by what they have the confidence to leave out. Fair winds and following seas…
