Boat of the Week: This 269-Foot Superyacht Was Repossessed From a Saudi Prince. Now It Can Be Yours for $70 Million.
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All yachts over 260 feet are customized works of art that are tuned to an owner’s lifestyle and preferences, but few yachts devote the entire top two decks to an owner’s personal and private use. Exterior and interior designed by Winch, Sarafsa remains immaculately unchanged since the owner took delivery from Devenport in 2008. Now for sale with Burgess, the 269-foot yacht presents a ripe opportunity for refit.
The owner, Prince Fahad Bin Sultan, has cruised the Mediterranean aboard Sarafsa for the past 15 years. However, in a London lawsuit filed in November 2022, Credit Suisse Group AG claimed that the prince, governor of Saudi Arabia’s Tabuk province, owes $42 million in defaulted loans and interest. The bank repossessed the yacht, and the unusual boat is now available to buy for a cool $70 million (€65 million).
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“Sarafsa is the only 269-foot superyacht that has a two-story owner’s penthouse apartment,” designer Andrew Winch told Robb Report. “It’s a feature that doesn’t exist on 90 percent of yachts.”
The duplex includes an owner’s suite with a vast dressing room and walk-in wardrobe, a marble en suite with shower and full-sized bath, and a private salon forward with a bar. For new owners looking to maximize the space with minimum refit cost, there is a staff cabin and VIP that Winch suggests converting into a children’s cabin and private study. Open exterior decks forward and aft allow for a steady sea breeze, as the owner—who was last aboard his yacht in the summer of 2021—used to regularly enjoy.
The owner’s previous yacht of the same name was a 179-foot Damen delivered in 1997. That yacht was originally intended to be no larger than 98 feet so that it could be kept in the small bay near his home in Capriana, northern Italy, a perk that its final length prevented. It shared a Venetian-style Winch interior like Sarafsa’s—burgundy and old gold with a large amount of heavy dark mahogany paneling. The biggest difference between the two is Sarafsa’s immense 3,179 gross tonnages.
“Sarafsa is a really beamy yacht,” Rupert Nelson, sales broker at Burgess, told Robb Report during a tour of the boat while docked at Monaco’s Port Hercules. “Compared to other yachts of the same length it’s virtually double the volume. That’s the equivalent of an additional 197-foot yacht included within Sarafsa’s footprint.”
The vast 49-foot beam was defined by the owner’s request for a sun deck swimming pool that could remain filled while underway. To mitigate any roll, the boat was built to be wide and steady—at least 20% percent wider than most other 269-foot yachts.
The sun deck also contains a spa—hammam, sauna, massage room and a television mounted on ceiling tracks to be viewed from all angles. There is also a touch-and-go helipad aft. Two custom-built Winch-designed limousines and open tenders are stored on the main deck concealed behind opening hull doors, though there is a concealed crane on the sundeck to lift and store two additional tenders on the helipad when not in use.
Guests have the option of boarding the yacht from a waterside door starboard and stepping straight into a lift that ascends from the waterline to the sundeck. “It held the record as the longest lift on a 269-foot yacht until we designed Phoenix II,” says Winch. The service lift goes one level further, descending all the way to the tank deck, and a second starboard hull door specifically for diving.
The informal salon on the bridge deck features a bar that is designed around one of the owner’s favorite hotels in Milan. Guests sit in armchairs rather than bar stools and the bar tender stands at eye level on a lowered floor.
“We mimicked that hotel bar on his first yacht, and he loved it so much we installed two sunken bars aboard Sarafsa,” says Winch. The bridge deck salon also has a piano, fireplace (though never lit) and a “TV lounge”—one central television surrounded by 16 smaller televisions to “watch all television channels simultaneously.”
The owner’s love for the Italian Riviera is apparent throughout. On the owner’s deck, a winter garden reveals views with folding glass doors and was designed to feel like an Italian piazza courtyard. In a surreal twist of fate, the owner cited Castello Brown—a historic house museum in Portofino that was once owned by Andrew Winch’s step-grandfather—as his key inspiration for the architectural details and doors to the guest suites. “My parents were married at Castello Brown, so I know it well and it was a nice coincidental element for the design,” he says.
The six en suite cabins are dressed in cream, pink and pistachio-hued silks and named after Mediterranean destinations, such as Santorini, Portofino and Monaco. Marble colonnades and ornate flooring sit alongside intricate wooden inlaid surfaces. In contrast, the primary suite—named Sharma—has a bold color palette laced in thick velvet and a theatrical headboard. It’s in keeping with the dramatic deep reds and blues found elsewhere in the yacht, though Winch believes the interior lends itself to a light-filled, contemporary alternative.
“The wood paneling can easily be replaced with cream silk panels or painted white,” he says. “The architecture and joinery provide a perfect foundation without having to rip everything out.”
The lower deck houses accommodation for 23 crew and nine staff cabins with a continuous corridor that links the amidships engine room to the forward and aft areas, including a security office. Other key areas include a hair/beauty salon, a dedicated owner’s galley opposite the formal dining room and an 11-seat cinema.
In recent years the sun deck pool was replaced with a deep therapeutic jacuzzi that enjoys a counterflow current for fitness swimming. It sits under a retractable roof, sheltered from view and shaded from the sun, and mirrors the pool design aboard the 403-foot yacht Golden Odyssey, once owned by Prince Khaled bin Sultan, brother of Prince Fahad Bin Sultan, before it was sold at auction in Malta for an estimated €150 million ($162 million) in October 2022.
With an influx of gigayachts now coming onto the market, and American owners looking to build increasingly larger yachts, interest in refitting yachts like Golden Odyssey and Sarafsa is gaining real traction, says Nelson.
“Yacht sales over €100 million are the rarest of the rare, though we’ve had more in the last 18 months than have ever been done previously,” he says. “Refitting a yacht of Sarafsa’s size circumvents five years of new build agony and saves hundreds of millions in costs. Sometimes it makes sense to cut your cloth to what’s available and to save some money.”
Click here to see all the photos of Sarafsa.
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