The first Custom Line Saetta 128 entered the water on 30 September at the Ferretti Group Superyacht Yard in Ancona, in front of the team that built her and the architects who drew her. The launch matters beyond the ceremony. The 128 is the first hull of Custom Line planing line under its Saetta name, a model announced at the 2025 Monaco Yacht Show, and it arrives with commercial proof already attached: three units of the model have been sold. In a segment where new designs often wait a season for validation, the order book has spoken first.
A new hand on the outside
The most consequential choice on the 128 is who drew it. Exterior design is by SY Design, the Bologna studio of Matteo Sassone and Veronica Yien, in its first collaboration with Custom Line. The established Saetta models, the 106 and the 140, carry exteriors by Francesco Paszkowski, so the 128 marks a deliberate changing of the guard inside a line the brand is repositioning. Naval architecture sits with the Ferretti Group Engineering Department and the Product Strategy Department led by Piero Ferrari. Interiors are by Chiara Massarani of ACPV Architects Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel, supported by the Custom Line Atelier, which handles the bespoke development for each owner.
SY Design has given the yacht the visual signatures the brief demanded. A sloping stern, extensive screen printed glazing, and a central mast that Sassone has described as inspired by a shark fin define the profile, with lighter spoiler elements tying the new model back to the sportier Saetta yachts below it in spirit if not in size. The numbers frame the intent: 39.80 metres overall, a maximum beam of 7.69 metres, and an internal volume held below the 300 GT threshold, the regulatory line that keeps a yacht of this size in a simpler class of operation. Volume discipline, rather than outright length, is the design story here.
Three decks arranged around the outdoors
The layout spends its area where owners actually live. On the main deck, a 33 square metre aft cockpit leads into a 40 square metre main saloon with its dining area, and the owner suite sits forward with a dressing area, an ensuite bathroom, and full height windows. The upper deck pairs a sky lounge of about 20 square metres with a 40 square metre aft terrace, while forward on the same level a 25 square metre bow lounge with a U shaped sofa can take an optional wellness area with a hydromassage tub. A 30 square metre sundeck completes the outdoor tally. At the stern, a beach club and a multipurpose area sized for a tender and a Jet Ski, extendable with a swim platform, close the loop between deck and water.
Below deck, three VIP cabins and one further guest cabin join the owner suite to sleep 10 guests, rising to 11 with an optional Pullman berth, and six crew including the captain are quartered forward. ACPV offers the interiors in two set moods. The first yacht carries the Perfect Mood: lacquered finishes in chocolate and mocha tones, walnut and maple woods, white marbles including Sivec, and ivory wallpaper with a three dimensional texture. A Classic mood, built on oak and more linear wallpapers, is the alternative. Throughout, the furniture is designed to float, raised off the floor in a visual echo of a planing hull at speed, a small idea executed consistently enough to become the interior signature.
Performance, stated as preliminary
Power is twin MTU 16V 2000 M96L engines of 2,638 horsepower each. The yard quotes a top speed of 22 knots and a cruising speed of 19 knots, figures it flags as preliminary pending trials, and a range of 1,000 nautical miles at an economical 11 knots has been published for the model. The yacht can also be certified to IMO Tier III standards by fitting a selective catalytic reduction system, which the yard says can cut nitrogen oxide emissions by up to 70 percent. For a 22 knot planing yacht, that option is the honest version of an environmental claim: an engineering fit, specified and measurable, rather than a slogan.
What the launch says about the range
According to BOATPro figures reported at the launch, Custom Line currently has 14 yachts on order or in build, the largest of them a unit of the 50 metre Navetta series, the brand displacement flagship. The Saetta 128 fills the middle of the planing family with a new design language and a volume held under a threshold owners care about, and it does so with three sales banked before the first hull touched the water. Yacht and Ocean will watch the delivery and the first trial numbers, because the preliminary figures are the one part of this story still to be proven. On the evidence of Ancona, the rest of the proposition (a fresh exterior voice, disciplined volume, and outdoor space counted in tens of square metres per deck) is already built.
Photography: Courtesy of Custom Line.
