BILLA cruises at 26.5 knots. Not maximum – cruise. Her top end is 31. On a 41-metre yacht those are unusual numbers, and they are the reason to look at her ahead of anything else in her bracket.
Admiral built her in 2009 in aluminium: 41.4 metres on an 8.54-metre beam, 312 gross tons. Light, long and narrow, with a planing hull underneath and enough power to use it. Most yachts of this length settle around 12 to 15 knots and call it cruising. BILLA does more than twice that, and she does it as a matter of routine rather than as a party trick. Stabilisers work at anchor and underway both, so the pace does not come at the cost of the week.
What that buys is range within a day. The Cyclades open up. Croatia stops being a series of compromises about which island to skip. A three-hour passage becomes ninety minutes, and the difference lands squarely in the part of the day guests actually remember.
Luca Dini drew the interior, and it is restrained in a way that has aged unusually well – taupe and cream lacquer, recessed lighting, no burl and no gloss theatre. The main salon runs forward into a formal dining table. Five cabins sleep eleven below, each in the same quiet palette with its own en-suite. Seven crew.
Her sundeck is the largest space aboard and does most of the work: a jacuzzi set into teak, loungers around it, and clear water on three sides. The swim platform is generous for her length and drops guests straight into the sea rather than negotiating them down a ladder. The aft decks seat the full party twice over.
Her toys are a short, sharp list rather than a warehouse: a 5.7m Dariel tender with a 170hp Mercruiser, a Sea-Doo XPR 255hp two-seat jet ski, a 2019 Seabob F5S, two inflatable paddleboards, a three-person towable sofa, water skis and a single-rider tube.
Admiral builds at Marina di Carrara, in the marble country north of Viareggio, and the yard has spent most of its life making fast aluminium boats for owners who wanted to arrive first. BILLA is that brief executed without hedging. Nothing about her is trying to be a displacement yacht in disguise: the beam is narrow, the hull is cut to plane, the weight is kept off, and the payoff arrives every time she leaves an anchorage.
The speed also changes the shape of a charter in a way that is easy to underrate. A yacht that cruises at 12 knots spends the middle of the day moving. A yacht that cruises at 26 spends it stopped. Same itinerary, same distances, entirely different week – and the hours it hands back are the good ones, in the water rather than watching the wake.
A 2020 refit went through her. She works the East Mediterranean and Adriatic in both seasons.
Weekly rates start at 95,000 euros, which makes her the least expensive yacht of her length and pace in the fleet by a clear margin. That is the trade being offered: a 2009 hull and a modest toy locker, against speed almost nothing else at 41 metres can match and an interior that does not look its age. For a group that intends to cover ground rather than sit in one bay, it is a straightforward calculation.
