Delivered by Perini Navi in 2000 and reworked through a multi-year refit finished in 2022, ALMYRA II carries a rare distinction: she is the only yacht from this storied Italian yard rigged with carbon 3Di Ocean 700 racing sails, and one of just 61 hulls the shipyard ever built. The result is a 50-metre ketch that sails as convincingly as she anchors, a genuine motorsailer rather than a sailing yacht with an engine fitted as an afterthought.
Her retractable keel is the detail that changes what a week aboard can look like. Draft drops to reach shallow bays and quiet coves that deeper-keeled yachts her size simply cannot enter, while a 3,200-nautical-mile range means she is equally capable of a genuine ocean passage. Few 50-metre yachts offer both ends of that spectrum.
Below, the refit has kept faith with Perini’s own design language rather than erasing it. Warm mahogany joinery runs through the salon, the formal dining room and the bridge deck, giving the interior a settled, timeless character rather than a showroom finish. The main salon opens onto deep, low sofas arranged around a fitted screen; forward of it, a round dining table seats the full complement of guests beneath portholes rather than picture windows, a detail that marks her out as a sailing yacht built before the era of full-beam glass walls. A varnished bar, its stools bolted to the sole for a yacht that is built to actually sail, sits just off the salon, and the raised wheelhouse above carries the instruments and helm chairs of a yacht crewed by people who use them.
Five ensuite cabins sleep up to twelve guests. The master suite runs a full stateroom in the same mahogany finish as the public rooms, with a separate seating and work area that converts easily into a private office or a second lounge, a flexibility rare in a yacht of this vintage. The remaining four cabins split between doubles and twins, each finished in the same navy and timber palette, and each with a porthole rather than a picture window, in keeping with a hull designed first for sailing performance.
On deck, the aft cockpit and sun deck do the entertaining. Teak decking, deep cushioned seating and a shaded dining table under sail give way, at anchor, to a beach club stocked for genuinely active days: two Seabob F5S units, an eFoil, fourteen sets of snorkelling gear, two chase tenders on 115hp Yamahas, a Tiwal sailing dinghy for two and a pair of Gocycle electric bikes for exploring ashore. A sustainability policy that strips single-use plastic out of the operation in favour of refillable, eco-certified products runs through the whole yacht, a genuine point of difference for a charter guest who cares how a yacht is run as well as how she looks.
ALMYRA II carries a crew of ten led by a captain with a sailing background, a complement built around handling her rig rather than simply running her systems. That distinction matters on a yacht like this: she rewards a charter guest who wants to feel the boat sail, not just watch the coastline from an anchor chain. She charters the West and East Mediterranean through the summer season, repositioning to the Middle East for the winter.
