A 2002 hull with a 2024 charter offering is an unusual combination, and SERENO is the argument for it. Benetti delivered her as a Classic 115 with a Stefano Righini profile and a Zuretti interior; two decades later a comprehensive refit across 2023 and 2024 gave her a new retractable hardtop bimini, refreshed interiors, upgraded audiovisual systems and Starlink. What she keeps is the thing a new build cannot buy: a dark navy hull, a joinery-heavy interior in figured cherry and burl, and the proportions of a yacht designed before beam became a marketing number.
Her toy list is the headline. An 11.8-metre Intrepid chase boat runs alongside her, which is a serious offshore boat rather than a tender with a sunpad. A water slide drops from the sundeck to the sea. An eight-by-five-metre inflatable platform with a netted sea pool and jet-ski docking turns the stern into a swimming enclosure, and two Sea-Doos, two Seabobs, paddleboards and full diving equipment fill the rest of the day. For a 35-metre yacht, that is a load-out normally seen on hulls fifteen metres longer.
The sundeck carries a jacuzzi with a fitted hardtop bimini over it, sunpads either side and an outdoor cinema that turns the deck into the evening room. Below it, alfresco dining runs on both the main and upper decks. Guests move between the water, the shade and the table without ever going inside if they do not want to.
When they do, SERENO offers three genuinely separate interior spaces rather than the single open volume that most yachts her size now provide. The main saloon holds a curved grey sectional and a burl coffee table under a coffered cherry deckhead. Forward of it, behind a panelled bulkhead with a glazed door, a formal dining room seats the full complement around an oval burl table. One deck up, the skylounge is a different room again – brown swivel chairs, a white sofa, candles on a round table, and doors that open onto the upper aft deck. Three rooms, three moods, all within a few steps.
Accommodation runs to five cabins for eleven guests. The full-beam master sits forward on the main deck with a mirrored headboard wall, a private dressing room and his-and-her bathrooms joined by a shared shower. Two VIP doubles on the lower deck carry deep blue bedspreads against the cherry panelling, and two twins – one with a Pullman berth for a child – complete the layout. Zero-speed stabilisers work both under way and at anchor, which on the Ligurian Sea in August is worth more than any specification on paper.
The refit also brought her connectivity up to current expectations. Starlink runs throughout, the audiovisual systems were replaced rather than patched, and the crew are set up for guests who need to work part of the week rather than disappear entirely. It is an unglamorous upgrade that changes who can realistically charter a boat in August.
Twin MTU engines give her 13 knots of comfortable cruise, 17 flat out, and a range near 3,800 nautical miles. Her crew of seven work her out of the South of France with flexibility to run into Italy, Corsica and Sardinia. She is not the newest hull on the Riviera. She is one of the better-equipped ones, and she reads as a considerably more expensive yacht than her rate suggests.
