Ares Yachts’ grand debut into superyacht society

Meeting RINA Charter Class, Simena is a heck of a debut yacht for a builder whose heartland has traditionally been fast steel and composite boats for military and emergency services. With her steel hull and composite superstructure, she neatly encapsulates two of the yard’s great strengths.

It has required a big step-up for Ares to achieve superyachtfinish quality, but here Simena does not disappoint. With an efficient build time of 28 months and an asking price of $45 million (£33.4m), broker Sean McCarter of Northrop & Johnson estimates she represents a substantial reduction in price compared to a Northern European equivalent.

Taka Yacht Design of Istanbul is responsible for the exterior looks of the boat, which owe something to the traditional Turkish gulet. Hallmarks such as the deep sheer line, weighty mahogany bulwarks and the clipper bow are elegant and in full proportion to the ketch rig, whose mainmast towers almost 60 metres above the water.

“Although clipper ships were an effective inspiration for her styling details, the DNA of her hull shape comes from wooden ketch designs,” says Taka founder Tanju Kalaycıoğlu. “The concept behind her superstructure is designed to serve contemporary cruising requirements.”

A gloriously glossy exterior paint job highlights Simena’s graceful lines. AkzoNobel supplied all the primers and fairing compounds, as well as all interior paints. The exterior finish uses Awlgrip’s Topcoat G-Line in Light Ivory, while the superstructure is finished in Awlgrip Topcoat Stark White. The masts received Awlcraft SE+HDT Clear in Light Ivory, and all exterior varnished surfaces were finished with Awlwood.

Although this is Ares’ first big yacht, I would be doing the shipyard a disservice if I didn’t point out that it originally built small yachts at its launch in 2006. Nor is it a stranger to superyacht interiors, having built several under contract for expedition yachting brand Arksen. Admittedly, there’s a scale difference, but the experience with fine leather, varied woods and upholstery is all there.

As Şahinkaya Orhun tells me repeatedly, all the crafts were already in house. “The biggest challenge was not technical capability,” she says. “It was mindset. In superyachts, you still need engineering discipline, but it has to be matched with a completely different level of precision, detailing and finish quality. Every surface, every transition and every material has to be consistent, controlled and visually refined. That requires a different way of thinking across the entire organisation.”

“There was a classic exterior and we wanted to reinvent the wheel with a modern take on the interior”

Luckily, the interior design was guided by industry veteran Design Unlimited. As she was built on spec, the British studio developed widely appealing styling featuring a muted palette, brass detailing, stained oak panelling, woven leather and textured wall coverings.

“We had quite a tight brief,” says Design Unlimited associate designer John Everett. “There was a classic exterior and we wanted to reinvent the wheel with a modern take on the interior. But we had the freedom of creativity, because there was no client saying: ‘I’ve got some art we could put here’.”

Take the owner’s cabin, for example: lit with deep oval portholes down each side, its joinery is routed into curved profiles with clean fiddles and the central panels covered with fine woven leather from Lance. Bronze lacquered panel work mimics the metal without the glitter. It’s a modern take on a classically neutral palette. I particularly like the owner’s bathtub, whimsically arranged on a dais with a view of the rest of the cabin.

“The biggest challenge was not technical capability, it was mindset”

“Throughout the boat, we designed a lot of furniture,” continues Everett. “In the master cabin, the bed is the centrepiece with woven metal mesh encased in glass above the headboard. It catches your eye as soon as you walk in. There’s a sofa outboard – we had a few goes at getting the ergonomics right for that!”

There are four guest cabins in this part of the yacht, though they remain well separated from the owner’s area by a heavy door and a corridor. A modest difference between standard and VIP cabins translates into a few extra square metres and a larger shower room. A fifth occasional guest cabin aft can otherwise be turned to crew use.

The staircase is really the linchpin of the lower deck, resembling a cross with its two athwartships arms angled up to the main deck and the other two angled down to the central corridor.

“The shape of the stairs came from Taka, but we asked how we could make it really special,” says Everett. “It was challenging geometry in places, and the finishes were quite difficult. We designed a gorgeous integrated handrail feature, and the staircase included custom fabric, leather and woodwork, and a custom light feature.”

Besides guiding guests below to their cabins and out to the side bathing platform (the stern shape precludes a modern beach club), the stairs are meant to emphasise motion and underline the four cardinal points of the boat.

The light presides over it all, formed of sinuous layers of black painted mesh. “We were inspired by the idea of currents flowing around the Mediterranean,” says Everett. “They’re simplified in their form here, but the idea was to communicate a sense of gentle oceanic motion.”

Design Unlimited’s styling features brass detailing, oak panelling, woven leather and textured wall coverings

Ares is very sensitive to the distinction between crew and guest, and a goal of the design was ensuring that privacy can be maintained easily – as much as can be expected on a sailing yacht. The staircase is one example, with the galley, mess and accommodation for nine crew laid out aft of the stairs. There is also a smaller service staircase that leads into the saloon.

Up on deck, efforts have also been made to remove sailing functions from the main guest areas. Heavy sheets from the main, mizzen and genoa run to captive winches, while the halyards and reefing lines are turned onto giant Bamar winches at the foot of each mast. Push-button controls are accessible in the wheelhouse and at twin helm stations on the sundeck.

Just the size of the hydraulic rams for the backstay makes their presence felt – that and the genoa sheets running at ankle height past the side exits from the saloon. It frees up the generous cockpit and aft deck, where we spend much of the day basking easily in the light reflected off a thousand glass balconies ringing Port Hercule.

Two burnished mahogany tables here can be combined to seat 14 for a meal, and further aft are more sunpads around a glorious sunken spa tub nestled into the deck. There’s also a wet bar and grill for entertaining.

Only a few key spots are clearly designed to accommodate crew and guests cheek-by-jowl. The wheelhouse is one, where Captain Paolo Martinuzzi’s domain contains a broad, clubby sofa in attractively cracked chocolate leather. Here an owner who loves their boat can recline, out of sight of the other guests, enjoying the view of the horizon and keeping an eye on navigation.

The sundeck above is another such area. As the captain demonstrates his docking prowess from the helm up here, using the feed from some of the 39 cameras positioned around the boat, we relax at a mahogany table under the shade of the opening hardtop. A huge expanse of sunpads spreads aft.

There’s barely a breath of wind to trouble the water off Monaco during my visit, but Captain Martinuzzi spells out the performance under sail during the 1,000-nautical-mile voyage from the yard in Antalya, Turkey, to France. “The boat is quick,” he says. “Twelve to 15 knots of wind is ideal for sailing at 10 knots, but we managed up to 14 knots on a broad reach. I am quite sure that we could do 16 knots!”

Just as importantly, Simena is extremely stable and comfortable in offshore conditions – as well she should be with 90 tonnes of fixed keel and a draught of 4.7 metres. She is designed to heel no more than 20 degrees, at which point you would need to get a reef in. The mizzen rig and twin headsails give plentiful sail options and allow you to jockey canvas for balance and speed.

There are almost as many engine options thanks to the parallel hybrid powertrain. The main workhorse is the 882-horsepower MAN engine giving a top speed of 14 knots, but there is also a 220-horsepower electric motor capable of 8.5 knots in near silence.

“The boat is completely silent in electric mode,” says the captain. “It’s great for night time manoeuvring. There are six navigation modes, including full electric and power take-off.

Curiously, Simena has no dedicated battery bank, so the electric motor must be supplied by the three 86kW generators. Electricity generated by the propeller when the boat is sailing in hydrogeneration mode cannot be stored either.

It can only cover the yacht’s hotel needs at that moment – something it does easily from around seven knots of sailing speed. Şahinkaya Orhun explains it as a play to save the weight, cost and complexity of the batteries.

“The idea from the start was to have only one engine and small gensets,” she explains. “We could easily add 100kWh of batteries to the next boat, if a client wanted it.” This way, the boat’s hotel needs can be covered by a single generator operating at optimum.

Range is 4,000 nautical miles at nine knots or a globetrotting 6,000 nautical miles at seven knots using only the electric motor.

It gives her a potential that goes well beyond her native Mediterranean – a fact attested to by broker McCarter. “I always thought that there were maybe 10 to 15 people in the world who could buy this boat,” he says. “But what we’ve found is that people are coming from the motor yacht world. We’ve got one client coming up from New Zealand because the boat would be great for the Pacific – you could cross the ocean on a single tank of fuel.”

You can almost hear Captain Martinuzzi praying for an adventurous buyer. “I know the Mediterranean like my own pocket,” he tells me pithily. “I’d love to sail to the Faroes, to Svalbard and Greenland – the cold seas.” I suspect he’d be just as happy in the Pacific. No matter where Simena goes, it’s likely this mammoth ketch will draw attention in every port she graces.

First published in the July 2026 issue of BOAT International. Get this magazine sent straight to your door, or subscribe and never miss an issue.