Riva has delivered its largest yacht ever, and the Riva 54Metri’s three-year journey from contract to completion says a lot about how the yard approaches size. Rather than treating scale as the headline, Riva built the brief around outdoor living and close contact with the water from the very beginning.
The story starts in March 2023, when Riva announced the sale of the first hull, brokered through Sea Pros Yachts in Kuwait. At that stage the yard described nearly 370 square metres of outdoor space, a wellness deck with a gym, spa and pool, and a design team, Officina Italiana Design’s Mauro Micheli and Sergio Beretta, working alongside Piero Ferrari’s Strategic Product Committee and Ferretti Group’s engineering department. An all-aluminium hull was chosen to keep weight down, with a preliminary top speed of 18 knots and delivery pencilled in for 2025.
The first hull touched water in August 2025, kicking off fitting out, sea trials and commissioning. By then the numbers had firmed up: 54 metres overall, an 8.60-metre beam, and gross tonnage held under 500 GT. The colour scheme, Moon Grey, London Grey and Bright Black, was confirmed, along with the fold-out terraces in the beach club and cockpit that would become one of the yacht’s signature features. This is also around when she picked up her name: Sairu.
Riva formally unveiled the finished yacht in June 2026, by which point she’d grown slightly to 54.83 metres overall with a 9.18-metre beam and a final tonnage of 499 GT. The completed boat runs to four decks, sleeps ten guests and eleven crew, and centres on a 42.5-square-metre beach area with a pool that stays full underway. Twin MTU engines give her an 18-knot top speed and a 3,600-nautical-mile range at 11 knots, with four electric stabiliser fins keeping draught to just 2.25 metres.
Designers Micheli and Beretta called the finished result an “almost sculptural object,” pointing to the beach club’s four-section fold-out design as one of its defining features. Three years on from that first announcement, the outdoor living and water-level focus Riva promised at the outset are still exactly what define the boat.
