In this edition, we’ll get into:

📊 Q3 yacht sales cleared $1 billion, with 122 boats changing hands
🛳️ ULYSSIA, a 323m residential ship with 122 residences, is on order
💰 The Forbes 400 cutoff hit a record $4.4 billion
🏎️ Custom Aston Martins return to the Denison booth at FLIBS
🖼️ A Van Gogh could fetch up to $200M in a sale headed to Sotheby's
🚁 A flying car just got approval for mass production

Read time: about 7 minutes

September logged 31 sales against 23 a year ago, and $184M in disclosed volume against $161M. Almost half of last September's volume came from one boat, the 49.5-meter Feadship new build GRAYCLIFFS at €65M. This September's biggest sale, the 67.5-meter Icon LOON at $42.95M, accounted for 23%. The median price slipped to $3.6M from $5.0M, largely because more of the action sat at the smaller end, with 9 of 20 priced sales under $3M against 3 of 14 last year. Boats took a median 190 days to sell against 385, though the two biggest resales took the long way around. LOON was on the market for 781 days and the 55.85-meter Benetti AELIA for 727. New builds doubled to six, including the 125-meter Lürssen PROJECT M, due in 2032 and the longest yacht in the month's data.

Busiest yard: Benetti led every builder with 4 sales on the month, three of them new builds.

More boats, broader base. The top three sales made up 20% of this quarter's volume, against 31% last Q3, so the growth came from more yachts changing hands rather than a few huge ones.

Bigger boats moved. 35 yachts of 40 meters or more sold, up from 22, and 10 cleared 60 meters, up from 6. New builds doubled to 12.

Top price: the 67.6-meter Amels NENINKA at €85M, after just 41 days on the market.

Busiest yard: Sunseeker led every builder with 10 sales on the quarter. Last Q3, Benetti led with 6.

🛳️ ULYSSIA, a 323-meter residential ship, is officially on order. The team behind her marked the milestone at the Monaco Yacht Show. She'll carry 122 private residences and 22 guest suites, and she'll be built by China Merchants Cruise Shipbuilding, which was chosen over Germany's Meyer Werft. The contract is worth more than €2 billion. The plans include a medical and wellness center run by Switzerland's Chenot, a school, and a marina stocked with submersibles and helicopters. Residences start around €10 million and average about €24 million, and owners need a net worth of at least US$30 million. Construction is due to begin in October, with delivery in 2031.

💰 The Forbes 400 cutoff hit a record $4.4 billion. That's $600 million higher than last year. It left a record 590 American billionaires off the list, including Oprah Winfrey, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift. The 400 who made it are worth a combined $8 trillion, up from $6.6 trillion. Elon Musk's fortune nearly doubled after SpaceX went public, reaching an estimated $908 billion. That makes him the first person on the list to pass $900 billion.

⚓ Lürssen sold a new 125-meter-plus superyacht, codenamed PROJECT M. She'll be built at the German yard's Bremen facility, with delivery slated for May 2032. Her volume will top 6,000 GT, enough to place her comfortably inside a top-100 ranking of the world's biggest yachts by volume, where the current entry point is 2,993 GT. For scale, the 156-meter DILBAR leads that ranking at 15,917 GT.

🏡 A $70 million Hillsborough, California estate was the most expensive US home sale in August. The property is called Villa de Verano. It sits on more than 12 acres and pairs a 12,404-square-foot main house with a 4,612-square-foot guest house. Extras include a sports pavilion, a 2,100-gallon saltwater aquarium and a 150-person amphitheater. Six of August's ten priciest sales were in California, and a $51.5 million Miami Beach villa came in second. The top sale of 2026 so far is still the $170 million home on Florida's Indian Creek Island, which sold in March.

💎 A pair of Cartier Tutti Frutti earrings sold for about $1 million at Sotheby's Hong Kong. That's roughly ten times their estimate. The style mixes carved rubies, emeralds and sapphires with diamonds in an East-meets-West look, though the name "Tutti Frutti" only came into use in 1970.

Last year at FLIBS, we teamed up with Holman Motorcars Fort Lauderdale, Q by Aston Martin, and yacht designers Bannenberg & Rowell to unveil ABOVE and BEYOND, a pair of one-off Aston Martin Vanquishes with nautical design cues throughout, down to Glacier White leather interiors stitched in a pattern inspired by bow waves. This year, we're doing it again. If you're at the show, definitely stop by the Denison booth at Hall of Fame Face Dock.

Explore Holman Motorcars →

“When I was six years old, I baked my first cake,” recalls Chef Etienne Racicot with a laugh. “Convinced I could improve upon it, I baked a second cake, this time inventing my own recipe.” That spark of creativity ignited a lifelong passion, and from that day forward, Chef Etienne has been putting his own inventive twist on every dish he encounters.

Now the solo chef aboard the 121-foot motor yacht AMORE—a sought-after charter yacht navigating the waters of the Mediterranean and the Caribbean—Chef Etienne brings ingenuity and playfulness to every meal. The story of his childhood cakes remains a family anecdote, often recounted by his mother, who recognized his love for baking and cooking from the very beginning.

Read the full story →

October is when the charter world starts changing hemispheres. As the Mediterranean season winds down, many yachts make the crossing west, and the Caribbean's prime season runs roughly November through April. Whether you're already picturing next summer on the French Riviera, a winter of island-hopping in the Caribbean, or something a little farther out like the Maldives or Seychelles, our new charter destinations page walks through the regions worth knowing and what makes each one different. And if you've ever been curious what owning a yacht actually feels like, chartering one first might be the most enjoyable way to find out.

Explore charter destinations →

▸ Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe: Oct 4. One of racing's most prestigious events runs at ParisLongchamp over 2,400 meters for a €5 million prize fund, and it's been run since 1920. Last year's winner Daryz and runner-up Minnie Hauk were both entered again. So was Japan's Forever Young, who won last November's Breeders' Cup Classic at Del Mar.

▸ Formula 1: Singapore Oct 9 to 11, Austin Oct 23 to 25, Mexico City Oct 30 to Nov 1. Those are the three October-window rounds on this year's calendar. Singapore is a sprint weekend.

▸ Paris Motor Show: Oct 12 to 18. The first day is reserved for accredited press. It's the 91st edition, and the 2024 show drew 508,007 visitors over six days. A few big names are skipping it: BMW, Mini, Nissan and Toyota all canceled for financial reasons. There's also a 700-square-meter space dedicated to exceptional cars.

▸ Rolex Middle Sea Race: starts Oct 17. The 47th edition leaves Malta's Grand Harbour on a 606-nautical-mile counterclockwise circuit of the Mediterranean that passes two live volcanoes. The course runs past Mount Etna, through the Strait of Messina and by Stromboli. Three of the past ten overall winners were under 14 meters, so the biggest boats don't always take it home.

▸ Art Basel Paris: Oct 21 to 25. It's at the Grand Palais, with preview days Oct 21 and 22 and general admission Oct 23 to 25. Frieze London wraps on the 18th, and three days later the same international crowd regroups in Paris.

▸ FLIBS: Oct 28 to Nov 1. The Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show is back at the end of the month, and it's widely billed as the largest in-water boat show in the world. Over five days, the city's waterfront fills up with everything from fishing boats to superyachts, and the Denison team will be on the docks to walk you aboard and talk through buying, selling, or chartering. One tip if you're going: tickets are sold online only, so there's no box office to fall back on once you're there.

Plan your visit →

An Argentine family's art collection, reportedly worth about $450 million, is headed to Sotheby's. It includes works by Van Gogh, Cézanne, Degas, Pissarro and Renoir. One adviser thinks an 1890 Van Gogh chestnut-tree painting could bring $150 million to $200 million.

Sunreef's first fully electric 100 Eco sailing catamaran debuted at Monaco. She runs twin 360 kW electric motors off a 770 kWh battery bank, with solar panels built into her hulls, superstructure and bimini. She was commissioned by a returning Sunreef owner. The yard claims unlimited range under sail with electric assistance.

Wealthy families are spreading their lives across several countries. A report from residence and citizenship advisory firm Henley & Partners found that Singapore, Italy, Switzerland, Greece, Hong Kong and New Zealand are gaining appeal with internationally mobile wealth. The UK, Germany, France, Norway and South Korea are losing ground. More than 28% of the firm's applicants in the first five months of 2026 already lived outside their home country. The report also found wealthy Americans seeking second residencies and citizenships in record numbers.

Tap to vote. See where everyone else lands.

FRANK Magazine gets to the heart of the matter. Its pages uncover the human interest stories that give yachting its passion. The humble highlighted, the entrepreneurial celebrated, and the daring showcased in full. From intelligent debate to cutting-edge science, risky sport to surreal charter experiences, FRANK never glosses over the details. Brazen at times, amusing in spirit, always transparent in discussion and, of course, always frank about the conclusions.

Get a copy mailed to your front door →

Apple’s first foldable announcement of the iPhone Duo has nothing on this. Someone just got official permission to mass-produce a flying car.

Dutch company PAL-V received European Production Organisation Approval on Sept 7, so it now holds both the automotive and aviation production approvals it needs to build at industrial scale. The company says it's the first in its segment to get this approval.

It's a three-wheeler whose rotor and propeller unfold for flight. It can't take off vertically and needs a runway. It's been road-legal in Europe since 2020. It runs two Rotax 912 iS engines with up to 200 hp in flight mode, and it goes from 0 to 100 km/h in under nine seconds.

The catch. It isn't certified to fly yet. The vehicle itself still needs approval as an aircraft, which the company expects by 2028.

As long as we get flying cars before I die, I’ll be happy. - LD