Benetti B.NOW 72M

The B.NOW 72M sleeps 16 guests in eight cabins with 17 crew in eight crew cabins. The owner's suite occupies the upper deck forward with a private terrace, isolated from the guest cabins distributed across the main deck, and the seven remaining staterooms give genuine privacy rather than the kind where you hear footsteps overhead at 6am.

With 16 guests and 17 crew aboard, traffic patterns matter as much as square footage. Benetti solves that architecturally: crew move through separate passages, and the Oasis Deck is guest-access only. The main deck salon is open-plan with floor-to-ceiling glass, soft tones and natural materials.

Beam is 12.8 metres, 42 feet, and draft is 3.5 metres, 11 feet 6 inches, on 1,950 gross tons. That combination gives stability without sacrificing efficiency, and the draft still allows access to most marinas and anchorages in the Caribbean and Mediterranean.

The beam is what buys the Oasis Deck. At 42 feet across you can put a 250-square-metre beach club with a central pool at water level and still carry 16 guests in eight cabins above it. Berth pricing is the practical consequence to check early, because a 236-foot yacht with a 42-foot beam is a specific conversation with any marina.

No. The B.NOW 72M is designed for private use. The Oasis Deck is guest-access only with crew routed through separate passages, a decision aimed at how a family lives aboard rather than how a charter week is turned around. Tony is blunt about it: the crew requirement makes casual or commercial ownership impossible.

This is a yacht for someone who has already owned a 50-metre and understands that crew size dictates your calendar. If you are not prepared to commit to full-time crew management and his estimated $5 million to $7 million in annual operating costs, the 72M is the wrong boat.

The B.NOW 72M covers 4,500 nautical miles at 12 knots. Top speed is 16 knots, which will not win races, but the range means crossing the Atlantic without a fuel stop and island-hopping the South Pacific without constantly calculating burn rates.

Benetti does not publish a fuel capacity for the 72M, so any figure quoted elsewhere should be treated as unofficial. The optional E-Mode Hybrid extends the picture: at anchor you can run hotel loads on battery power for hours without waking the anchorage with generator noise, and underway it reduces consumption at lower speeds. This is a yacht bought to go far and stay long.

Tony's estimate is $5 million to $7 million a year, before any refit or unexpected repair. Crew alone is $3 million minimum: a 236-foot yacht requires 17 people, and they need salaries, insurance, training, flights and accommodation when the boat is laid up. Fuel, insurance, maintenance, dockage and provisioning make up the rest.

What you get for it is capability. With 17 crew you run a full galley, manage tenders and toys, cover navigation and engineering and still deliver proper service, without asking the captain to also fix the air conditioning. The layout helps, with separate crew areas, service corridors and a well-planned galley.

The Oasis Deck on the 72M spans over 250 square metres, the largest beach club configuration Benetti has built. It sits at water level with a central pool and lounge seating wrapping the perimeter, and RWD eliminated the traditional bulwarks, so the connection to the water is physical rather than implied.

That is the organising idea of the whole boat. The 236-foot steel hull becomes infrastructure and the deck becomes the product. Access is restricted to guests, with crew using separate passages, which is about traffic flow rather than exclusivity. The owner's suite above sits upper deck forward with its own private terrace.