Custom Line Launches the Navetta 35 at Cannes, a 34.5 Meter Flagship for Its 30th Anniversary

Custom Line has unveiled the Navetta 35, its new 34.5 meter displacement flagship, at the Cannes Yachting Festival. Naval architecture and general engineering come from Ferretti Group's Strategic Product Committee and Engineering Department, exterior styling from architect Filippo Salvetti, and the interior from ACPV Architects Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel. The launch lands during Custom Line's 30th anniversary, a milestone the brand marks against a track record of more than 300 made to measure yachts.

The detail worth reading past the press language is the staircase, or rather its absence. Custom Line has removed the external staircase from the aft main deck and folded an internal, privacy focused stairway into the interior instead. What that frees up is the cockpit, which stops functioning as a transit space between tender and salon and becomes, in the yard's own framing, the yacht's social hub. On a 34.5 meter flagship built to argue for made to measure living rather than raw specification, that is a more telling choice than the usual list of finishes.

The same logic shows up below the waterline. At full load the Navetta 35 draws 2.2 meters, shallow enough to enter sheltered bays and thin water more associated with a much smaller boat, the Caribbean among the cruising grounds Custom Line names directly. Power comes from twin 1,400 horsepower MAN V12 diesels as standard, giving a range of up to 1,800 miles in economy mode, with an optional twin 1,622 horsepower CAT C32 package raising top speed to 16 knots on preliminary figures. None of that is dramatic on its own. Together, it reads as a flagship built for range and access rather than outright pace.

A light palette for hull number one

For this first Navetta 35, ACPV Architects developed what the yard calls the Light Mood concept: ivory, beige and caramel tones set against Pietra di Vicenza stone, pale wood floors and sand colored leather on the upholstery and detailing. Furniture is designed by Antonio Citterio and built freestanding, raised off the floor rather than fixed to it, part of the same effort toward visual lightness that runs through the exterior glazing.

Accommodation runs to 10 guests across five cabins: a master suite on the main deck, and four further guest cabins on the lower deck, laid out to keep guest and crew circulation separate. Spanning three decks and built with full height glazing from stern to bow, the yacht is positioned by Custom Line in its displacement segment under 270 gross tons.

Thirty years, one showcase

Custom Line is presenting the Navetta 35 at Cannes alongside the Custom Line Saetta 106, but the Navetta is doing the heavier symbolic lifting. Thirty years and more than 300 made to measure yachts is the kind of anniversary a brand can mark with a retrospective, or with a new flagship that argues the formula still holds. Custom Line chose the second option, and built the argument around what a made to measure 34.5 meter flagship can do that a stock hull cannot: lose an entire structural element, in this case a staircase, without losing function.

Whether the Navetta 35 sells beyond hull one on the strength of that argument, rather than on the Custom Line name alone, is the question the yard's next order book will answer.