The first Maiora 42 Exuma has stopped being a render. Hull and superstructure, already bonded together, now sit at NEXT Yacht Group's Viareggio site and have entered outfitting — a year, almost to the week, after the model was shown to the press in July 2025. Delivery is still set for summer 2027.
SuperYacht Times reports the hull came in from Piombino. No other outlet names a port, and the group's own facilities are in Massa and Viareggio, so take that detail as single-source.
Twelve months from public premiere to a physical hull in the shed, with the delivery window untouched, is something yards announce far more often than they manage.
The cabins moved up a deck
At 42.49 metres and around 430 GT, the 42 Exuma is the flagship of Maiora's composite programme. Size is the easy headline. The deck plan is the actual pitch.
Guest accommodation sits on the main deck: a full-beam owner's suite with separate sleeping and sitting areas, two walk-in wardrobes and two bathrooms, plus four VIP cabins, all behind floor-to-ceiling glass. The lower deck is almost entirely service space and crew — nine berths in five cabins, mess, laundry, cold room, garage — plus one multipurpose room the owner can spec as a gym, a massage room, a media room or a sixth ensuite cabin. That is the yard's own wording: almost entirely. Up to twelve guests in up to six cabins, per its spec sheet — reports differ on that count, and this is the official one.
Giorgio Maria Cassetta, Cassetta Yacht Designers:“The most significant innovation brought by the shipyard was in the layout: we moved guest cabins to the main deck, dedicating the lower deck to services.
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Maiora's press material calls this "a paradigm shift reminiscent of the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance", which is a lot of weight for a deck plan to carry. Underneath the rhetoric it is a simple change: guest life moves off the lower deck, and the one cabin that stays down there is optional. Cabins, saloon, the glass-walled Infinity Upper Deck lounge with its fold-out side terraces, the glass-bottomed pool aft, a shaded foredeck under a hardtop, an 80-square-metre sun deck — all of it lives above the main deck line. An optional panoramic lift ties three levels together.
Elie Saab, at sea for the first time
Interiors and deck design are by Elie Saab, with pieces from ELIE SAAB Maison and bespoke furniture on hull number one, under the creative direction of Carlo Colombo and his A++ studio. It is the fashion house's first superyacht.
Elie Saab Jr., CEO, ELIE SAAB Group:“This evolution was both natural and intentional — translating our legacy into contemporary luxury.
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Fashion houses have been lending their names to tenders, cabin trim and one-off refits for years. Handing one the interior and the deck architecture of a 42-metre boat, saloon to sun deck, is a different order of commitment.
The numbers
Nine metres of beam and 430 GT on a metre and a half of draft is the whole point of the Exuma name: this much volume, anchored in water that normally turns a boat this size away.
Two characters, one hull
The buyer picks the drivetrain. Three MTU units of 2,600 hp each on MJP waterjets give 30 knots flat out, 26 at cruise and 1,800 nautical miles at 10 knots. Two Volvo Penta IPS 40, 4,000 hp combined, cap the boat at 20 knots but stretch the range to 2,100 miles. Speed or reach, same hull. Hull number one is going together with the fast package.
The yard behind it
We went through NEXT Yacht Group's structure and the Exuma concept in June, when the group put the third AB Yachts AB 130 and the second Maiora 36 Exuma in the water on the same day. The 42 is the same group and a much bigger boat at a much earlier stage — that piece has the background.
Worth adding since then: the group entered the Global Order Book for the first time this year, in fifteenth place, with 19 units under construction or delivered between September 2024 and September 2025. 13 yachts are in build now, against a stated target of 18 to 20 at once.
Hull number one is sold. Megayacht News says the owner is American; nobody else names a nationality. Hull number two is still open, with delivery quoted for spring 2028.
Photo: NEXT Yacht Group press office, via Megayacht News.
