The ten longest sailing yachts afloat — ranked by length, with builder, year, rig, and which of them you can actually charter.
The largest sailing yacht in the world is Sailing Yacht A, at 142.8 metres — a Nobiskrug-built, Philippe Starck-designed monolith with three free-standing carbon masts close to 100 metres tall. The largest conventionally rigged sailing yacht is Koru (127 m, Oceanco, 2023), and the largest you can privately charter is Black Pearl (106.7 m), whose DynaRig is the biggest ever built. Below, the full top ten by length overall.
Nobiskrug, 2017. Designed by Philippe Starck for Andrey Melnichenko, "SY A" is the largest sailing yacht ever built and one of the most technically radical objects on the water: three rotating carbon masts near 100 metres, 12,558 GT of volume, and a hull that reads more starship than schooner. She is a private yacht, not for charter.
Oceanco, 2023. The three-masted schooner built for Jeff Bezos is the largest conventionally rigged sailing yacht in the world and, with masts over 70 metres, the tallest. Classic Dykstra lines over thoroughly modern engineering — the yacht that reset the ceiling for what a "traditional" rig can be. Private.
Krupp Germaniawerft, 1931. The grande dame of the list: a four-masted barque commissioned by Marjorie Merriweather Post, still sailing nearly a century on. Sea Cloud is proof that length records are not a modern invention — and that a great sailing yacht ages into legend rather than out of relevance.
Oceanco, 2018. The largest sailing yacht available for private charter, and the most advanced. Her three DynaRig masts carry more than 2,900 square metres of sail — the largest DynaRig in the world — and she can, in theory, cross the Atlantic without burning a drop of fuel. Black Pearl charters through Sailyachts →
Lürssen, 2006. A three-masted Bermudan-rigged schooner built for Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg, EOS held the "largest private sailing yacht" title for years and remains one of the most admired profiles afloat — restraint at a scale most builders can't manage.
Royal Huisman, 2004. A three-masted gaff-rigged schooner in aluminium — the largest the Dutch pedigree yard had built at the time, and a benchmark for the modern classic look that Koru would later carry to 127 metres.
Perini Navi, 2006. The yacht that made the DynaRig famous: fifteen sails set from three rotating unstayed masts of "weapons-grade" carbon, hoisted at the push of a button. Still one of the most requested — and most photographed — charter sailing yachts in the world.
Vitters and Oceanco, 2016. The world's largest high-performance ketch — a two-masted yacht engineered to genuinely sail, not merely to be large. Occasionally available for charter through specialist brokers, she is the performance answer to the schooners above.
Vosper Thornycroft, 2004 (ex-Mirabella V). The largest single-masted sloop ever built, with a mast so tall it cannot pass under the Bridge of the Americas at Panama. A reminder that "biggest" and "simplest rig" can, once, be the same yacht.
Perini Navi, 2016. A 70-metre high-performance sloop with naval architecture by Philippe Briand and an interior by PH Design — closing the top ten and marking the point where the world's largest sailing yachts shade into the (still enormous) mainstream of the 60–70 metre fleet.
You do not need 140 metres to have the largest-yacht experience. Sailyachts represents some of the finest large sailing yachts afloat for charter and sale, including Black Pearl (106.7 m), Ngoni (58 m, Royal Huisman), Liara (50 m, Baltic Yachts) and Canova (43.3 m, Baltic Yachts). Each sails beautifully, carries a full professional crew, and delivers the scale, silence and pedigree the flagships are famous for — at a rate that makes sense for a week on the water.
See the charter fleet Enquire about a charter
Sailing Yacht A, at 142.8 metres (Nobiskrug, 2017). The largest conventionally rigged sailing yacht is Koru at 127 metres (Oceanco, 2023).
Black Pearl, at 106.7 metres, with the largest DynaRig in the world. Maltese Falcon (88 m) is the other headline DynaRig charter yacht. Black Pearl charters through Sailyachts.
Close to 100 metres on Sailing Yacht A and over 70 metres on Koru — limited in practice by bridge and cabling clearances on delivery routes.
A small group of northern-European yards: Oceanco and Royal Huisman (Netherlands), Nobiskrug and Lürssen (Germany), and the former Perini Navi (Italy), often with rig by Vitters and naval architecture by Dykstra.
Not necessarily. Above about 40 metres you have full superyacht comfort; most charter guests are best served in the 30–60 metre range, where the yacht sails well and weekly rates sit far below the 90-metre-plus flagships.