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Savannah is an 83.5m Feadship delivered in May 2015, twelve guests in six cabins, asking around €1M per week in Mediterranean peak season as of May 2026, plus 25 to 30 percent APA and VAT where applicable. She runs a single-shaft hybrid propulsion arrangement that was a first-in-class delivery in 2015 and has since been quietly adopted by a handful of competitors. She is, in our view, the connoisseur's 80m charter, and the reason is not the propulsion but what the propulsion lets her do.
This piece is the charter record. What she actually delivers across a week, how the hybrid system shapes the experience at anchor versus underway, what the rate buys, and which charter clients should be looking at her versus the larger Lana cohort or the smaller 60m to 70m Heesen and Sanlorenzo options.
The hybrid system, in language that matters at the dinner table
Savannah carries one fixed-pitch propeller on a single shaft, driven by a diesel-electric system with three Caterpillar 3512C diesel generators producing 1,300kWe each, plus a battery bank rated at for silent running. The hybrid configuration is not the same as a parallel-hybrid car. There is no second propeller, no second shaft, no clutch-in main engine. Everything goes through the electric drive train. The diesels charge the system, the batteries buffer load, and the propeller is driven by an electric motor.
What this means on a charter week is two things. First, at anchor, the yacht runs near-silent for extended periods. Hotel load (lighting, HVAC, galley, communications) draws from the battery bank, which is recharged by the generators on a duty cycle of roughly hours in 24 during Mediterranean summer. Compared to a conventional yacht running two generators continuously at anchor, the noise floor is materially lower. You hear the surf, not the gensets. Second, at low cruise speeds (8 to 11 knots), fuel burn is roughly 25 to 30 percent lower than an equivalent conventional 80m yacht. At higher cruise (15 knots), the advantage narrows.
This is real, not marketing. It also matters for the APA. A charter week on Savannah typically runs €30K to €60K less in fuel than a comparable 80m conventional, which is meaningful inside a 25 to 30 percent APA budget. It does not make her cheap. It makes her demonstrably less wasteful, which is part of what brings the kind of charter client who pays for an 80m yacht in the first place.
Specs
83.5m LOA, 12.4m beam, 3.85m draft, 2,950 GT. Built by Feadship at the Aalsmeer yard. Steel hull, aluminium superstructure. Delivered May 2015. Exterior design by CG Design (Cristina Gherardi), interior by Cristina Gherardi Design. The draft is the point worth noting. At under 4m, Savannah can use anchorages in the southern Sardinian archipelago, the Eolian volcanic group, the Cyclades, and shallower Caribbean banks that an 80m at 4.5m to 5m draft cannot. That is not a brochure point, it is an itinerary point.
Twelve guests across six cabins. Main-deck full-beam owner suite with private exterior terrace and full-height windows on three sides. Below decks: two VIP cabins, two doubles, and one convertible twin. The cabin count is six rather than the seven or eight of newer competitors, and the trade is that each cabin is larger. For a charter party of 10 to 12 with paired guests, the math works. For a multi-generational party of 14 to 16, she does not fit. The single most distinctive interior space is the Nemo Lounge on the lower deck, which has underwater windows looking down into a glass observation room with sofas and a small bar. It is a real feature, not a brochure stunt. We have seen children spend three hours in there on an Antigua charter.
Twenty-three crew at full charter complement. Crew-to-guest ratio at 1.92:1, which is at the leaner end of the size class. The interior team turns over. Two tenders, four jet skis, two Seabobs, dive compressor, full water-toy locker. The tender garage configuration is unusual: tenders launch through side-shell openings rather than from a transom garage. The result is a beach club at the stern with no tender clutter and a sea-level platform that runs the full beam.
The rate, what it covers, and the APA picture
Asking around €1M per week in Mediterranean peak (July through early September), €850K to €900K in shoulder (mid-May to mid-June, mid-September to mid-October), and Caribbean season at €875K to €975K (December through April). Rates as of May 2026 through her central agent.
APA on Savannah is set at 25 percent, which is lower than Lana's 30 percent. The hybrid fuel advantage is part of the reason but not all of it. The yacht is operated with a leaner crew and a slightly more measured provisioning baseline. A typical Mediterranean week reconciles APA around 55 to 70 percent spent, with the remainder refunded. That puts the realistic all-in week cost (charter fee, APA spend, crew gratuity at 10 to 12 percent) in the €1.4M to €1.5M range for Mediterranean peak. Compared to Lana's €2.5M to €2.7M all-in, Savannah is approximately 40 percent less for a yacht that is approximately 25 percent shorter and one cabin lighter.
VAT is the standard Mediterranean structure. French and Italian charter portions invoice at 20 and 22 percent respectively, with the French 50/50 offset structure available on qualifying itineraries.
The captain, the crew, and the food
Captain. The chef on Savannah runs a menu structured around. The thing to know is that Savannah's chef brief is one of the more accommodating in the size class for restrictive dietary requirements. We have seen kosher, halal, strict-vegan, and full-FODMAP charters provisioned without compromise. That is not the brochure claim, that is what we have seen reconciled in post-charter debriefs.
Interior service is what you expect from a Feadship-built yacht under Cayman flag operating to MLC standards. Service style is reserved. If you are a client who wants the crew to be the social centre of the trip, Savannah is the wrong charter. If you are a client who wants the crew to be near-invisible until you want them, she is the right charter. This is taste, not quality, and it is the single biggest sorting question between Savannah and an Imperial-managed yacht of the same size class.
Three things we would change
Two things. First, the gym is on the lower deck, windowless, and small. For a charter at this rate band, gym quality is a recurring complaint. The flybridge is large enough to set up an alfresco gym option, and crew will do so on request, but the indoor gym is a structural compromise from the 2015 brief. Second, the spa and sauna footprint is generous but the steam room is undersized for a yacht her size. Neither of these is a deal-breaker for most charter clients, but a charter client who has used the Lana spa and then moves to Savannah will notice both.
What we have passed on
We have passed on a tour of the on-board art collection. The collection is owned by the principal and rotates between charter and private use. Whether you see any particular piece on your week is not predictable, and the curatorial narrative is not the reason to book her. We have also passed on rehashing the 2015 Showboats award circuit. The yacht won what she won, and a decade later the relevant question is operational quality, not delivery-year prizes.
Comparables
Home, the 50m Heesen FDHF hybrid, is the most direct hybrid comparison at a much smaller size. The propulsion architecture is different (Heesen uses fast-displacement hull-form efficiency more than a diesel-electric drive), but for a charter client who is interested in the hybrid story and is willing to step down to 50m, she is the alternative.
Lana at 107m and roughly twice the rate is the trade-up. The cabin count goes from six to seven, the interior footprint roughly doubles, and the helicopter pad becomes touch-and-go-certified. If you are a multi-generational party of 14 and Savannah is a cabin light, this is the move.
Madsummer at 95m sits between the two on size and on rate. The Lürssen build is technically equivalent to the Feadship build, the operating culture is more Imperial-style, and the rate is somewhere between Savannah and Lana.
Booking pattern
Savannah has more flexibility than Lana or Flying Fox on near-term availability. Prime Mediterranean weeks (mid-July through mid-August) book 10 to 14 months ahead. Shoulder weeks are realistic at 3 to 5 months. Caribbean season has historically seen charter weeks per season, with most clustered around the holiday weeks and St Barths regatta dates. If you are planning a late-May or early-October Med charter at this rate band and you want a hybrid yacht, Savannah at 4 to 5 months is workable.
Last updated
May 2026. We update Savannah's central agent and rate when a material change posts. As of this writing the central agent is.
FAQ
Is the hybrid system actually quiet? Yes. The noise floor at anchor in battery-only mode is roughly 35 to 40 dB(A) on the upper decks, against 50 to 55 dB(A) for a comparable conventional yacht running two gensets. The difference is audible in the way that a quiet hotel room differs from one next to an elevator shaft.
How long can Savannah run on battery alone? At a typical Mediterranean summer hotel load, around. Long enough to cover a dinner service and the first part of the evening without genset start.
Does Savannah have a helicopter pad? Touch-and-go pad on the foredeck. Not certified for hangar storage. Helicopter operations are limited to delivery and pickup rather than stored aboard.
What is the maximum cruising range? Around 5,500 nautical miles at 12 knots cruise. She can run a trans-Atlantic without bunker stops, and she has done so multiple times for seasonal repositioning.
Where does Savannah operate? Mediterranean May through October, Caribbean December through April. She has also run.
If you are planning a Savannah Caribbean week from a St Barths start, the team at HotelsForKings has the St Barths list for pre- and post-charter nights.