Newly delivered 117-metre Lürssen Boardwalk is well into her first Mediterranean season, with recent movements through the Adriatic and southern Italy marking the yacht's transition into active operation.
Delivered only three months ago, the 117-metre Lürssen Boardwalk is now firmly into her first Mediterranean season, with publicly recorded movements showing the new yacht travelling through the Adriatic and along the Italian coast. Rather than remaining close to the yard after handover, she has already begun the kind of sustained summer programme for which a yacht of this scale was conceived.
Recent AIS records and local observations have placed Boardwalk at Tivat in Montenegro, heading south through the Adriatic towards Brindisi, later at Otranto and subsequently off the coast near Polignano a Mare after a call at Bari. These are historical, time-stamped observations rather than a claim about the yacht's position today, but together they provide a useful picture of one of 2026's largest new deliveries moving from shipyard project into active Mediterranean operation.
Boardwalk was delivered by Lürssen in May 2026 after being constructed as Project 13797. The yacht measures 117 metres and is among the largest traditionally styled motor yachts produced by the German builder, combining an unusually high-volume platform with exterior proportions intended to make that scale appear less imposing from the water.
Delivery followed her December 2025 launch and sea-trial programme earlier this year. Reporting at the time of handover placed her departure from Germany on 14 May, initially bound towards Gibraltar before entering the Mediterranean, turning what had until then been a closely watched construction programme into an operational yacht.
For a yacht of this size, delivery is not merely the end of construction. It begins a period in which hotel systems, tenders, aviation arrangements, crew routines, engineering loads and guest operations have to work repeatedly in real cruising conditions rather than during controlled acceptance trials.
Public AIS information shows Boardwalk at Tivat in late July before departing south through the Adriatic. One tracker recorded her underway on 30 July at approximately 12 knots with Brindisi transmitted as her destination, while another subsequently recorded the yacht at Otranto on 2 August.
Local reporting then placed the yacht off Polignano a Mare on 4 August after an earlier stop in Bari, extending a summer programme that had already taken her through a number of Italian and Adriatic locations. The movements are notable less because any individual port is unusual for a large yacht than because they show Boardwalk being used actively only weeks after delivery, rather than spending an extended period alongside undergoing post-handover work.
AIS records for private yachts should always be treated with care. Reception gaps, delayed public feeds and changing transmitted destinations mean that a historical AIS point is evidence of where a yacht was observed at a particular time, not necessarily where she is now or where she ultimately travelled next.
Lürssen's own description of Boardwalk reveals why her first operating season is interesting beyond the movements themselves. Frank Woll led the exterior design and worked with the late Amy Halffman, Suzanne Glover and Teresa Francis on the interior spaces, while the owner was closely involved in developing the arrangement and details of the yacht.
Her official specification describes multiple outdoor pools integrated into Tesumo decking, a cinema, spa and gym, a golf putting area, two helipads and a glass-walled passage through the engine room. A particularly unusual feature is a retractable deck section that opens to reveal an exterior staircase, allowing the aft arrangement to change between a continuous deck surface and a direct connection between levels.
Those features make Boardwalk more than a very large yacht carrying conventional amenities at greater scale. The combination of aviation capability, substantial tenders and vehicles, multiple recreational zones and complex movable deck architecture means that her operational programme depends on a large collection of systems working together consistently once the yacht is away from the controlled environment of the shipyard.
AIS databases identify Boardwalk at approximately 117 metres overall, with a reported beam around 18 metres and draught of roughly 4.5 metres. Those dimensions put her into a category where berth availability, turning space, depth, security arrangements, tender operations and advance port planning can materially shape an itinerary.
That does not mean a 117-metre yacht is restricted to a handful of Mediterranean destinations. It does mean that anchoring offshore, using appropriately sized commercial or superyacht quays, and relying heavily on tenders can become more practical than attempting to berth inside every marina visited, particularly during the busiest weeks of the Mediterranean summer.
The yacht's recent movements through Montenegro and southern Italy illustrate that distinction. Boardwalk can move rapidly between major cruising areas, but the infrastructure required to support a yacht of her size is very different from that needed by a 40- or 50-metre vessel, making each operational stop a logistical exercise involving far more than simply reserving a berth.
Sea trials confirm whether machinery and systems meet contractual and classification requirements, but they cannot reproduce an entire owner season. Repeated passages, long periods at anchor, helicopter and tender operations, guest movements, hotel loads and constant transitions between ports are what begin to reveal how successfully a very large custom yacht works as an integrated platform.
There is no evidence from the yacht's recent movements of a particular technical problem or operational concern, and none should be inferred simply because this is her first season. What the summer programme does show is that Boardwalk has moved decisively beyond the launch-and-delivery phase and into normal use, which is the stage at which an ambitious custom yacht ultimately has to justify years of design, engineering and construction.
For Lürssen, Boardwalk is one of the yard's headline deliveries of 2026 and a new expression of the traditional large-motor-yacht format. For the yacht herself, the Mediterranean summer is now providing the first sustained demonstration of what that 117-metre platform looks like when it is no longer a project number in a German shipyard, but a working yacht moving between some of Europe's busiest cruising grounds.