Luxury catamaran Hemisphere sale could leave captain Gavin Bladen adrift

Gavin Bladen’s long run aboard Hemisphere may end with the yacht’s sale, severing a 15-year life in which his workplace, residence and identity have all been tied to the same vessel. He oversaw the construction of the luxury catamaran and has lived on it for 15 years, a rare case of a captain so deeply bound to one boat that a change of ownership could leave him without a home.

Hemisphere is no ordinary brokerage listing. Built by Pendennis Shipyard Ltd. in the United Kingdom and delivered in 2011, the 44.2-metre, 145-foot sailing catamaran has a 16.6-metre beam, a 3.25-metre draft and 499 gross tonnes, with accommodation for up to 12 guests. Pendennis describes it as the world’s largest privately owned sailing catamaran, a claim echoed across yacht-industry coverage that has long treated the vessel as an outlier even in the ultra-wealthy superyacht market. The yacht was refitted in 2023.

Bladen has been more than a skipper. SuperYacht Times has described him as being with Hemisphere since her birth and as central to the yacht’s history from concept and sketch lines through construction, cruising and chartering around the globe. Ocean Magazine has also identified him as skipper of the 145-foot Hemisphere, underscoring how closely his own career has been braided into the boat’s identity.

That identity includes a string of headline-grabbing uses. Burgess said on 8 October 2020 that Hemisphere became the first foreign-flagged yacht to charter in Australia, a status that helped burnish its reputation as both an exploration vessel and a showpiece. By 27 November 2024, Burgess was offering Hemisphere exclusively for sale and listing an asking price of EUR 38,500,000 for the 2011 yacht after its 2023 refit.

The broader market has already attached other values to the same hull. One YachtWorld-related listing put the price at $45 million, while a separate social post referenced EUR 46,000,000. Those figures show how customized superyachts can move through a resale market where the asset value is only part of the story and the human cost can be harder to measure. For Bladen, the real risk is not the price tag. It is being separated from the vessel that has served as his berth, his office and the center of his working life since the boat was new.