10 - Inside the Market - Yacht Sales Insights & Trends for December 2025 - Berthon International Yacht Brokerage

In this final Inside the Market of 2025, Sue Grant is joined by Berthon motorboat broker and lifelong yachtsman, Hugh Rayner, to unpack what is really happening across sail and power as we head into 2026.

They start with a striking datapoint from the USA. For brokerage yachts over 500,000 dollars, 1,893 motorboats have sold in 2025, against just 149 sailboats including multihulls. As Sue says, it is a sobering statistic. Hugh sees it every day as experienced sailors quietly move to semi displacement and long range motor yachts. As he puts it, many are discovering that “straight line sailing is quite nice because you can sit inside, put the heating on and avoid a face full of salt water every fifteen minutes”.

Multihulls are another clear growth story on both sides of the Atlantic, sail and power. Deck space, comfort and performance are drawing in new owners. At the same time, more mature and heavier designs must now be priced very keenly to compete with rapidly evolving new models and materials.

New yacht sales remain challenging overall. Confidence, not capital, is the limiting factor. Yet truly new designs in the quality segment still cut through. From serious blue water sailing yachts to long range motorboats, the best of the new launches are selling off the drawing board in both Europe and the USA.

Across the group, buyers are asking Berthon to act for them in growing numbers. They want accurate, unvarnished advice on values, VAT, build quality and where a yacht really sits in the market. As Hugh says, “you are not just buying a boat, you are buying what that owner has done with that boat”.

Correctly priced, well marketed recent yachts with good pedigree, strong service history and sensible specification are still finding buyers readily. Berthon goes into the holiday period with more yachts under contract for early 2026 than we would normally expect.

None of this hides the fact that 2025 has been a bruising, turbulent year and that 2026 is likely to be similar. Reading the market accurately and telling owners the truth about price and presentation is critical. Overpriced, badly marketed yachts will not sell, however cheap the commission deal.

The episode closes with a look at the Berthon Fleet itself. The marketing team in all territories is busy, with an unusually high volume of new listings joining the fleet for the time of year. If you want a clear, honest view of where the market really sits at the end of 2025, this is the place to start.

Transcript

Inside the Market - Yacht Sales Insights & Trends for December 2025 - Berthon International Yacht Brokerage

So I'm here with Hugh Rayner who does motorboats at birthing in the UK, and we're here to chat about the yacht Insights from Birthing for December 2025.

This is the last one of these for this year before we all break from the holiday.

So the first of the points that as a team in our five offices we came up with is the fact that motorboats are driving the market in the USA for brokerage sales of over 500,000 U.S.

dollars.

1893 motorboats sold in 2025 against 149 sailboats including multi hulls.

Of course many Americans are sailing outside their home waters, but this is still a sobering statistic, unless of course you're a motorboat broker.

Hugh Morning everybody.

My name's Hugh.

I'm a long term birth and fixture.

I started I think on the 20th of February 2009.

So I've you remember that.

Wow, well done.

I started at 0831, so I was one.

I was one minute late.

It's really interesting.

So I sit on the motorboat side of selling, but I'm a yachtsman by career and default.

So I see it from both both sides of the of the spectrum and it's really, really interesting at the moment.

So we put last Week 2 boats under offer.

Both of them were long range semi displacement boats.

Both are properly built, both were sold by agents in the UK, one was actually built over in in Guernsey and we are seeing a quite a swing from your more mature, high quality yachtsman as Ano Domini catches up and the joints don't move quite as well as they used to.

And a lot of people learn that the quickest way from A to B is a straight line.

And straight line sailing, as we say, is quite nice because you can sit inside, you can even have heating on.

You don't get a face full of salt water every sort of 15 minutes.

And rather than God and the tides deciding on your course, you use this thing called a steering wheel and throttles.

And it's all rather easy.

Yeah.

And I think I, I think whilst, you know, the States, it's not quite the same in Europe and in UK, I think it's the general trend, you know, they normally follow stuff.

And I think that we've benefited from the fact that we're not really in the plastic, fantastic production motorboat side of things.

And I think that the UK market with the VAT and how that's changed since Brexit has also seen a change in the motorboat market in the UK.

Would you agree?

I think I think it's quite stark.

We've seen the difficulties involved with producing high volume performance motorboats.

You are always following a trend to stabilize your future build production and the stuff that you have to build because you have to keep the boys on the tools you need to build for stock.

The problem is that as soon as you built a boat for yourself, the next guy will want different carpets, he'll want different washing machines, he'll want to take the boat to the Mediterranean, he won't want the boat specified for Scotland.

And you are always catching your tail and it's an incredibly difficult furrow to plough at the moment.

And we see all sorts of problems with high inventory levels across the spectrum with really tough times.

I can see ahead for a lot of our our very, very great UK boat builders.

But they're building for a market that is very, very choosy, that can afford to be choosy because there's huge choice.

And yeah, I mean, look at the Italians, look at and you've got it.

All these guys are coming.

And I also think that news alert, the weather isn't very nice in the UK.

And so for this market, the sort of boats that the blue boats, the displacement, the semi displacement, these boats are perfect for what we do here.

Absolutely.

So we've seen a big growth in boats going up to Scotland.

You've got some time, you've obviously worked hard for your money, you've probably owned a fair few nice sailing boats.

You may have owned a couple of power boats.

And you think, right, I've got a bit of time on my hands and I'd like to go and see Scotland.

So I'm going to base myself up out of the Western Isles.

We've sent 4 big boats up there in the last 14 months.

I've spent quite a lot of time over in Northern Ireland at the moment and that is their hunting ground at the moment.

There's a lot of traffic between Belfast over to the Western Isles.

Some people actually use boats for commuting over there.

And when you've been up there and you see that it is arguably the greatest cruising ground in the world, it's pretty difficult to argue apart from them little midges.

Yeah.

And of course, you're also very close to the next greatest cruising ground in the world, which is Sweden.

And then if you've got the sort of boat that will take it, Norway, Slovak, all of that, that whole Greenland, that whole thing is waiting for you.

But a production motorboat, which is Mediterranean biased is perhaps not quite suitable for those waters.

Agreed.

And we see a lot of people will have a conventional planning boat.

So conventional planning boat is 2 flat planning surfaces underneath, shaped with AV at the bottom with large pair of engines.

They throw the thing forward through the water, it climbs out of the water.

It is not exceptionally efficient, but it's fairly efficient at faster speeds.

But at the middle ground speeds, you've got large engines consuming a fair amount of diesel to throw the thing forward and it's never ultimately comfortable unless you have a completely flat wicket because that V section at the front, which is what is doing the job for you, is always hitting that next wave.

So always an impact and that comes back through the boat.

With a semi displacement boat, it's a completely different hull form, so it's like a wine glass.

So you have a completely rounded 4 foot with an A knife shape at it and then a keel that runs the way back through the boat.

That gives you 2 advantages.

It means that the boat behaves somewhat like a sailboat, so it's anchored by its keel.

It's therefore very directionally stable.

The other great thing about it is that the boat never gets out of the water.

So there is no China such so that big flat underneath the boats to hit the water.

So it pushes spray out of the the side.

It will never get out of its own furrow.

So you always have cushioning of that Big Blue wobbly thing called the ocean underneath you.

And we see a huge amount of conventional fast planning boats.

So you know, which can go quick, you know you can, but you have to have the conditions.

You have to go to have the conditions.

So when they say they'll do 50 knots, when will they do 50 knots, they will totally flat.

It's got to be flat.

And the other thing is that all of those performance figures that you see on a sunny day have to be taken with a pinch of salt.

There are very, very few motorboaters that actually know how much fuel their boat burns.

There are very few actual boat builders, I would argue, that know exactly how much their boats consume.

They are fed those figures by magazines when they do them.

You are very, very lucky if you can data test your engine to your hull.

And then you've got to take into condition.

You've got to take into condition, wind, tide speed, the loading of the boat, the stern gear.

As soon as you put a prop driven boat in the water, after about two weeks, you're losing about 10% of performance because you're just getting scale on the propeller blades which are your cleavers, so the boat becomes less efficient.

If you do that over season, you are losing 30 to 40%.

And if we ever get anyone coming to the office and they'll say our boat's not going anymore, 9 times out of 10, if it isn't, there's one thing that's stopping it.

And that is that your, your prime movers, IE those things that govern the speed of the engine, which are called propellers because the diesel is governed by the size and the pitch, the propeller.

If those are not absolutely super clean, then you get a massive performance disadvantage.

And I think, and I think pitching of propellers, I think there are a lot of boats out there which are never going to meet their optimum performance because actually the props are either wrong or they're incorrectly pitched.

You know, it's, it's more than just having them be clean.

And I think, you know, a lot of boats get sent out and actually that's not looked at nearly carefully enough.

Exactly.

If you go to whoever it is your propeller agent, they can put your prop on a spin, they can look at the cupping of the blades, they can do all of that stuff and they can exactly tune your propeller.

If you are a manufacturer buying propellers because you bought Gordon knows how many Caterpillars, Mt US or whatever else, not every propeller fits every boat.

So and as of that boat changes because it will do because it has loads, it has fuel burn, it has all of those differences.

There is not one size that fits all.

So you're always chasing tail again with that with a semi displacement boat because it is always cushioned by the water.

It's never.

Uncomfortable, it can push through water and conditions that would just simply stop the crew of a planning boat.

They might not stop the the actual boat itself, but it is a very unpleasant way to go boating when you're well.

I think.

I think the difference is with the planning boat you kind of get there for lunch.

On a semi displacement boat, you have lunch on the way Exactly.

And I think that's so that's that.

So the second point we had was multi hulls.

Of course multi hulls are coming both sale and power.

That is a real growth segment in the market both sides of the Atlantic.

But what we're starting to see is when we started out, you know, it really was the preserve of the charter companies and and that's also still driving growth.

But that the more mature heavier multi house, you know, they don't sit on their lines.

They've got a lot of usability and all the rest of it.

They do need to be well priced to find new owners because the design is moving so quickly.

There are so many new entrants into the into the market.

So I think that we're going to see resistance to older multi hull sales unless pricing is correct.

Yeah, I think that's going to be across the board.

I think at the moment it's been far more balanced to the to the to the point of sale.

There are few power boats out there in the market at the moment.

There are going to be a lot more.

I think there will be.

I think the advantages of deck space over usability.

You've got a huge amount of performance advantage because you've got a very slender hull, you've got all of that wave piercing ability, and then you've got the huge, huge advances in composites, carbon, all the rest of it weight saving, which can give you an enormous deck area for very, very little penalty in terms of the build weight.

Yeah, it's going to be a massive, massive piece of the market that is right for the taking.

And there are lots of small and more boutique guys looking at it.

There is very little actually at the moment coming out, but I think there will be a they're good in a sea way, exactly the fabulous and and as as more multihulls are built, I think the whole thing of multihull, it's difficult because you can't get a birth.

I think the birthing is going to change because of course you can have marinas in areas which have less depth.

So I, I think all that's going to change as well.

But so, so that's something we're watching carefully.

New boat sales for sure continues to be challenging.

There are new launch models.

There's something bizarre about our market.

Whenever things are at their most bleak, people manufacturers come out with amazing new models and they sell them off the drawing board.

And then you get the whole thing and you say you're getting all this innovation happening.

You know, the Halbergrassi 370 I, I, I, between 5:00 and 10:00 have been sold off the drawing board before.

Dusseldorf.

Yeah.

Very, very interesting.

Across sail and power, Europe, states, everywhere.

I mean, that's quite interesting, isn't it?

It's really interesting.

There are, there are a few, again, smaller companies that are really grabbed it by the horns.

They are building for a a more custom customer.

So they can afford to be different in the way that they build.

They can afford to be different in the way that they design.

It may be great for the original owner.

It's not necessarily a mass market appeal, but what it allows them to do is to play with technology that is not available in the the broader scheme of things.

I've spent quite a lot of time up recently up in up in Ipswich with a company called Spirit and they have a absolutely, phenomenally interesting powerboat projects on the board at the moment.

That's for delivery kind of in the in the next year, but it shows what boat building can still do rather than just being Jelly moulds.

It's amazing levels of craftsmanship.

But these boats are wonderful.

They're slightly whimsical, but they're really interesting.

And they are doing what the American builders have done with the down Easters, with the Hinckleys, with the Sabres, all those guys.

Well, if you look at Hinckley, I mean, they've got, you know, their latest model, I forget the size of it.

They've, you know, that's still on the drawing board and they're selling them.

And I think in this market, the problem is not money, it's confidence completely and wanting something that's just a bit special.

It needs to be a bit special and it also needs to be very good at its intended job.

So for these guys who are building a weekend cruising boat, that is a very, very different thing to building a boat that can.

World girdle that is, you know, set up to do 3 months cruising in the Baltic.

All the rest of it.

You've got stores on board, you've got tank size, you've got availability of storage.

You've then got, you know, interesting things to do with deck space versus internal space protection, crew protection so that you're comfortable, so that you don't get tired.

All of those sort of things are very, very different aspects to throw into the mix and just building a boat that goes fast and looks great.

And I think also that in a, in a buoyant market, manufacturers aren't exactly lazy, but they can afford to have long production runs of a boat because the markets all moving around.

Whereas if things get hard, you know, the clever people in design and, and and so on and, and production are looking at what can we bring to the market for our clients That's they're going to just super love.

And of course, if they can do something which is innovative and fresh, their clients haven't gone away.

No, absolutely.

And, and, and we saw that, you know, before COVID, we, we, we saw that in the last crash that all this amazing new technology and of course, the new materials are being more widely used and that, you know, carbon composites, all, all of those things.

And there's so much more that you can do.

Whereas if you have a full order book and people carry on ordering and you're on a whole number 67 of, of, of whatever it is, you'll carry on building it exactly.

If that stops, then you have to rethink it entirely, entirely.

And I think it, it's very interesting looking at production numbers of boats that have been built over the say last 15 years.

A lot of very, very, very successful boats in terms of what they can do have very low production numbers.

And the reason that they have that is that they are built for a job.

That job is very well defined.

What it what it puts into the brokerage market as a used boat is that you need to be able to put over to a client how that benefits them.

Why that is very, very different in terms of what it can offer you to another boat that's in the market.

And that's where having been at this is a bit of an old War Horse for a long time, you kind of get a view to to kind of understand what works and what doesn't.

And I certainly find find out, I spend a lot of time not exactly educating, but just talking people through the differences because it's very nuanced.

And you know, even on a production boat, there are so many options that you can choose.

Some work, some don't, some make the boat more sellable.

But it's, it all depends on what that future owner's vision for what they want to achieve is.

And the big thing, and I say this time and time again, it's terribly boring, but certainly in the brokerage market, you're buying the owner, you're buying their boat, but you're buying what that owner has done with that boat.

And therefore having a very, very deep understanding of what they've used it for, how they've used it.

And that's a huge amount of our job is trying to get that.

And, and, and I think that's really important too, that when a client comes to us to buy a boat is taking the time to understand how they're going to use the boat, who they're going to use her with, where she's going to go, so that you can actually not guide.

It's arrogant thing to say, but actually show the options and talk through with them because you know, our clients will come to us and they've decided that they are going to have, I don't know, Hardy 42.

And actually they don't want one of those at all.

And actually they want something quite different.

But it's only by bothering to spend the time and not being a, a reactive broker who says, Oh yeah, it's some 483,000 and it's and that's it.

Actually bothering to dive into it.

Because for our our yacht owners who are sort of prime importance to us, they want a good sale.

So there's no point trying to push somebody into a boat which it isn't the right boat for them.

We had this entirely demonstrably 2 weeks ago.

So where are we?

It's the 7th or 8th of December as you can hear by the dog.

So Christmas is coming and people are thinking what to Chuck underneath the tree.

And we had a really nice pair of local yachtsmen, Lifetime yachties done well.

And we're very lucky where we have a fairly mature market where people are, you're not sort of borrowing through the the nose to fund their, their, their boating habit.

They came in looking at a big, big sailboat and we showed them the big sailboat and they were like, yeah, OK.

And a lot of our friends have said, you know, we should.

Think about, you know here it comes the dark side.

And so my Colin, my colleague Alan just said well, have you thought about that over there?

And they looked about 150 yards away and there was Dutch built semi displacement motorboat.

And yeah, anyway, we've agreed a price and all the rest of it and it's going through the thing.

But it just shows you and, and, and unless you talking to people that can have got what you're trying to do and you're fairly blind.

And certainly I spend a huge amount of time just talking to people before we even get into what boat they're thinking of buying and all the rest of it.

So you can understand kind of what the what the remit is, how they've done their boating previously, whether they're going to be boating in the same place, whether they're going to be, you know, flicking over to Europe.

And then there's a whole other, you know, kind of kind of fun to open up there with, with, with, with transport and all the rest of it.

And we can help with all that kind of kind of kit.

But yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's actually taking the time and I think important.

And I think that's why, I mean, the next point, you know, as, as a group, buyers are asking us to act for them in this market in elevated numbers.

I mean, we've always had a bit of it.

We're seeing more of it.

They require accurate and informed advice about the market and sales process to enable them to navigate through the process safely and to close on the odds suitable for their needs.

There's always been a phenomenon in the States and you know, where you have a buyer's broker.

And here a lot of the time we're sort of dealing with both sides.

And rather unkindly, it's been said here that in America it's done because it means that the buyer then has somebody to sue if everything goes wrong.

But I actually think there's more to it than that.

They increasingly having been through the kind of birth and process they want, they want to be in that process.

I think so.

And if I have a look back over the last few boats, I mean, I think the last certainly 2 that we agreed on are, are, are former and you know, very much still current customers.

And we've bought and sold a few boats together over a, you know, a lifetime.

And they have a huge amount of knowledge.

They have a huge amount of experience at sea.

They've got a lot of sea miles under their belts, but you can show them something and they just go, crikey, I hadn't thought of that.

And it totally skews their way of thinking about what they're going to do.

It can open up completely new avenues as to where they can keep the boat because of depth, size constraints, all the rest of it.

They can get away with a much smaller boat, a more compact boat than they thought they could get away with because it offers options in terms of accommodation and, and cabins that that they, they just hadn't seen in the market.

And you can only really find that out by really drilling down into what's important and then just chatting and at the end of the day going and having a look at these boats.

And then it's like, which boat is it?

And there's so much data that's available to us as brokers now, you know, we can see how long boats have been on the market.

We can look at asking prices.

We know from our own sales figures what the last sort of, I don't know, 5 of that model have, have have gone forth through US and it, it, it, it can't, it can't you know, it doesn't necessarily help a sale or whatever, but it, it just offers options.

Yeah.

And I think also that we do live in a complicated life with VAT and RCD and title and, and all of those other things contract how things are managed, particularly when the boats overseas.

And you said that you were a War Horse.

I think we all are.

And whilst we don't know all the answers, we normally know where to get it.

And we've all been around the block numerous times.

And, and I think that's helpful because it means that we can actually take a step back and, and, and, and also, you know, for yacht is patently not the right boat.

Have the courage to say, well, actually Are you sure?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, you know, you should be able to our our sales figures do not depend on them on us getting that sale closed exactly this month.

Exactly.

But you know, there is, there is, there is, you know a lot of people have very punitive contracts and all the rest of it.

And you have to have, you know, X&Y and C trials have to be within this tolerance and all the rest of it.

The end of the day, you want a sale between a motivated but happy seller and a motivated but happy buyer.

You don't want to be forcing stuff down someone's throat.

I think it's completely, it's completely unnecessary and just not how we do it, which is why.

I figure I'm really proud of 55% of our business across the group is repeat.

So then we go on to, I think we've touched on this before, correctly priced and well marketed recent yachts with good pedigree, well maintained with a proper, proper service history of finding buyers readily.

We go into the holiday with more contracts for completion early 26 that we normally expect.

I think that's right, isn't it.

I think this service history thing is also a big issue.

It's critical.

I think we sort of kind of touched on it earlier.

But as much as you're buying that boat, you are buying its history, you are buying its provenance, you're buying its owner, you are buying the guys that maintained it, all of this sort of stuff.

You know, we've, we've had boats recently where, you know, the boats been insured by one surveyor sort of by, by an insurer.

The new gentleman or, or lady or whatever ownership structure comes along, they want to keep that boat as it was.

So they will use the same crew that have maintained it.

They'll use the same guys that have insured it.

They might move the location of the boat, but they will stay in touch with the team that have been looking after that.

So from from our point of view, you know, when you're buying a boat, you look at what you think you want, you look at the number that is attached to that boat, But your friend is the man who or lady that is selling that boat to you.

You know, the last thing that you want to do is to think, oh, I'll be super, super cute here and to upset, annoy or whatever else.

We really shy away from doing that.

Or we just try and say, yeah, that's a great number, all the rest of it.

But do remember that, you know, past the day of handover when that switch that's in that back cupboard that you never knew how it worked and what it did that turns on the lights in the engine room.

You know, it's really useful for us or or they to be able to pick up the phone and have a chat.

And generally they then become friends and then that's a whole lot of fun.

Yeah.

I mean, I think that's great.

I mean, I remember well this year being involved in a sale that was happening in the Mediterranean and the buyer had been very, very sharp on the price and came the day that he came down to take delivery of the boats, the sailing boat, there's no sail cover.

There was no Bimini, there was no spray hood.

And he rang up in high dudgeon and I sort of took the call and looked back and I said, well, wasn't on the wasn't on the specifications, Sir.

And he said yes, but you really, really, really upset the owner.

And the captain was dispatched to put them back on the boat and to pick up a cheque.

But that's, yeah, that's a real shame because he had no one to, you know, yeah, he had to pay the captain to take him sailing then to teach him how the boat worked And.

And that really, that really.

I wonder how much fun that was.

And again, it's, it's indicative of, you know, boat ownership is it's a long term love affair, both with your chequebook and, and, and with yards and the boat.

And if you're lucky enough to have a skipper, just keep hold of them.

And, you know, take as much advice as you can because how your boat is used, maintained, all the rest of it is absolutely critical.

At that point of, of you thinking, oh, crikey, I want to do something else or whatever, or hand someone else over the keys, You know, just having that resource to be able to pass on to the next person is absolutely critical.

Yeah, nothing.

That's right.

So 2025 has been a bruising year, lots of market turbulence.

We expect that 2026 is going to be much the same.

Reading the market accurately and giving owners the correct advice about the market is key.

Overpriced, badly marketed yachts will not find buyers in this market.

However cheap the Commission deal was.

I think I can add to that.

Yeah, demonstrably so.

I, I'm really dull and I get really excited about looking at data analytics and stuff like that.

And I spend a lot of time with a lens in me face and, you know, going around boats.

Because if you're doing a marketing package and you've got good photography and you've got good moving imagery and you've got an actual relationship with the people looking at the video, as well as you having a relationship with the boat and the owners and all the rest of it, you've got quite a nice circle there.

And it is absolutely critical that that marketing hinges on that.

And I've had a couple of boats recently and I thought, OK, we should be getting more interest in that.

And you can see how many times people have looked at a boat, a listing on our website, we can look at how many views the things had on YouTube or whatever else.

And there is a.

It's, it's, it's an unbelievably stark reality that if you haven't done that, that boat will not sell.

People will not look at that boat.

And you can see we can release A blog and viewing statistics goes through the roof because it involves people, it gets people interested.

It's the same with all these videos.

You know, I get a lot of people come on board and, and, and they'll say, oh, you know, I've looked at that video and it's quite interesting.

You know, I'm awful.

And Harry, who does our videography here, it's me because I do like half an hour video of me, you know, talking drivel.

And then you say ask the guy who's come to look at the vote.

Say it.

Have you looked at the video?

I say, Oh yeah, I watched it five times over the weekend with my wife.

That's on our on our big thing.

It's no, it's worrying.

I, I, I, I had this, I had this lady the other day say, you do realise that I've listened to you in bed.

There you go.

There you go with my husband, you know, and yeah, we all want to be Harry Lightfoot, you know, YouTube Harry.

But it's, it's, it's, it's, it's from, from our point of view, it's really useful because actually we've kind of got a bit of a relationship with people before they actually meet us.

And we hope to be fairly sort of friendly and, and upfront and all the rest of it.

But if they see you and they've kind of done that, then the last kind of links in the chain is them jumping on board the boat.

And I've sold boats abroad.

We do a lot of distance selling, obviously.

And the first time you meet the client and the client sees the boat is the evening, having had a beer in the, you know, in the hotel or whatever, and, and met them.

And you walk down to the boat together and pop them on it and they go, oh, that's better than I thought.

Yeah, that's the way it should be.

I've done my job then.

Yeah.

And I've still got my kneecaps.

Yeah.

No, no, I think I, I think that's absolutely right.

And they do feel a bit like, you know, the reason, the reason we do these international meetings is so that we meet everybody over a screen.

But at least they know us and they know the level of detail that we go to and in most importantly, they know the birth and fleet or the past the birth and fleet that they're interested in.

So our marketing team busy with all territories with new listings, the volume at which we're accumulating new members of the birth and fleet is unusual for this time of year.

And that's very good.

And we're very happy about that.

And we don't know quite why, because it should be, it should be getting quieter for Christmas, but thank goodness it's not.

Yeah, it's, it's quite interesting.

I speak to a lot of mates in the industry and obviously we've all been, you know, around the block a few times and there are bits that are in absolute turmoil at the moment.

And I, I, I try not to be horribly arrogant and nasty, but I do try and tell the truth.

And the truth is that we are bloody busy at the moment and we sell a boat a particular way.

We do things somewhat differently to other bits of the market, I guess, you know, But at the end of the day, it's all about people.

And, you know, if you can give people some brilliant memories and give them a lovely boat that will look after them and their family, then you kind of done your job.

Yeah.

And you know, what I think is really important to me is if you walk into the office in Newport, RI, or in Palmer or up in Orrest, you'll get coming to a birthing office should be like a warm bath.

I think it's the same everywhere.

So on that bombshell, as has been said many times before, Hugh and I are going to say very happy Christmas and we'll be doing this again in 2026.

Happy Christmas.

Happy Christmas, everybody.

And apologies.

But if you did see someone dressed as an elf last night on the Christchurch River in a small launch, accompanied by someone in a red suit with a black belt and a large white beard, that was me.

I don't think I got in your way, but hopefully the fairy lights that were all over the thing kind of allowed you to clear our passage.

And my goodness, me, 200 kids screaming on a balcony.

You could hear them about 200 yards upwind.

It was epic.

Well done you.

Thanks, everybody.

Happy Christmas.

All the best.