Kokomo Nights Yacht Charter: The 156-Foot Steel Superyacht You Can Book for a Single Day From £19,000
She's had ten names in 44 years. Today she's the rare superyacht you can charter for a single day
She has had no fewer than ten names in 44 years. Sara Blue of England. Lady in Red. Legend of Tintagel. Piano Bar, for a long charter run through the 1990s and 2000s that old-hand Mediterranean crews still remember her by. Today she is Kokomo Nights, a 47.55-metre motor yacht built by Picchiotti in Viareggio in 1982, and she is based in the waters around Athens doing something almost no other charter yacht her size will do.
You can charter her for a single day…
Most people never get far enough into the yacht charter process to discover the rule this breaks. Ask a broker for a single day aboard a 45-metre-plus steel hulled superyacht anywhere in the Med, and in high season the answer is typically no. Seven nights is the accepted minimum duration for boats this size, not a marketing minimum but the number the commercial machine, crew, fuel planning, provisioning, is built around. Kokomo Nights runs that same weekly programme, from £120,000 ($156,000 / €139,200 / CA$214,800 / AU$237,600), with the same seven-night minimum as everyone else in July and August. But alongside it, she also offers something her peers largely don’t: a single day, just over £19,000 ($24,700 / €22,040 / CA$34,010 / AU$37,620), no week required.
A Boat With a Genuinely Interesting Past
Before the charter arithmetic, it’s worth knowing what you’re actually stepping aboard, because Kokomo Nights is a more interesting boat than her current name suggests.
She was designed by Arthur DeFever, the American naval architect whose name any trawler enthusiast will recognise instantly. DeFever is the man behind the DeFever passagemaker line, the long-range, full-displacement trawler yachts that quietly built an entire cruising philosophy around going anywhere, comfortably, without hurrying, [the kind of design lineage I’ve written about before](https://johnjohnsonyachtbuoy.substack.com/p/this-trawler-yacht-was-designed-to). Finding his name on a 47-metre superyacht is a genuine crossover moment between the explorer yacht world I usually write about and the superyacht world Kokomo Nights now lives in. Vincenzo Ruggiero worked alongside him on the design, and her interior was styled by Shawn Paulic, refreshed in her 2026 refit.
She was built at Picchiotti’s Viareggio yard, and 1982 was not a quiet year for that yard. The same year Kokomo Nights was launched, Picchiotti delivered the 103-metre Al Said for the Sultan of Oman, then one of the largest yachts in the world. She still remains in Omani state service today, converted in recent years to a Royal Navy of Oman training vessel and renamed Al Mabrukah. Picchiotti itself is one of the oldest shipbuilding names still in existence anywhere, founded in 1575 in Tuscany, credited as the first yard to build recreational motor cruisers in series back in 1902. Kokomo Nights is reportedly the third-largest yacht the yard ever built. That is serious pedigree sitting underneath a boat most people have never heard of.
Under the surface she is steel hull, aluminium superstructure, teak decks, three decks, full-displacement, twin Caterpillar diesels giving her a cruising speed around 12 to 13 knots and a genuinely long-legged range for her size. This is not a boat built to make rapid progress between anchorages. She was built to go a long way, comfortably, and simply happens to spend her working life in the beautiful Aegean.
What the £19,000 Day Rate Actually Means
Here is where it gets genuinely interesting for anyone who understands how this market prices things. A single-day charter is already a rare product at this size, most operators won’t sell one at all, for exactly the reasons above: turning a boat and a ten-person crew around for one day costs the operation nearly as much effort as a full week, for a fraction of the return. When yachts in the 40-metre-plus bracket do offer a day rate, the accepted industry rule of thumb is that it costs a quarter to a third of the weekly rate, not a simple seventh.
On that rule, a boat chartering at £120,000 a week should command something in the £30,000 to £40,000 ($39,000-$52,000 / €34,800-€46,400) region for a single day. Kokomo Nights offers hers at just over £19,000, roughly a sixth of the weekly figure. She isn’t just rare for offering a day charter at all. She is priced below the bottom of her own market’s day-rate band for doing it.
For a Yacht Buoy reader who has never chartered anything bigger than a day boat, that is the number worth sitting with for a moment. This is not a discount on a fixed weekly rate, and it is not a knockdown deal to fill an empty gap in the calendar. It is a genuinely rare product, priced aggressively, on a boat with real pedigree underneath her.
What a Day Aboard Actually Looks Like
Picture leaving the Alimos marina area near Athens in the morning aboard a boat with a deck jacuzzi, two Kawasaki jet skis, two Seabobs, a pair of electric bikes, waterskis, a paddleboard, a foilboard, full scuba kit and snorkelling gear, and a 9.2-metre Axopar chase tender sitting ready on the aft deck. Ten crew, including a British chef on his third Mediterranean season aboard her, look after up to twelve guests, a ratio most 5-star hotels would struggle to match. Wi-Fi and Starlink keep you connected if you need to be, and at-anchor stabilisers mean that whichever bay you drop into for lunch, the boat sits genuinely still under you.
Be realistic about range on a single day. Athens sits at the edge of the Saronic Gulf, and at her cruising speed you are looking at a swim-lunch-sunset day rather than an island-hopping marathon. Aegina is the classic run, close enough for several hours ashore and back with time to spare. Agistri and the little islet of Moni make an easy swim-and-lunch pairing just beyond it. Poros is the ambitious option, a longer run each way but doable in a full day. Hydra is right at the edge of realistic, more steaming than time in port. The Cyclades, Mykonos, Paros, and the rest, are simply not reachable and back in a single day at her pace, so don’t expect that itinerary. What you get instead is the Saronic done well, from a boat that would normally cost you a week’s commitment to set foot on.
This is exactly the kind of explorer yacht charter that rewards a bit of research before you book, which is what I try to offer with every vessel I cover, including [Over The Rainbow of London](https://johnjohnsonyachtbuoy.substack.com/p/over-the-rainbow-of-london-a-classic), another Mediterranean charter yacht with a history worth knowing before you step aboard.
For more information regarding her day rate, and her weekly availability, click below:
If you’re looking at a longer charter, seven days or more, on Kokomo Nights or another yacht like her, get in touch with me directly at john@yacht-buoy.com and I will handle it personally.
This article continues below, in “The Wardroom”
In the premium section, I cover:
- The full cost breakdown: APA, gratuities, provisioning, and port fees on top of both the day rate and the £120,000 weekly rate, and what a genuine “all-in” figure looks like for each
- How she compares to the rest of the Greek day-charter market: real comparable day rates on yachts her size and larger, and why hers sits where it does
- A 44-year hull with a 2026 refit: what buying into a 1982 Picchiotti, rather than a brand-new charter yacht, actually means for the on-board experience
- My honest assessment of the value: whether the single day or the full week makes more sense for different kinds of guest, and where the £19,000 day genuinely earns its place
The Full Cost Breakdown
The £19,000 day rate and the £120,000 weekly rate are both starting points, not final bills.
