Expedition Vessel Restomods, expedition yacht acquisitions, and clean-sheet new builds — advised by the same principal who has personally represented Blohm+Voss, CRN, and Camper & Nicholsons across the Americas. Twenty-five years inside the world's premier shipyards.
The luxury yacht market has spent the last two decades selling a white-yacht aesthetic to owners who actually want to go to sea. The physics have not changed. The boats have.
A finished new-build of any serious capability now lives north of $100 million. A commercial vessel of equivalent or superior engineering pedigree — an Ulstein UT-design, a North Sea OSV, a research vessel — can be acquired and rebuilt as an expedition Restomod (Restore & Modify) for twenty to forty percent of that. The hull is already built. The class is already established. The work is in the Restomod, not in convincing a naval architect that an exploration yacht needs ice plating.
The yards in Tuzla, Ulsteinvik, and Louisiana build vessels for owners whose lives depend on them in heavy weather: oil majors, navies, fisheries. The plate is thicker. The ice class is real. The stability is documented. A white-yacht builder writes a brochure. A commercial yard writes a class certificate. Repurposed correctly, the second vessel goes anywhere on the chart. The first one does not.
The expedition principal is a different person. He has crossed oceans on his own boats. He values function over finish, range over headcount, and engineering documentation over marketing prose. He wants to be in Greenland in July, the Tuamotus in March, and at his own dock for September. He is not interested in being parked stern-to in Monaco. We work with that owner.
“A yacht built to a class society's commercial standard goes where a yacht built to a brochure cannot. The owners who understand that — really understand it — have always been a small club. We work for that club.”
Three available projects are examples of our active workstreams — the same advisory practice, the same principal, three different routes to a serious expedition platform.
DNV ice-class research-vessel platform available for acquisition at $6M, with a Grant Maughan ORCA Restomod package costed at $19M. Replacement value of a comparable new-build is $80–110M. Eighteen-month build window from signed acquisition to sea trials.
Conversion Brief
Existing 81.4m Rolls-Royce / Bergen-powered hull constructed in Norway by Palmer Johnson, lying partially completed in Spain — ready to be finished to owner specification. Available as-is at est. €12M or fully completed at €65M. Eighteen- to twenty-four-month delivery from contract.
Vessel Brief
The WindVoyage flagship range — 80- and 110-metre wind-powered expedition yachts engineered around the VPLP Oceanwings® propulsion system, photovoltaic surfaces, and hydro-regenerative drives. Engines optional; oceans included.
windvoyage.comA commercial-vessel Restomod, a clean-sheet expedition new-build, and a white-yacht of equivalent length. Same itinerary on the chart. Three different vessels at three different prices.
Figures are working ranges from current Xplorer engagements — ORCA Restomod, RR81 finishing-build study, and comparable LY2 acquisition market. Detailed budgets supplied under NDA.
Buyer representation on listed and off-market vessels. Central listings — a small portfolio, transparently priced. Negotiation strategy informed by hundreds of comparable transactions. We do not list vessels we cannot defend on a survey table.
Platform sourcing — OSVs, research vessels, ice-class hulls, government tonnage. Restomod design with Grant Maughan, VPLP, and selected studios. Yard tender, build supervision, class engagement, sea trials, delivery.
Yard selection. Contract negotiation. Specification development. In-yard supervision. Delivery. Paul's career was built representing Europe's most demanding shipyards — that perspective, applied to the owner's side of the table, is what we bring to a new build.
Through the WindVoyage joint venture with VPLP Design and Norse Shipyard, we deliver 80- to 120-metre wind-powered expedition yachts. Xplorer is the advisor and owner's representative on each project. windvoyage.com →
For owners ready to retire a vessel, we facilitate yacht donations to The International SeaKeepers Society — a structure that places the vessel into ocean-science use and delivers a substantial tax-deductible position to the donor. Appraisal. IRS-grade documentation. Vessel transition.
A short list of principals, scientists, and explorers whose ocean lives have shaped what a serious expedition vessel is for. The company an Xplorer client keeps.
Ray Dalio
Founder, Bridgewater · Co-founder, OceanX · M/V OceanXplorer, 87m
“I believe that ocean exploration is more exciting and more important than space exploration.”
Read the voice
Paul Allen
Co-founder, Microsoft · Owner, M/Y Octopus
“It turns out if you go 1,000 feet down in the ocean, it's really dark, and the animals are really strange.”
Read the voice
Mike Horn
Explorer · Owner, S/Y Pangaea · Solo Arctic & Equator circumnavigations
“The only limits are the ones you accept.”
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Victor Vescovo
Founder, Caladan Oceanic · First to reach the deepest point of all five oceans
“The oceans are 70 percent of our entire planet — and 95 percent of that is unexplored.”
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Jacques Cousteau
Captain, R/V Calypso · Marine documentary pioneer · 1910–1997
“The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.”
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Don Walsh
U.S. Navy Captain · First descent to Challenger Deep, Bathyscaphe Trieste, 1960
“The deep ocean is the last frontier on the planet we can still actually go to.”
Read the voice
Full library: windvoyage.com/voices →
The trade-wind crossings, the polar voyages, and the great cape passages our owners run. Each route shapes what their vessel needs to do.
Gibraltar to St Maarten on the trades — the classic dropping-south-to-the-breeze passage, three weeks at sea.
Drake Passage to the Antarctic Peninsula, then north to Shackleton's island of king penguins. The voyage that earns the vessel.
North on the Atlantic westerlies to the land of the midnight sun — calving glaciers, polar bears, and the great ice.
The longest, finest reaching passage on earth — through the Galápagos and the Marquesas on the great SE trades.
Effortless beam-reach trade-wind cruising and the historic galleon wreck grounds of the Bahama Banks.
A trade-wind circumnavigation routed around the great capes — six continents on a single voyage.
Our work is the network — commercial shipyards with the engineering credentials a serious expedition build requires, naval architects with track records on real vessels, and a private list of class surveyors we have hired on our own projects.
Australian-born naval architect specialising in commercial-to-yacht conversions and clean-sheet expedition designs. Long-running design partner on the ORCA series, the Xplorer 70 platform, and Shadow 70.
Four decades at the intersection of performance sailing and naval architecture — from America's Cup campaigns to the 121-metre cargo vessel Canopée. Co-developers of Oceanwings® and our partner on the Wind Xplorer range.
The full engineering package behind RR81 — a diesel-electric Azipull-driven 81-metre expedition yacht engineered to ABS class and MCA LY2 standards. On file and ready to go to a European yard.
Active new-build and conversion relationships at yards capable of polar-class steel construction. Norse for wind-powered builds in Turkey. Cardama (Vigo) for refit and conversion work. CRN (Ancona) where Paul ran the Americas market.
Active conversion engagements at US Gulf Coast and South American yards with deep commercial vessel experience — the right yard for an OSV-to-yacht conversion is almost never the same yard that builds white yachts.
Active class-society engagement on every project. Independent surveyors we have personally hired and re-hired. The class certificate is the asset — that's the line we will not cross.
Every working relationship begins with an engagement letter and a fixed retainer. The structure is straightforward, disclosed in writing, and the same on every engagement.
“The retainer tells me the principal is serious, it pays for the work that has to happen before either of us knows whether there's a deal, and it puts the engagement on a businesslike footing from day one.”
If you are considering an expedition yacht acquisition, a commercial-vessel conversion, or a clean-sheet new build — or if you are a current owner exploring the SeaKeepers donation pathway — contact Paul directly.
Paul M. Madden · Newport, Rhode Island · +1 561 568 3430