Before I was invited by Prestige to sea- trial a new boat and tour its Italian factory, I knew next to nothing about Trieste, a grand old port city in northwest Italy, or the nearby shipbuilding town of Monfalcone. But Trieste, set atop forested limestone outcroppings on a gin-clear sea, is really something.
Trieste has existed in some form or another for over 2,000 years. It’s the center-piece of the Gulf of Trieste, a gale-protected stretch of the subtropical Adriatic. A few miles from Slovenia, 15 miles from northern Croatia and 50 miles from southern Austria, it’s a true cultural crossroads. Walking the delightful waterfront, you hear a mishmash of tongues: Slavic, Germanic and every branch of Latin. Stopping in at Pizzeria Calo for one of the best margherita pies that ever torched the roof of my mouth, I asked the manager where everyone strolling the waterfront came from.
“Everywhere,” he said. “Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Albania, France, Italy, Germany, Greece, Switzerland.” He then mentioned the 460-foot vessel seized from Andrey Melnichenko. “And Russia too,” he said with a laugh.
It was in this corner of Italy that Prestige and its parent company Groupe Beneteau unveiled a brand-new flagship—the M8 power catamaran. It was tied to a mooring at Portopiccolo, a former rock quarry converted into a resort and marina. The boat had handlers, including Prestige Brand Director Erwin Bamps, North American Director Sam Dubois and Product Manager Rosalie Le Gall, who walked me through the biggest and most expensive ($5.5 million) boat in the Prestige fleet.
The name M8 is actually a wordplay on her size. According to the builder, to get the 3,000-plus square feet of living space aboard the 65-foot M8, you’d need an 80-foot monohull.
And what a living space it is. Angular lines, curved hull windows and blinding white surfaces distinguish this interior. Le Gall and Bamps said designers took some cues from Prestige’s smaller M48 catamaran, but for the most part, the M8 was built new from the stringers up.
I was able to see the M8’s birthplace at the 500,000-square-foot Groupe Beneteau factory and Italian headquarters in Monfalcone. There, the generational expertise of 250 employees extends back to the city’s emergence as a shipbuilding hub in the late 1800s. It’s a highly advanced operation that yields a Jeanneau 65 sailboat every 23 days and an M8 every 27.
At the M8 hull infusion site, a mammoth crane can rotate the entire hull mold. Further up the line, the joinery factory is staffed by serious craftspeople. The M8 is so customizable, Prestige decided it was more efficient—and affordable—for her woodwork to be done in-house. Because the factory is situated right on the water, boats of all types are brought in for refurbish work too.
Starting at the stern, which is wide enough to host a Greek wedding, the M8’s rear deck and main cabin present an entirely flat surface that measures 1,180-plus square feet. It’s covered by resilient faux teak that’s far lighter than actual wood and, according to Le Gall, much easier to repair. There’s also a 14-foot-wide, step-equipped swim/beach platform created by Opacmare. Le Gall called it The Transformer.
“It was first engineered 15 years ago, so it’s very reliable, and it is used on lots of superyachts,” she said. “I think it’s the first time one has been used on a boat of this size.”
Raised, it’s an extension of the main deck. Midway down, it’s level with a stern garage where you can load and unload paddleboards and gear. When fully lowered, the platform drops down into the sea, Your guests can swim right off or your tender can nose up to the garage. It’s brilliant.
The main cabin is accessed by five sturdy glass doors—two to port, one to starboard and two astern. When they’re all opened up and coupled with a broad, raked windshield and a full perimeter of floor-to ceiling windows, the demarcations between indoor and outdoor blur. While a handsome bar separates the salon from the cockpit, those borders are blurred too. This is a space for socializing with a lot of people.
The M8 was designed by Camillo Garoni, with interior design overseen by Valentina Militerno de Romedis. Interior spaces are both luxurious and practically considered. Hull number one featured a full (if relatively small) galley equipped with Miele appliances at salon level, but the boat can be configured with the galley belowdecks. The lower control center (I’m hesitant to call it a helm since there’s no steering wheel) with joystick and three MFDs features Garmin’s Surround View, which gives a faux aerial view of the boat, as if a drone is gazing down on it. It makes docking a breeze. (There’s also a docking joystick on the back deck.) There are individual climate zones throughout the interior, along with copious USB charging ports, soothing recessed lighting and railings all around so there’s rarely a place where passengers can’t gain a handhold.
Garoni and de Romedis designed the M8 with what Prestige calls a “Miami aesthetic.” Furniture, featuring pieces by legendary Italian design studio Pininfarina, is set in a loose configuration. It’s modern but classic. I’d liken it to the luxe, jet-aged vibe portrayed in the James Bond epic Goldfinger. Sturdy glass tables feature 3-D-printed layered surfaces that resemble marble. There are carbon fiber accents too. You’d have to secure everything running through a storm, but big storms and vast crossings are not really the intended scenarios with this boat.
Belowdecks, the full-beam, single-level master suite—with IMAX-quality windows to starboard and port and soothing grayish-blonde wood paneling—takes up the entire forward space. I found myself down there with Le Gall and we just gawked at the 322 square feet of living space.
“It’s no longer a stateroom suite,” La Gall said. “It’s an apartment. You’d have to go over 100 feet LOA in a monohull to have this amount of space.” Was she speaking marketingese? Sure. But she’s not wrong.
M8 guests aren’t shortchanged either. If you opt for a salon-level galley, you can choose a four- or five-cabin configuration (with the VIP suite taking a space hit in the five-stateroom setup). The boat I saw was a four-cabin yacht, and the VIP cabin felt like a master suite. It occupied much of the portside nacelle’s distance and offered a walk-in closet and even a small lounge, which could be a guest office or sanctuary from a blazing party.
On the M8’s giant foredeck, sunpads and lounge are accessed by comfortably wide, railing-supported walkways. My favorite spot was the sunken lower foredeck lounge, which is genius. Flying above the water on the bow settee, you have the best seat in the house.
The M8 is big enough to feature a stainless-steel-railed indoor spiral staircase to the flybridge and upper helm—a nice touch. With 500 square feet on the flybridge there’s room for a grill, fridge, eight-person dining area and lounging settees for at least another eight. It’s an excellent space for entertaining and an entertaining space to drive the boat.
This hull’s flybridge roof held a retractable canvas sunroof, but a solid, solar paneled setup can be had with a lithium bank that should power the boat’s house systems overnight without the generator.
I took one of the flybridge helm’s two supportive and comfortable seats, which face a pair of 22-inch Garmin MFDs. (A small, separate screen monitors the engines). I throttled up on the twin shaft-drive Volvo Penta D8 600s. I initially wondered if 1,200 hp was modest for a boat that weighs 116,000 pounds fully loaded. But those twin nacelles give nearly twice the hydrodynamic—and fuel—efficiency of a similar displacement monohull. The center portion of the M8’s bow hull is also sculpted into a V for cushioning in a heavy chop and swell, giving an almost hybrid trimaran appearance from the front.
I didn’t have much opportunity to test those chop-defeating chops. The best I could do on this dead-still morning was turn the boat sharply at speed and confront her 3-foot wake. Not surprisingly, she plowed through with easy authority. Like every power cat I’ve had the pleasure of driving, she remained remarkably flat while turning and accelerating and incredibly stable for just walking around.
Offshore, I joysticked the pair of bow thrusters and was impressed with the boat’s fine maneuverability. Sam Dubois says joysticks are the reason more owner/operators are buying bigger boats. “These people say that without the joystick, they’d have been looking at boats 10 feet shorter,” he said. “When my family is on board, I feel safer with the joystick. And there’s also less shouting from my wife.”
With twin 489-gallon fuel tanks, the M8 is neither a long-range cruiser nor a speed demon. On plane at her 20.8- knot top end speed, she slurped fuel at 64 gallons per hour. A 49.5-gph fuel burn at a 15-knot cruise speed gives a range of 350 nautical miles, but if you ease back to 8 knots the M8 is suddenly sipping diesel at a mere 5.3 gph, where cruising range rockets to 1,400 nautical miles.
Passing a high limestone escarpment on the run back to Trieste, I pulled the Prestige M8 over to photograph the spectacular arch. From the scenery to the history to the food to the mightily impressive Beneteau factory and yachts, I had enjoyed a few days of sensory overload in this corner of Italy. Yet I had just skimmed the surface of this magical part of the world.
Prestige M8
LOA: 65’0”
Beam: 29’0”
Draft: 5’5”
Fuel: 978 gals.
Water: 224 gals.
Power: (2) 600-hp Volvo D8-600s
This article originally appeared in the October 2023 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine and was published in the November 2023 issue of Soundings.
