Reliant Yachts

Reliant Yachts is a Newport, Rhode Island design-and-build house founded in 2012 by partners Dave MacFarlane and Jim Ewing, with construction carried out at partner yards - the X40 programme was fabricated in Tuzla, Turkey. The firm targets the custom and semi-custom end of the market, from 40-foot harbour cruisers up to blue-water sailing and power yachts of 140 feet and beyond.

The X40 is the build we ask Reliant for when a single superyacht programme calls for a matched trio of tenders with a unified design language. All three hulls share a 12.26m (40.0ft) overall length and the same plumb bow, clean topsides, and metallic-finish paint scheme. The X40 Express is the chase-oriented platform: an epoxy, cold-moulded wood-laminate hull, carbon-fibre deck with classic teak surface, and twin Cummins QSB 6.7 480-hp diesels driving Konrad 660b stern drives - which retract to let the boat slide into a tender garage with a clearance of 2.9m. Sea trials recorded a top speed of 40.7 knots; comfortable cruising sits between 27 and 33 knots. The X40T Limousine shares the hull form, twin Cummins QSB 6.7 425-hp diesels, and the same carbon hardtop and saloon structure, hitting 38 knots in trials. The X40L Lander swaps to an aluminium hull and Hamilton jet drives to handle shore landings, and carries a stone-top dining table for fourteen that rises electrically from under the deck.

What distinguishes the programme is its garage-first engineering discipline: hull height, lifting points, and stern-drive kinematics are resolved at the drawing stage, not retrofitted on the hard. We'd put it alongside bespoke European tender programmes on finish quality, at a measurably lower price point.