Wally 80 Review & Buyer’s Guide: The Carbon Maxi That Lost Its Name
What you’d actually do with her
This is a 24-metre carbon sloop you sail with buttons. You’d base her in the Mediterranean, run her with a professional crew of two or three, and take her to the start line three or four times a year — Saint-Tropez, Porto Cervo, Palma — against other twenty-year-old Wallys maintained like racing stables. Between regattas: charter, if you want the boat earning part of her keep, and passages where a self-tacking jib and a mainsheet on a joystick genuinely let two people handle a maxi. The running budget is in the hundreds of thousands of euros a year. She is not a discounted superyacht. She is an entry ticket to a closed club — and the price of the ticket isn’t the purchase. It’s the keeping.
The boat that lost its name
Most boats in this canon share one problem: finding a good hull. With the Wally 80 the problem starts one step earlier: finding the boat itself. Because “Wally 80” is not one boat. At least five different yachts by different designers live under that name in databases, charter catalogues and race entry lists.
There is Genie of the Lamp — a 24-metre Germán Frers design from 1995, Wally’s first flush-deck revolution, which the yard itself called an “80-footer” and the databases file variously as a Wally 77 FR or a Wally 80. There are J One and Lyra — Frers 77s that race in the same class group as the 80s and blur into them in every regatta report. There is Highland Fling XI — a Reichel/Pugh 82 built by Goetz in Rhode Island, routinely misfiled as an 80. And then there is the actual series: Farr Yacht Design’s Design 435, drawn in 2003, built from 2004 to 2009 — the only boat here to which the word “series” applies at all.
This dossier is about her. And the first thing it does for a buyer is a hull census that exists in no public database.
“Rose is a Wally 80 built in Tunisia in 2005 and finished outfitted in Fano under the name Tango for Italian owner Carlo Sama… the boat was built without much attention to budget with the best materials and technology available at the time.”
The button that changed yachting
You can’t understand the Wally 80 without the man who commissioned her from Farr Yacht Design. Luca Bassani is a Milanese who founded a yard in 1994 to build a boat for himself, around one simple, heretical idea: a big sailing yacht should not require twelve people on winches.
“Then, when we introduced Magic Trim, we changed the face of yachting forever. Suddenly, large sailing boats were fun again.”
Magic Trim is a double-acting hydraulic cylinder with a 4:1 tackle inside, conceived by Giovanni Cariboni in 1998: as the ram extends, the sheet trims four times its stroke, and the winches vanish from the deck. By 2003, when Farr took the commission for Design 435, the philosophy was mature: flush deck, four winches on a 24-metre hull, a self-tacking jib, all the muscle in the buttons.
The hulls were moulded at WMagic in Bizerte, Tunisia — Wally’s own composite facility — with fit-out in Fano. Farr’s official figures: hull length 23.99 m, waterline 21.23 m, beam 5.96 m, displacement 35,000 kg, of which 13,000 kg is ballast. Prepreg carbon over honeycomb core, RINA class.
And straight away, a buyer’s warning: the internet knows this series as “Design 518”. That number is a content-farm error, propagated by aggregators. Farr Yacht Design’s own records are unambiguous: Design № 435, 2003. A seller showing you paperwork with any other number owes you answers, not a discount.
What kind of boat is this — if you’re seeing her for the first time
The Wally 80 is a racer-cruiser maxi that looks like a minimalist sculpture: a flat teak deck with no coachroof, a lounge of a cockpit, not one spare rope in sight. Three things define her character.
She’s carbon — all of her. Prepreg carbon in hull and deck delivered 35 tonnes of displacement where contemporaries of the same length carried noticeably more. The flip side: surveying such a hull is not a job for a general surveyor but for an NDT specialist with ultrasound gear — more on that below, because it’s the biggest line in the pre-purchase budget.
She runs on hydraulics. Main and jib sheets, the traveller, and on some hulls a canting keel: all of it is Cariboni cylinders and pumps below deck, driven from push-buttons and a joystick at the helms. That is the “easy sailing” freedom — and it is also the single point of failure around which the entire ownership experience is built.
She exists in sixteen combinations. Wally offered up to 16 permutations of keels, decks and interiors, and the series used them liberally: Aori, Shaka (now Ryokan 2) and Dangerous But Fun (now Sensei) carry Cariboni canting keels swinging 35 degrees each side; Tango (now Rose) has a fixed keel drawing 4.5 metres; Bombarda was built as the “Terrace-on-the-sea” version. No two Wally 80s are alike — and price, maintenance bill and racing potential depend on the individual hull more than on the model.
Living with her: the people who sail them
An honest disclosure this section must open with: owner testimony is almost entirely absent from the public record. Wally 80 owners don’t post on forums — they hire the people who do. The most substantive voices belong to professional crew, and they should be read knowing these people work for the owners.
“One position I love on this boat is that of the mainsailer, the sheet is on a captive winch managed by a proportional Joy stick, the harder you press the lever the faster you cock or let go of the sheet… this allows continuous and immediate adjustment… moreover the piston never gets tired.”
And on why a twenty-year-old boat still wins: “The balance of the design and the excellent execution by the yard form the basis… the development and continuous updating over the years make it a more fine-tuned boat than others on the race course.”
The list of what Rose received over her years of “updating” reads like the bill of materials for a second boat: carbon rigging, then a bowsprit, then a new Lorima mast — same length, lighter and smaller in section — then three successive booms, each lighter than the last, then a vang with a textile strop replacing the heavy hydraulic one. The result: in 2025 Rose became the first ever three-time winner of the Superyacht Cup Palma, beating a Southern Wind 108 launched in 2023.
“We’re really thrilled we got the top result for the third year in a row… To make history at the Superyacht Cup Palma is wonderful.”
The racing biography isn’t all gloss. In the Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez photo archives sits a caption: “The Wally 80 Tilakkhana spears Ryokan 2” — two sisterships colliding, an incident for which no official report of any kind exists. Which is an accurate portrait of the class’s entire information environment: what happens to these boats is known exactly to the extent that it happened in front of a lens.
The cruising, family side of the ledger lives in charter: Aori and Bombarda work the Western Mediterranean with crews of three; Aori’s weekly rate runs roughly $25–34k. Guest reviews in the public domain: none. Even the charter aggregators say so plainly — “There are currently no testimonials.”
The great debate: freedom of the button, or hostage to it
Every boat in this canon carries one central conflict. On the Wally 80 it reads: the system you buy this boat for is the system that takes you hostage.
The thesis is Wally’s own philosophy: four winches, buttons, a couple handling a 24-metre maxi — “large sailing boats were fun again.” The mainsheet joystick De Simoni loves is that philosophy at its peak.
The antithesis is the engineering reality of twenty-year-old hydraulics. Everything that makes a Wally 80 “easy” lives in Cariboni cylinders, pumps, valves and a controller. The precedent is documented: during her refit, Ryokan 2’s owners rebuilt the entire hydraulic system driving the winches and Magic Trim. The canting keels of Aori, Sensei and Ryokan 2 are one more circuit of the same hydraulics — swinging four tonnes of ballast on an axis where a failure is not an inconvenience but an emergency. An independent service network exists (a Wally keel ram serviced at STP Palma is on the record), Cariboni is alive and building — but that is exactly one supplier for the whole class, and every ownership budget stands on its availability.
Ferretti, which bought Wally in 2019, did not settle the argument: the group committed €84 million to new model ranges, and no legacy-sailing support programme exists in the public record. Twenty-year-old Wally 80s are serviced not “at the dealer” but by specialists — Cariboni for hydraulics, Lorima and Southern Spars for rigs, Compositeworks for composite work. The fleet, meanwhile, is alive, racing and holding value — indirect evidence that the ecosystem works. But a buyer must understand what he’s buying: a boat with no manufacturer in the ordinary sense. There is a web of contractors — and it holds as long as the class does.
Which Wally 80? A hull census
This is the dossier’s central warning. Verify the name chain and the design number — never the current name alone.
The Farr Design 435 series is at least seven traceable hulls:
| Current name | Previous names | Year | Keel | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tilakkhana | “OS” | 2004 | — | Active racer (PalmaVela 2025); owner Pascale Decaux |
| Bombarda | Indio → Inti → Tonemai | 2004 | — | “Terrace-on-the-sea” version; refits 2009/2013/2017/2020 |
| Aori | — | 2004 | canting, ±35° | Built by Compositeworks; in charter |
| Sensei | Dangerous But Fun | 2004/05 | canting | Current whereabouts untraceable |
| Ryokan 2 | Shaka → Highland Fling X | 2006 | canting | Compasso d’Oro 2008; hydraulics rebuilt |
| Rose | Tango → Tango G | 2005/06 | fixed, 4.5 m | Three-time Superyacht Cup Palma winner |
| Aesop | Bagheera → Nahita | 2009 | — | Last hull of the series; refit 2020 |
Three traps the databases have already fallen into — and an inattentive buyer will:
Tonemai and Bombarda are one boat. Catalogues carried them as two hulls for years; the BOAT International and SuperYacht Times registries agree: one 2004 hull, name chain Indio → Inti → Tonemai → Bombarda. The “six hulls” figure in popular write-ups is unsourced — and it counts Shaka and Ryokan 2 as different boats.
Nahita is two different vessels. The Wally 80 Nahita (ex Bagheera, 2009, now Aesop) and the Wally 93 Nahita (Judel/Vrolijk, ~2019): same owner, different boats. A listing that says “Nahita” without a year and a length says nothing.
Sensei is two different vessels too. The Wally 80 Sensei (ex Dangerous But Fun, 23.99 m) and the Wally 94 Sensei (28.55 m) are merged into one record on the aggregators. And Highland Fling: X is the Farr 80 (now Ryokan 2); XI is a Reichel/Pugh 82 built by Goetz. Different designers, different yards, an ocean between them.
One question stays open: Inti3 (2005, Farr naval architecture, asked €3.8M) — an eighth hull of the series or a different Wally? The public registries don’t answer. The one document that would close the census outright is a Farr build list or the RINA register entries; neither is in the open record.
Buying a used Wally 80: what to check on a twenty-year-old carbon maxi
From here on, this dossier switches to survey mode.
The hull: NDT only, and it isn’t optional
The leading survey houses are unambiguous — Yacht Survey Partners state they would be unlikely to agree to survey a large carbon yacht at all without the buyer engaging an NDT specialist: an organisation certified to NDT level 3, technicians to level 2, ultrasonic inspection of laminate and bonds. For a prepreg hull of 2004–2009 vintage with twenty racing seasons behind it, this is the first line of the inspection budget.
The rig: count cycles, not guesses
The industry’s yardsticks: a full rod-rigging service every four years under racing use, with heads re-cut or rods replaced; a mast-down survey by a professional rigger at least every three years; textile stays (PBO/aramid) replaced at eight years, runners and removable stays at four. The question to the seller is simple: when did the mast last lie horizontal, and with whom. A fresh spar (Rose — Lorima; Ryokan 2 — Southern Spars) argues for the top of the price band; an original 2004 rig is a six-figure deduction.
The hydraulics: an audit, not a look-around
Pressure-test the Magic Trim and traveller circuits, inspect the ram seals, review the controller and its software, and get the Cariboni service history in writing. On the canting-keel hulls (Aori, Sensei, Ryokan 2), a separate audit of the keel circuit: that is the axis carrying four tonnes of lead. The Ryokan 2 precedent — a complete hydraulic rebuild at refit — is both the warning and the negotiating template: either the system has been rebuilt, and it’s in the papers, or it hasn’t, and it’s in the price.
The hull’s identity
After the census section, no commentary needed: HIN, RINA records, the name chain verified end to end. A seller who cannot produce build documentation with design number 435 on it is selling you a legend, not a boat.
A free map of what ages first, courtesy of the fleet itself
Bombarda’s refit history (2009, 2013, 2017, 2020) and Rose’s rolling upgrade list (mast, booms, vang, deck teak, generator, 2015 repaint) together make a ready checklist of what wears out on these boats: spars and their hydraulics, generators, teak decks, and the paint over the carbon.
Wally 80 price and market: the price list that doesn’t exist
The first fact about Wally 80 money: no new-build price survives in the public record. Not one period source — Boat International to Giornale della Vela — names what these boats cost to build. The best proxy is the earliest brokerage asks of hulls that later sold: Indio at €3.75 million; Inti3 at €3.8 million VAT paid.
The asking-price history since (all figures are asks; this class does not disclose sold prices):
- Ryokan 2 — €3.25M (K&K Superyachts; optimised racer, fresh spar)
- Tonemai — €2.5M, cut to €2.0M (2019)
- Nahita — €2.099M after successive €400k reductions
- Aori — €2.75M → €1.8M (charter boat, canting keel)
- Bombarda — €1.4M (iNautia, 2023) — the floor of the class
The pattern reads clearly: a €1.4–3.25M band, and a boat’s place in it is set by biography, not by year. The top belongs to optimised racing hulls with fresh rigs and documented system rebuilds; the bottom to charter-cruising boats on original hardware. Twenty years of rolling price cuts say something else too: these boats sell slowly, to a handful of buyers a year worldwide.
And a third number that matters more than the first two. The industry benchmark for running costs is 10–15% of value per year; on a €2M Wally 80 that is €200–300k annually — crew (industry salaries from €40k per head), berthing in the 24-metre-plus category, insurance on a carbon racer, winter works. A racing campaign comes on top. The purchase is the cheapest part of ownership, and the sellers know it better than the buyers.
Market snapshot: August 2026. This section is updated with each revision.
Wally 80 vs Swan 80, Southern Wind — and her own relatives
Swan 80 (Frers, 1999–2004, 8 built) is the direct contemporary and the antithesis: glassfibre against carbon, 36.7 tonnes against 35, a conventional winch deck against buttons. Swan is tradition, Nautor service and predictability; Wally is design, a class circuit and hydraulics. Nautor later answered with the Swan 80-2 (2010) and Swan 82 S — a buyer choosing between them is choosing between two philosophies, not two price tags.
Southern Wind 72/78/82 is the South African school: carbon composite too, but biased toward long-range cruising and interior volume. It’s telling that Rose beat a 2023 Southern Wind 108 on the racecourse — but nobody buys an SW for seconds on the beat. They buy her to cross oceans in a comfort the Wally’s flush deck was never meant to offer.
Wally 77 (J One, Lyra) and Genie of the Lamp — the boat’s own relatives and the chief source of confusion. Frers designs of 1995–2000, racing in the same Wally Class group. Lyra was asking €1.95M before selling: a de facto “Wally 80 experience” one generation older and a third cheaper. For a buyer who wants into the class rather than into a Farr 435 specifically, a legitimate alternative — and brokers use it, blurring the line between the models.
ClubSwan 80 and the Wallycento answer the question “and if newer?”: the next generation’s box-rule racing classes, different money, different crews. Their existence is the reason the Wally 80 stays affordable — she is the previous generation of the arms race.
The formula: a pure racing campaign in a living class with history — Wally 80; yard tradition and service — Swan 80; carbon plus ocean cruising — Southern Wind; the same club for less — Wally 77.
Swan 80 (Frers)
Southern Wind 78
Wally 77
Open questions
This dossier doesn’t pretend to omniscience. The series’ exact hull count has never been published by Farr or RINA — seven hulls are traced, and Inti3’s status is unresolved. The 2004–2006 new-build price has not survived. Owner voices — as opposed to captains’ and crews’ — are absent entirely; interviews with the class’s owners and skippers (Ligier, Decaux, Wackerhagen, Pansera) are the next revision’s task. Sensei’s current whereabouts cannot be traced. The “GRP” tags in aggregator data against the prepreg-carbon primary record want closing with RINA class documents. And not a single MAIB or insurer report on the class exists — which, for boats that have been converging on start lines for twenty years, is itself a notable fact.
Wally 80 specifications (Farr Design 435)
| Hull length | 23.99 m |
| Waterline length | 21.23 m |
| Beam | 5.96 m |
| Draft | 4.0–4.5 m by hull (canting keel ±35° on some hulls) |
| Displacement | 35,000 kg (Farr; 33.5–35.5 t across hulls) |
| Ballast | 13,000 kg |
| Construction | prepreg carbon / honeycomb core, RINA class |
| Rig | sloop, self-tacking jib, 4 winches, Cariboni hydraulics (Magic Trim) |
| Engine | Cummins/Yanmar 170–250 hp by hull |
| Design | Farr Yacht Design № 435 (2003) |
| Build | WMagic (Bizerte) / fit-out Fano; Aori by Compositeworks |
| Hulls | ≥7 traced (2004–2009) |
| Crew | 2–3 cruising, 10+ racing |
FAQ
How much does a used Wally 80 cost?
Asking prices 2011–2024 range from €1.4M (charter-cruising hulls on original systems) to €3.25M (optimised racers with fresh rigs). Sold prices are not disclosed. Budget roughly €200–300k a year to run her.
How many Wally 80s were built?
No official figure exists. At least seven Farr Design 435 hulls (2004–2009) are traceable; the popular "six" is wrong — it misses the renames. Tonemai and Bombarda are one boat (Indio → Inti → Tonemai → Bombarda).
What’s the difference between the Wally 80, Genie of the Lamp and the Wally 77?
Genie of the Lamp (1995) and the Wally 77s (J One, Lyra) are Germán Frers designs — the previous generation. The Wally 80 is Farr Yacht Design’s Design 435 series (2004–2009). They race in the same Wally Class group and are constantly confused in databases — check the design number, not the name.
What are the known problems of the Wally 80?
Ageing Cariboni hydraulics (Magic Trim, travellers, canting keels) — a complete system rebuild is documented on Ryokan 2; rod and textile rigging cycles; surveying twenty-year-old prepreg carbon (NDT specialists only); and the whole class’s dependence on a single hydraulics supplier.
Can you cruise a Wally 80 long-range?
Formally, yes: RINA class, and charter hulls work the Mediterranean. In practice she is a regatta and coastal machine: up to 4.5 m of draft (more with a canting keel), a flush deck with no crew protection, and every system running on hydraulics. For ocean cruising, the same money works harder in a Southern Wind or a Swan.
Method: this dossier was assembled from Farr Yacht Design and Wally documentation, interviews and reporting in Giornale della Vela, Seahorse, BOAT International, SuperYacht Times and Yachting World, race archives (Superyacht Cup Palma, Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez, Loro Piana), brokerage listings 2011–2026 and industry survey standards. Quotes are given in their published English form; Italian-language material is translated with meaning preserved. Where sources disagree, we either resolved the conflict with primary documents or left it honestly open. Owner interviews are underway; their testimony will join the next revision.