Yacht broker in Palma de Mallorca, working across the Balearics and the wider Mediterranean. Eighteen years in the marine industry, in five countries and four languages.
Karl Atkin
Boats have taken up most of my life, and I have never once minded. What began as a trade turned into a craft, and then into a business I intend to be in for a very long time.
I take a sale personally, from the first valuation to the handshake at the end — the same voice on the telephone, at the viewing, in the negotiation and over the paperwork.
Eighteen years in, and every boat still teaches me something. That is most of the pleasure of it.
I came up through sails. North Sails in the United Kingdom first, then senior work at the loft in New Zealand, a short spell with Doyle, and back with North Sails in the Caribbean. Sailmaking is the finest education there is in how a boat is actually put together: where the loads run, which repairs were done properly and which were done cheaply, what an owner has lived with for years and stopped noticing. I still go aboard and read a vessel before I read her particulars, and I am still learning.
Alongside those seasons I worked in asset management and in high-end hospitality, looking after people whose time is short and whose standards are exact. That is where the quieter half of this work was learned. Discretion is not a line in a brochure. It is a set of habits about what gets written down, who is copied in, and what never leaves the file.
Brokerage proper began in Palma, among brokers and yacht managers genuinely esteemed in their field and generous with what they know. The first sale I carried was a Finngulf 36, from a Swiss owner to Spanish buyers, negotiated in Spanish and German and concluded in the April of 2025. Atkin & Co. followed. Since then the work has run from a Moody 47 that needed mechanical troubleshooting and a compliance problem solved before it could complete, to a tender that took mediation, cross-border logistics and an escrow account before anyone could shake hands, to a Princess 88Y carried as a jointly held central mandate.
Papers from five countries, four languages and eighteen years spent around other people's boats leave you with a fairly unsentimental view of the market. They also leave you with the thing an owner actually needs: someone who has seen how these deals fall apart, and knows where to look first.
Every vessel I take on gets a complete pack before she is advertised: chain of title, tax position, registration, invoices, survey history. Building it first is what stops a sale dying at survey. Where something genuinely is missing, the advert says so rather than hoping nobody asks.
If a tax position is not documented to my satisfaction, the listing does not claim it is settled. Hours are given as approximate unless there is a reading I have seen myself. It costs a few early enquiries and saves the ones that matter.
No account handler and no junior. I take the mandate, show the boat, run the negotiation and sit with the paperwork at the end. One number, answered — including on a Sunday when a buyer has flown in for the day.
English and German fluently, French conversationally, Spanish improving steadily. A Swiss seller and a Spanish buyer is an ordinary week here, and nothing important is left to a forwarded translation.
An owner's identity documents never travel with a buyer's pack. Reserves, commission and the reason a boat is being sold stay between us. Public listings give a general area and never a berth.
The quickest way to spend a reputation is to sell somebody the boat in front of them instead of the boat they need. If the market is not where you hoped, you will get the comparable evidence rather than a compliment about the asking price.
Central, joint-central and open mandates. Valuation from comparable evidence rather than optimism, the document pack, photography and particulars, the advertising, viewings, and the negotiation through to completion and handover.
Buyer representation. A proper brief, an honest shortlist that includes boats I do not have listed, inspection, survey and sea trial coordinated, and somebody on your side of the table when the number is discussed.
Fractional ownership: structuring an offer, valuing a share fairly, and taking a departing owner's weeks to market without unsettling the rest of the syndicate.
Chartering a yacht for a week or a season, and placing an owner’s vessel into charter where it makes sense of the running costs. The Balearics first, and further afield on request.
Chains of title with gaps in them, tax and VAT positions that need documenting, registration and flag questions, imports and matriculation. Much of the real work sits here, and most of the deals that fail, fail here.
Escrow, cross-border movement, delivery, berthing and the practical business of moving a boat out of one owner's life and into another's.
If you are thinking about selling, or you have found something and want a second opinion before you commit to it, write or call. The first conversation costs nothing and is usually the useful one.
+34 623 961 404 · hello@karlatkin.com
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