Bering 70 Explorer Yacht, the Slim Steel Coastal Cruiser

Bering 70 means two boats, RA and Levanna

Anyone searching for a Bering 70 for sale is looking at a very small pool. Bering's own fleet record lists two delivered hulls: RA, launched at the end of January 2019 in Antalya, and Levanna, launched on February 18, 2022 and delivered that March. The yard has since said plainly that it stopped building 70-foot models and that the Bering 78, developed from owner feedback on the 70s, replaces them.

That makes this a used-only model with two quite different examples. Levanna is about a meter longer than RA, carries far more fuel and has a different lower-deck plan, so the specifications on this page are Levanna's unless we say otherwise. Where the two differ, we spell it out.

Bering talked about a 70-foot coastal design for several years before RA appeared. Its news archive from 2015 to 2017 describes B70 projects under construction, including a project named Apsara whose hull and superstructure were joined in June 2017 and whose three en suite cabin plan matches RA. Treat those early posts as background to the design rather than as additional delivered boats.

A dreadnought bow instead of a trawler bow

Most steel explorers look like small ships, with high, flared bows. The Bering 70 does not. Bering's naval architects drew a long, slim hull that Scott Blee of SABDES Yacht Design described as more dreadnought cruiser than traditional explorer, with a reverse stem similar to an axe bow. Blee then styled the exterior around it, repeating the reverse arc of the bow in the aft edge of the saloon windows and running one long curve from the bridge front to the aft sundeck.

The point of the plumb, reverse-raked bow is behavior, not looks. With little overhang there is less reserve buoyancy forward, so the bow tends to slice through an oncoming sea rather than climb it, which damps pitching. Combined with a beam of only about 5.6 meters on a 22-meter hull, the result is a low-resistance shape that Bering says is economical at all its speeds.

Blee said the brief from the start was a sleek, low-draft and low air-height design. That is why the 70 sits so low in profile, and why it suits owners who want to get under bridges and into shallow anchorages.

The 4-foot-4 draft is the headline number

Levanna draws 1.33 meters (4 feet 4 inches) and RA about 1.3 meters. For a 65 to 70 tonne steel yacht with transocean tankage, that is unusually shallow, and it opens up the Bahamas banks, the Florida Keys, the Chesapeake's creeks and the Intracoastal Waterway in a way that a 2-meter-draft explorer never will. Bering highlighted Caribbean cays and the islands of the Adriatic as natural cruising grounds when it launched RA.

The tradeoff is roll. A narrow, shallow, round-ish steel hull will move in a beam sea, and Bering's published material on the 70 does not list stabilizers as standard. Ask what each boat carries before you take it offshore.

• Levanna: 22.43 m LOA, 22.10 m LWL, 5.58 m beam, 1.33 m draft, 64.8 tonnes full load, 74 GT
• RA: 21.44 m LOA, 21.18 m LWL, 5.57 m beam, 1.3 m draft, 70 tonnes full load, 71 GT
• Fuel: Levanna 6,840 L (1,806 gal), RA 4,780 L (1,262 gal)
• Water: Levanna 1,000 L (264 gal), RA 930 L (245 gal)

Small John Deeres, 8 knots and 3,000 miles

Levanna runs on John Deere 4045 AF85 diesels rated at 200 hp at 2,500 rpm, a modest, four-cylinder workboat engine that is easy to service and widely supported. Bering quotes a cruising speed of 8 knots, a maximum of 10 knots at half load and a range of more than 3,000 nautical miles at cruise. RA's sheet shows a 9-knot cruise, 12 knots maximum and 2,500-plus miles from its smaller tanks. Bering has not published RA's engine model in the sources we read.

Those are honest displacement-boat numbers. In January 2020, when RA was the only Bering 70 afloat, the yard used a 70 for a demonstration run from Kemer, near Antalya, to Cyprus, about 420 kilometers in 26 hours at roughly 8 knots in calm winter conditions, then returned in seas of about a meter and a half. That pace is the way to think about the boat: a 190-mile day at a comfortable gait, not a sprint.

Do not buy a Bering 70 expecting to outrun weather. Do buy one if you plan long legs at displacement speed and want fuel bills a fraction of a semi-planing 70-footer's.

RA versus Levanna below decks

Both boats sleep six guests and two crew. RA's plan, described in Bering's construction updates for the project, puts a full-beam master amidships, a VIP forward and a third double aft that can be used by crew, all with en suite heads. The interior was finished in a light, minimalist beach-house style with pale woods.

Levanna's owner asked for changes. Bering added about a meter of length, reworked the general arrangement with the full-beam master amidships and a large guest cabin forward, then fitted an extra bunk cabin on the lower deck plus a dedicated crew cabin, so the boat can run with or without professional crew. On deck, the 70 has large glass panels around the saloon and galley, lowered bulwarks for a closer connection to the water, a big forward sundeck and lounge, and on RA a flybridge of about 35 square meters with a barbecue.

Why Bering replaced it with the 78

Bering says feedback from the two 70 owners led directly to the Bering 78, a 23.85-meter shallow-draft steel explorer that keeps the reverse-raked bow and draws 1.45 meters. The first 78 launched in January 2026 with twin Cummins QSL 9 engines of 285 hp, an 8-knot cruise, 10 knots top and more than 3,000 miles of range, and Bering also lists a 78 with Cummins QSB 9 335 hp engines.

For a buyer this is useful context. If a Bering 70 is too narrow or too small for your plans, the 78 is the same idea grown up. If the 70 is the right size, a used one costs a fraction of a new 78 and is the only way to get this hull.

Owning, surveying and shipping a steel 70 from the Med

Both 70s were built and launched in the Mediterranean, and Levanna appeared at the 2022 Cannes Yachting Festival. A US buyer will usually face either a transatlantic delivery or a ship transport, and should budget for it. On a full-displacement steel hull with this range a delivery is realistic, but plan it around season and weather.

Survey priorities are the same as for any steel yacht: ultrasonic thickness readings, coating condition below the waterline and in the bilges, and the transition between steel hull and the superstructure. Bering's spec sheets list RA's superstructure as aluminum, while the yard's 2019 launch note described its superstructure, flybridge and hardtop as fiberglass, so confirm the actual construction on the boat in front of you. CE Category A is listed for both; classification was available on request.

Annual costs for a 22-meter steel yacht run by owners, or with one or two crew, typically land between about $160,000 and $320,000 including dockage, insurance, haul-outs, maintenance and modest fuel use. Professional crew sits at the top of that range or above it.