Finding Mockingbird: How Racing Yachts Sourced a TP52 That Was Never For Sale
Some of the best boats never touch the open market — and Mockingbird was one of them.
When our client came to us looking for a competitive TP52, the search didn't start with a listings page. It started with our network. Mockingbird, a 2015 Botin-designed, King Marine-built TP52 originally campaigned under the name Bronanosec on the Super Series circuit, wasn't advertised anywhere. Her owner wasn't shopping her around, and she wasn't sitting on a brokerage site waiting for an offer. By every conventional measure, she was off the table.
That's exactly the kind of boat we go looking for.
At Racing Yachts, we've long believed that the right match for a client isn't always the boat that's listed — it's the boat that fits. So instead of waiting for the right TP52 to come to market, we went out and found one that already checked every box: a proven Botin hull, a recent 2025 keel, and a program that had clearly been maintained to a very high standard. We reached out directly, opened a conversation with the owner, and worked through what became a genuinely off-market transaction from start to finish.
Why Mockingbird stood out
Once we had access, the boat's condition made the case for itself. She'd had a comprehensive deck and hardware service in May 2025, a new electronics suite built around B&G and Garmin systems, and a sail inventory of more than 40 sails split between Doyle and North lofts — the kind of depth that lets a new owner step straight into competitive racing rather than rebuilding a program from scratch. The hull had been freshly painted black in 2022, with the deck already scheduled for a repaint in 2026, so the next owner inherits a boat on a clear maintenance cycle rather than a list of deferred jobs.
LOA: 15.85m
Beam: 4.42m
Draft: 3.5m
Displacement: 7,000kg
Designer: Botin / Builder: King Marine
Year built: 2015
The value of a broker who looks beyond the listings
This is the part of the job that doesn't show up on a website: picking up the phone, knowing who owns what, and having the relationships to ask the question "would you ever consider selling?" before anyone else does. Buyers searching listing sites alone will only ever see the boats someone has already decided to advertise — which is a fraction of what's actually out there and potentially available.
For this client, that off-market approach was the difference between waiting for the right TP52 to surface and simply going out and getting it. Mockingbird has since changed hands, and we're proud that our reach into the fleet — not a listing page — is what made the deal happen.
If you're looking for a specific boat and can't find it listed anywhere, that doesn't mean it isn't out there. It usually just means nobody's found it yet. Get in touch with the Racing Yachts team and let us go looking.
