breezeYachting.swiss Opens US Desk, Names Casey Rehrer to Lead It

breezeYachting.swiss has opened a dedicated US office, a move founder Cornelius Kistler says had been on the firm’s roadmap for some time. What Kistler couldn’t plan for was finding the right person to lead it, and he found him at a moment when he wasn’t looking.

Kistler had come to Hawaii for a friend’s milestone birthday, and with three kids in tow, decided a single week wasn’t worth the flight from Switzerland, so he stretched the trip into several months. It was a client connection through Rehrer’s real estate work, a guest renting a house from Rehrer’s broker, that put Rehrer in Kistler’s orbit: Rehrer was asked to help him get settled and show him around.

The two hit it off. Rehrer had spent his life around boats and the water, first as a professional windsurfer who competed on tour as a teenager, later building a career in off-market luxury real estate in Hawaii. What started as one conversation on a cliff turned into weeks of surfing, foiling, and getting to know each other before Kistler offered him the job at all.

The more Kistler learned about him, the clearer it became. When he asked what Rehrer was doing in Hawaii, the answer stuck with him: a solid real estate business and a good life, but one that had grown a little too quiet, leaving him restless and ready for a real challenge again.

“That’s when it clicked for me,” said Kistler. “Here was someone clearly capable, with the right mindset, whose potential was going underused. He understood people, and what a good life actually looks like for the kind of client I work with. That’s the hard part to find in someone. Everything else is just detail.”

For Rehrer, that was exactly the appeal. “I wasn’t looking to walk away from what I’d built,” he said. “But Cornelius was offering something I didn’t have anymore, a real challenge, and I was genuinely excited by it. A broker’s life is never dull. There’s always work to do, and that was the point for me.”

Handing a planned market launch to someone from outside the industry is an unusual call. But Kistler didn’t make it blind, and neither did Rehrer.

“Cornelius runs a tighter operation than most people in this industry are used to,” said Rehrer. “Everything is documented, everything is provable, nothing is left just to a broker’s charm. That’s the Swiss in him coming through, I think, whether he means to show it or not. That felt rare to me, and I wanted to be part of it.”

A shared focus on longevity

Kistler keeps coming back to a question he asks most of his clients before he’ll talk to them about a single yacht: how much time do you actually have, and who do you want to spend it with? Rehrer, whose wife is a private chef with a strong focus on health, had been living by a version of that question for years.

A few months into Kistler’s time in Hawaii, they sat down for what turned into a two and a half hour conversation about exactly that, Kistler recording as Rehrer walked him through his daily routine, his habits, and what he’d actually built his health and his life around. “He asked me to just talk him through my day,” said Rehrer. “It wasn’t scripted. I don’t think either of us thought much of it at the time.”

Looking back, Kistler sees that afternoon as the real interview. “I wasn’t looking for someone who could recite hull specifications,” he said. “I was looking for someone who’d already worked out, on his own, what he actually wanted to use his time for. That’s the same question I ask every client before we talk about a single yacht. Casey had been living the answer for years.”

Why the US, and why now

If the industry has a center of gravity, it’s Florida. Fort Lauderdale has long been considered the yachting capital of the world, with a large share of global yacht sales running through South Florida each year. The firm had always intended to expand into the US, and Florida was where that made sense to begin.

In addition, a significant share of breezeYachting.swiss‘s existing European client base already has ties to the United States through business, property, or family, which made an on-the-ground American presence a natural next step. The firm has also watched a broader wave of newly liquid American clients work through IPOs and other liquidity events in 2026, creating fresh demand for the kind of structuring discipline breezeYachting.swiss has built its European reputation on.

“We’ve had American clients for years, working with us from Switzerland,” said Kistler. “Opening here just means we can be more quickly in the room with them, instead of several time zones away.”

Rehrer will be based in Fort Lauderdale, overseeing vessel sourcing, charter operations, and client relationships, working in close coordination with Kistler and the firm’s European team.

“Opening in the US this year was always part of the plan,” said Kistler. “Finding the right person to lead it was not something I could plan for, and I found him at a moment when I wasn’t even looking. I don’t rely on intuition alone, which is why we did the work to be sure. But when the person is right, you do know it early. We’re really excited about this next chapter.”