Chelsea Football Club Owner Building $400 Million Mega-Yacht with Submarine, Missile Defenses

Jack Loftus — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 20:30:00 EDT

Russian billionaire and Chelsea soccer club owner Roman Abramovich is building a $400 million mega-yacht. Yawn, you say? You have two? OK, well, this yacht has its own submarine. And armor plating with bulletproof glass. And little boats that fit inside the bigger boat. And a frickin' missile defense system that will alert he and his crew of 70 former SAS soldiers that there be pirates in those waters. It should be noted that Abramovich's other yachts—the 377 ft. Pelorus, 282ft Ecstasea and 160ft Sussurro—all pale in comparison to the 550 ft. Eclipse, and do not include missile detection systems. You can never be too safe, right?

The Eclipse, so named because Abramovich desires that it overshadow all other boats at sea, also includes an escape submarine, just in case pirates or other rapscallions make it on board. The submarine seats two, so Abramovich and his gorgeous girlfriend Daria Zhukova, 26, can make a hasty flight to safer waters (or go down to 160 ft. deep) while his hired guns secure the decks.

Abramovich's Eclipse will also have room for 24 guests, a cinema, aquarium, disco and a hospital. But no weapons—under maritime law, private vessels are banned from carrying them. Hence, the yellow submarine action and missile defenses that border on paranoia. [The Daily Mail]

"If Darth Vader had an intergalactic yacht"

Brian Lam — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 16:06:12 EDT

That's Newsweek's David Kaplan describing the Maltese Falcon, a $130 million dollar high-tech sailing yacht as long as a football field, with free-standing carbon fiber masts that go 20 stories high.

When people talk about mega-yachts, they're usually talking about powerboats. To make this boat sail without compromising its luxurious attachments like leather-and- steel-filled staterooms, plasma TVs, speedboats and Jetskis, they had to make the 1,367-ton boat extra long (289 feet). And come up with a crazy way to power it, by wind.

From Wired:

If the...Falcon were anchored in New York Harbor, its masts would nearly reach the tablet in the arm of the Statue of Liberty.

The square-rigged ship uses a new rigging system called the DynarRig, designed by Gerald Dijkstra, which uses hollow, freestanding masts of carbon fiber to control 26,000 square feel of surface on 15 sails. The CEO of Perini Navi, the boat builder, saw the plans and said "whatever that is, it's not going to sail." The masts, at their base, are only 5 inches thick, toward the top, only half an inch. The stress in the masts is monitored by fiber optics in the masts. When sails are unfurled and stowed, it's done by 75 motors.

But the ship isn't completely computer controlled. David closes a Wired feature on the boat by quoting Tim saying, "No way Bill Gates is controlling my boat...I don't ever want to have to press Control-Alt-Delete to restart..."

I gathered a lot of these images from around the Web, and from a Wired Magazine feature and a Newsweek piece. But you can find out a hell of a lot more by reading David's book, Mine's Bigger: Tom Perkins and the Making of the Greatest Sailing Machine Ever Built. –Brian Lam

[Amazon Link]

Gizmodo: mega-yacht

Chelsea Football Club Owner Building $400 Million Mega-Yacht with Submarine, Missile Defenses

"If Darth Vader had an intergalactic yacht"