The Worlds Greatest Sailing Yacht Sold, at 40% discount!
Thursday, August 13th, 2009The Maltese Falcon Sold
Tom Perkins, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and ultra-millionaire, finally sold his super yacht, the Maltese Falcon.
The reported price tag: 60 million pounds, according to the British newspaper The Times. After nearly a year on the market, the price was trimmed from about 90 million pounds, which is believed to be about what Perkins had paid for the boat.
“It has taken a while,” Perkins told The Times. “It is not the best time in the world to sell it. I can’t tell you anything at all about the buyer. There is confidentiality.”
The 289-foot-long Maltese Falcon (home page here) was built in Turkey three years ago and has been a frequent visitor to the Port of Monaco, where we spotted it in front of our vantage point.
The luxurious yacht features a model Maserati car, two VIP suites, private gyms and a hotel staff of about 20. The boat carries the Deep Flight Super Falcon, a two-man submarine built to travel at 1,500 foot depths. Perkins told the television show “60 Minutes” the yacht cost more than $150 million but less than $300 million, and he refused to elaborate.
At one point Perkins made the boat available for charter for about $550,000 a week. He has said he made enough money from renting to break even.
Maximum speed of the Maltese Falcon is 18.5 knots, and the boat has a range of 3,000 miles at 14 knots. The sails, mounted on three masts made of carbon fiber, furl and unfurl at the touch of a button. One person can sail the ship from a computerized console.
“I wanted to recapture the grandeur of the clipper ships and bring them into this century,” Perkins told the Chronicle in 2007. He also wanted to own the world’s largest privately owned sailing yacht.
For a while, the Maltese Falcon was the largest in the world. Now that title belongs to the 557-foot-long Eclipse, owned by billionaire Roman Abramovich, a Russian oligarch and it still lags behind the Dubai, the 531-foot vessel owned by Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, and valued at £212 million ($350 million).