![]() About the only other thing they have in common is that they are all owned by Americans.īut being very much a scientist in his own right and with a competitive streak which has been a distinguishing feature in his yachting exploits (he drove his Herreshoff schooner Mariette very hard indeed on the race course), Perkins was quick to point out that ‘the Falcon’ is not only the longest on deck at 278ft 10in (85m) but more significantly is much longer on the waterline at 256ft 6in (78.2m). Falcon’s ‘biggest’ claim is for being the largest modern clipper. From the outset Perkins put the yacht in context with the two other existing superyachts that have knocked our socks off in recent months – namely Joe Vittoria’s VT-built Mirabella V (the biggest sloop in the world with an LOA of 246ft 8in/75.22m) and Dr Jim Clark’s Huisman-built three-masted schooner Athena (the biggest privately owned sailing yacht in the world with an LOA, including spars, of 295ft 3in/90m). By the end of the session that seemed like an understatement.īut this wasn’t just about Maltese Falcon. Tom Perkins, an inventor himself in the field of laser technology, admitted that both he and his friend Fabio Perini, with whom he has built two previous yachts, were “both nerds who get off on doing new technical things”. ![]() For two hours the assembled cognoscenti from the superyacht industry sat there goggle-eyed. In an unusually detailed paper delivered recently at Project 2004 in Amsterdam, Perkins and his team – including Gerry Dijkstra (naval architecture), Ken Freivokh (interior and exterior styling), Damon Roberts (rig design and builder) and Franco Torre (from the builders Perini) – described how some of the unique design challenges have been met. And her rig is genuinely revolutionary, potentially a serious alternative for sailing yachts Later this year, Tom Perkins’s three-masted 289ft clipper yacht Maltese Falcon will be launched from Perini Navi’s Yildiz yard near Istanbul, where all eyes will be on her extraordinary square-sailed Dynarig which promises to add a new dimension to superyachting.įor a man whose venture capital activities have started companies like Google, AOL,, Genentech and Sun Microsystems and who earlier in his Silicon Valley career managed Hewlett Packard, building a big yacht might seem like a walk in the park. It seems appropriate that someone who has spent his life in the risk business should be attempting one of the most daring developments in yachting.
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