Wanna Buy A Boat?

With a name like that, Maltese Falcon should be a prettier boat, right? As things stand, I kinda think the 289-foot craft looks like Darth Vader’s megayacht. Or, at the very least, it looks like it should be owned by some sort of super villain. Even a minor one. But don't you think this boat looks as though it were built for that? As though that is its destiny?

Actually, that might be a good thing, because it means that most normal people will not be ever-so-sad they can’t just snort up the 150 million US necessary to buy this bad boy. And in this economy? Well, let’s just say the owner -- venture capitalist Tom Perkins -- better figure on this hanging around the lot for a while. To be honest, I haven’t heard how the yacht market is doing -- specifically, I mean. But I’d be willing to lay down a couple of kumquats that buyers for yachts almost 300 feet long are not lining up. Forget everything else for a moment: can you imagine the gas it takes just to go for ice cream?

Giira Yachts, “India’s First Yacht Blog,” gives us the 4-1-1 on the specs:

Maltese Falcon has 2 32’ Pascoe RIB Tenders. 4 Laser Sailing boats. 1 Castold 14′ Jet tender. 6 full sets of dive gear, water skis, snorkeling gear. Maltese Falcon has a full gym with Techno gym, Stairmaster etc.

And I’ll bet the “etc.” is where it starts to get really cool. Falcon will take 12 guests and 16 crew. It was built in Istanbul in 2006 and is one of the largest privately owned sailing yachts in the world.

Somehow, though, the more I read the specs, the more they just give me a headache:

The ship has fifteen square sails (five per mast), stored inside the mast; they can fully unfurl into tracks along the yards in six minutes. The Falcon has two 1800 horse-power Deutz engines running at 1800 rpm with a top speed of 20 knots with minimal wave-making and virtually no vibration or noise and with a smooth and non-turbulent wake.

All of that, and it’ll cross the Atlantic in 10 days.

It would be fun for a while, but I’ll bet the fun would wear off. And when I think about it, I like my fun available in various configurations.

I don’t know about you, but I guess I’ll skip the super yacht. For now, anyway. Lacking both 115 million anything and the desire to be the first kid on my block with a megayacht, there’s not much point even thinking about it. For fun with variation, I think I’ll buy a book. (Lower maintenance, lower pricetag, higher level of expected satisfaction.)