![]() Why the sudden flurry of these stratospherically ambitious projects? In truth, it is not that sudden – initial pitches for what ultimately became Sailing Yacht A were invited back in 2008, and pre-studies began in 2011. There is also the 86m Komorebi, an experimental wingsail-assisted hybrid trimaran design from the French multihull experts VPLP. A proposal for the 114m Endurance has just been unveiled, an explorer concept designed to be able to cruise unassisted for three months. Royal Huisman announced this autumn that they had been commissioned to design and build the 86m Project 400, another three masted design, this one more conventionally rigged. Meanwhile in the spring, the largest Bermudan rigged yacht ever launched, the 86m ketch Aquijo, powered through sail trials in preparation for a global adventure. Black Pearl represents a modern evolution of the rotating Dynarig pioneered by Maltese Falcon. ![]() The Philippe Starck-designed Sailing Yacht A, with her 20m freeboard, begs the question: is she even a sailing yacht? The last yacht to divide opinion, and attract the shock and awe of the non-sailing public in the same manner was Maltese Falcon, the glossy, experimental megayacht designed for Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tom Perkins.īut the Falcon was launched a decade ago, and Sailing Yacht A is just one of a crop of extraordinary gigayachts, or sailing superyachts of 80, 90 or 100m plus, to touch the water in 2016.īesides the 142m Sailing Yacht A, another three-masted design was launched from OceanCo this autumn, the 106m Black Pearl, which looks set to become the largest sailing yacht in the world – for a while at least. The 142m, eight-deck behemoth is the archetypal ‘gigayacht’, phenomenal not just in her dimensions but also in her radicalism. Dwarfing not only any other yacht that happened to be on the River Eider, but even the buildings along the foreshore, the monolithic Sailing Yacht A made quite an impression when she was launched from the Nobriskrug yard in Hamburg in the autumn of 2016.
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