One of the world’s largest private sailing superyachts back in Mallorca, The Maltese Falcon, was sailing off Palma today she is understood to have undergone some refit and repair work at the STP shipyard.
Maltese Falcon is a full-rigged ship using DynaRig technology, which was built by Perini Navi in Tuzla, Istanbul, and commissioned by her first owner, the late Tom Perkins, an American businessman and venture capitalist who was one of the founders of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins.
The yachts is now repoprted to be owned by one of the UK's most successful female entrepreneurs. But Hedge-fund manager Elena Ambrosiadou says she won't have time to sail the boat. “I work 16 hours a day, seven days a week. I doubt if I'll be spending much time on her,” she told the Times.
She is one of the world’s most complex and largest sailing yachts at 88 m (289 ft), similar in size to the Athena and Eos. The vessel dropped its BVI flag in 2008 and was purchased by Pleon Ltd, which put it to charter use.
The bare hull was built and launched on speculation in 1989-1990 by Perini Navi at its newly acquired shipyard in Tuzla, Istanbul, but found no takers in the aftermath of the Gulf War.
Tom Perkins, a keen yachtsman and the owner of the two Andromeda La Dea Perini ketches, took an interest in the hull.
In 2001 he hired Dutch yacht designers at Dykstra Naval Architects to investigate 19th-century clippers and propose a three-mast square rig for the project.
The “DynaRig” concept, a 1960s invention by German hydraulics engineer Wilhelm Prölss intended to operate cargo ships with a fuel-saving philosophy and as few crew as possible, met with Perkins’ approval, and the project was signed into build in Tuzla.
The three self-standing rotating carbonfiber masts were not a Perini Navi deliverable; they were manufactured and fitted to the yacht at the Perini Navi premises in Tuzla under the direct responsibility of Perkins and the supervision of Insensys, Ltd, a British carbonfiber specialist. Ken Freivokh designed the vessel’s interior decoration, and Perini Navi fitted her out.
The yacht is easily controlled and has been seen to sail off her anchor and away from berths within harbors.
The yacht’s sophisticated computer detects parameters such as wind speed automatically and displays key data.
An operator must always activate the controls, yet it is possible for a single person to operate the yacht.
In a radio interview for the BBC World Service’s Global Business programme broadcast in December 2007, Perkins claimed that he personally wrote some of the yacht’s unique control software.
On 4 November 2007, in a 60 Minutes profile, Perkins suggested the yacht cost more than $150 million but less than $300 million, refusing to be more specific.