The Maltese Falcon (yacht)
Encyclopedia
The Maltese Falcon built by Perini Navi
Perini Navi
Perini Navi is an Italian shipyard based in Viareggio, Italy, province of Tuscany. Ship maintenance now occurs at the Ligurian port of La Spezia. Founded by Fabio Perini in the 1980s, it builds large , luxury sailing yachts, mainly of ketch design....

 is a clipper
Clipper
A clipper was a very fast sailing ship of the 19th century that had three or more masts and a square rig. They were generally narrow for their length, could carry limited bulk freight, small by later 19th century standards, and had a large total sail area...

 sailing luxury yacht
Luxury yacht
The term luxury yacht, “Superyacht” and "Large Yacht" refers to very expensive, privately owned yachts which are professionally crewed. Also known as a Super Yacht, a luxury yacht may be either a sailing or motor yacht.-History:...

, commissioned and formerly owned by American venture capitalist Tom Perkins
Tom Perkins
Thomas James Perkins is an American businessman, capitalist, and was one of the founders of leading venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.-Biography:...

. It is one of the largest privately-owned sailing yachts in the world at 88 m (288.7 ft), similar to Royal Huisman's Athena
Athena (yacht)
Athena is a clipper-bowed 3-masted gaff rigged schooner built by Royal Huisman in 2004 for internet entrepreneur James H. Clark. Clark purchased a 47.4 meter sloop, Hyperion, from Royal Huisman in 1998...

and Lürssen's Eos
Eos (yacht)
The Eos is a three-masted Bermuda rigged schooner. The ship is one of the largest private sailing yachts in the world, and as of 2009 was owned by movie and media billionaire Barry Diller, husband of fashion designer Diane von Fürstenberg. According to a 2007 article in Harper's Bazaar, Eos...

. The yacht was sold in 2009 to Elena Ambrosiadou the founder of IKOS Asset Management, a London-based hedge fund.

Provenance

It was built after the dynaship concept, a 1960s invention of the German hydraulics engineer Wilhelm Prölss, which was intended to operate commercial freight sailing ships with as few crew as possible. The ship has fifteen square sails
Square rig
Square rig is a generic type of sail and rigging arrangement in which the primary driving sails are carried on horizontal spars which are perpendicular, or square, to the keel of the vessel and to the masts. These spars are called yards and their tips, beyond the last stay, are called the yardarms...

 (five per mast
Mast
-Engineering:* Mast , a pole that holds a sail on sailing ships and boats, or radar and telecommunication antennas on modern warships* Guyed mast, a type of tall structure supported by guy-wires...

), stored inside the mast; they can fully unfurl into tracks along the yards
Yard (sailing)
A yard is a spar on a mast from which sails are set. It may be constructed of timber, steel, or from more modern materials, like aluminium or carbon fibre. Although some types of fore and aft rigs have yards , the term is usually used to describe the horizontal spars used with square sails...

 in six minutes. The three carbon fiber masts, which are free-standing and able to rotate, were manufactured and assembled by a company financed by Perkins at the Perini Navi
Perini Navi
Perini Navi is an Italian shipyard based in Viareggio, Italy, province of Tuscany. Ship maintenance now occurs at the Ligurian port of La Spezia. Founded by Fabio Perini in the 1980s, it builds large , luxury sailing yachts, mainly of ketch design....

 Istanbul "Yildiz Gemi" (literally: Star Ship) yard in Tuzla, 50 mi (80.5 km) east of Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...

, Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

, under the supervision of the English company Insensys and Dutch company Gerard Dijkstra & Partners. Other design was provided by Ken Freivokh Design. The Maltese Falcon was the third yacht built by Perini for Perkins.

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 pilot the yacht. In a radio interview for the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 World Service's Global Business programme broadcast in December 2007, Perkins claimed that he personally wrote some of the yacht's unique control software.

The Maltese Falcon has two 1800 hp Deutz
Deutz AG
Deutz AG is an engine manufacturer, based in Cologne, Germany.-History:The company was founded by Nikolaus Otto, inventor of the four-stroke internal combustion engine, in 1864 as N. A...

 engines running at 1,800 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.

The yacht has a permanent crew of 18 to maintain the technical aspects, including the rig and to operate the onboard "hotel", which can accommodate twelve guests plus four guest staff. The boat also includes an onboard gourmet chef and stewards and stewardesses.

The Maltese Falcon was registered in Valletta
Valletta
Valletta is the capital of Malta, colloquially known as Il-Belt in Maltese. It is located in the central-eastern portion of the island of Malta, and the historical city has a population of 6,098. The name "Valletta" is traditionally reserved for the historic walled citadel that serves as Malta's...

, Malta
Malta
Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...

 in 2006. It completed its trial sail in the Sea of Marmara
Sea of Marmara
The Sea of Marmara , also known as the Sea of Marmora or the Marmara Sea, and in the context of classical antiquity as the Propontis , is the inland sea that connects the Black Sea to the Aegean Sea, thus separating Turkey's Asian and European parts. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Black...

 to the Bosphorus strait on 12 June 2006, and made its maiden voyage
Maiden voyage
The maiden voyage of a ship, aircraft or other craft is the first journey made by the craft after shakedown. A number of traditions and superstitions are associated with it....

 from Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

 to Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 via Malta
Malta
Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...

 in July 2006. Since that time, Perkins has been renting out The Maltese Falcon for between €325,000 to €335,000 per week, plus expenses.

On 4 November 2007, in a 60 Minutes
60 Minutes
60 Minutes is an American television news magazine, which has run on CBS since 1968. The program was created by producer Don Hewitt who set it apart by using a unique style of reporter-centered investigation....

profile, Perkins suggested the yacht cost more than $150 million, but less than $300 million, refusing to be more specific.

Perkins and the yacht were the subject of a prize-winning biography, "Mine's Bigger: Tom Perkins and the Making of the Greatest Sailing Machine Ever Built," by Newsweek's David A. Kaplan. The book in 2008 won the prestigious Gerald Loeb Award for best business book of the year.

The Maltese Falcon was listed for sale in 2006 on Yachtworld.com, with an asking price of
Euro
The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...

99,000,000 with engine hours listed at 1,890 hours. Perkins sold the yacht for £60 million in July 2009.

There is now a new and improved Maltese Falcon sailing yacht design concept as unveiled by Perini Navi Italy, complete with the rotating clipper rig. The new 110 metre Falcon yacht design is larger, faster and better according to Perini.

The Maltese Falcon DynaRig

Damon Roberts of Insensys, Ltd. was responsible for designing and manufacturing the DynaRig sail system of The Maltese Falcon in the Tuzla shipyard, Turkey. The design, testing and manufacturing of the system was completed over a three year period. All aspects of the system were incorporated and tested to ensure that the design and finite element analysis matched the actual loads whilst sailing.

The DynaRig owes its origin to work done in the 1960s by Wilhelm Prölss; at the time he believed the system could provide additional propulsion for ships. The DynaRig is effectively a square rig, the mast is freestanding and the yards are connected rigidly to the mast. In this case each mast supports six yards. The yards, unlike a conventional square rigger, have built-in camber of 12%. The sails are set between the yards in such a way that when deployed there are no gaps to the sail plan, enabling each mast's sail plan to work as a single sail. The sails, when not deployed, furl into the mast. The sail is trimmed to the wind direction by rotating the mast. As there is no rigging, the yards have no restriction on rotation and this, taken together with the curved (shaped) yards, low windage and effective single-piece sail, combine to give the rig improved aerodynamic efficiency compared to a traditional square rigger.

The masts are approximately 58 m (190.3 ft) in height above the bottom bearing. The DynaRig concept calls for an elongated section (to reduce the drag) and this needs to be symmetrical. As the rig can be tacked to allow flow in both directions, the mast rotates about deck and keel bearings.

Insensys also incorporated their fiber optical strain monitoring system that monitors the loads on the rigs to ensure that the carbon fiber structures are never overloaded whilst the yacht is sailing. The fiber Bragg grating
Fiber Bragg grating
A fiber Bragg grating is a type of distributed Bragg reflector constructed in a short segment of optical fiber that reflects particular wavelengths of light and transmits all others. This is achieved by adding a periodic variation to the refractive index of the fiber core, which generates a...

 system was embedded within the rigs during fabrication of the carbon structure. The system monitors the strains in real time and transmits the loads to the bridge such that they are understood whilst sailing.

Accidents

The Maltese Falcon was involved in a collision on October 4, 2008 with a 40 ft (12.2 m) sloop
Sloop
A sloop is a sail boat with a fore-and-aft rig and a single mast farther forward than the mast of a cutter....

 while sailing in San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay is a shallow, productive estuary through which water draining from approximately forty percent of California, flowing in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers from the Sierra Nevada mountains, enters the Pacific Ocean...

in support of the Leukemia Cup.

Awards

Some of the awards The Maltese Falcon has won.
  • 2007 International SuperYacht Society — Best S/Y over 36 m
  • 2007 Showboats international Award — highest technical achievement in a sailing yacht
  • 2007 Showboats international Award — best sailing yacht interior
  • 2007 Showboats international Award — best sailing yacht over 40
  • 2007 Showboats international Award — most innovative sailing yachts
  • 2007 Boat International World SuperYacht Award — Sailing Yacht of the Year
  • 2007 Boat International World SuperYacht Award — Best Sailing Yacht 45m and above
  • 2007 Boat International World SuperYacht Award — Best Sailing Yacht Interior
  • 2006 Vela e Motore — Superyacht dell'anno 2006
  • 2006 Yacht Capital BMW Award

Further reading

  • Kaplan, David A. (2007) Mine's Bigger: The Extraordinary Tale of the World's Greatest Sailboat and the Silicon Valley Tycoon Who Built It. ISBN 9780061374029.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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