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After months of testing at sea, the massive ship known as Sailing Yacht A has left Germany and is on its way to be delivered to its new owner, Russian billionaire Andrey Melnichenko. Slated for official delivery in late spring, Sailing Yacht A is an amalgamation of mind-boggling statistics and figures.
Costing around $450 million—pocket change for its owner, who’s reportedly worth more than $13 billion—Sailing Yacht A was produced by Germany-based luxury yacht builder Nobiskrug, and has taken since April 2015 to complete. As you can imagine, powering one of the world’s largest sailing yachts is no small task, so Nobiskrug uses hybrid diesel-electric propulsion.
Each diesel engine produces 4,800 horsepower, while the two electric motors are rated at 4300 kWh each. Augmenting that immense power is the wind itself, harnessed by sails attached to its 300-feet-tall, carbon fiber masts, which are apparently the largest free-standing composite structures in the world. For scale, that’s the length of nine New York City subway cars front-to-back.
Due so its monstrous size, however, Sailing Yacht A has a cruising speed of 18 miles her hour and maxes out at 24 mph.
Built to accommodate 20 guests and a crew of 54, Sailing Yacht A is gargantuan. It has eight decks, a helicopter pad, an enormous pool, and an underwater observation area that uses a 1.8-ton, 193-square-foot piece of curved glass fas a viewing portal into the underwater world. Other than this material substitution in the keel, the rest of the hull is steel; the deck, of course, is teak.
Bomb-proof glass and 40 closed-circuit TVs help protect the occupants.
Holger Kahl, managing director of Nobiskrug, said: “Born from the desire of the owner to ‘push the boundaries of engineering and challenge the status quo of the industry’, Sailing Yacht A is undoubtedly one of the most visionary projects Nobiskrug has ever been involved in.”
Check out the videos below to get a sense for how big, majestic, and opulent this thing really is.
