The Crazy World of the Gigayacht

Megabuilds Were Big News in 2016. Helen Fretter Delves Into the World of the Gigayacht.

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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. The 142m, eight-deck behemoth is the archetypal ‘gigayacht’, phenomenal not just in her dimensions but also in her radicalism.

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. But 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.

Besides the 142m A, another three-masted design was launched from OceanCo this autumn, the 106m yacht with the working name Y712 or Black Pearl, which looks set to become the largest sailing yacht in the world – for a while at least. Black Pearl represents a modern evolution of the rotating Dynarig pioneered by Maltese Falcon. 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.

There are more in the pipeline also. 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. A proposal for the 114m Endurance has just been unveiled, an explorer concept designed to be able to cruise unassisted for three months. There is also the 86m