Few vessels resist easy description quite like Sailing Yacht 'A'. Registered as a sailing boat, she is in truth a three-masted, sail-assisted motorboat, and at 143 metres she stretches to the length of two Boeing 747 airliners parked nose to tail. Her beam matches the wingspan of one of those jets. Designed by Philippe Starck and built by the German shipyard Nobiskrug at a cost of almost $500 million, she is the most technically complex and extraordinary megayacht on the water today.
Her owner, the Russian oligarch Andrey Melnichenko, also commissioned the 119-metre motor yacht 'A', and his sailing counterpart is no less ambitious. Eight decks are linked by multiple lifts and free-floating spiral staircases. She accommodates 14 guests and 54 crew, carries four large tenders and a submarine, and offers a touch-and-go helipad on the bow. Her draft of eight metres is so deep that she can seek refuge only in commercial ports.
The engineering is as singular as the silhouette. The largest of her colossal unstayed masts rises 100 metres above the waterline, and all three top out higher than Big Ben; only carbon fibre could withstand the stresses involved, as no metal would cope. The design is unprecedented, with a high bow that climbs aft along the sheerline before dropping to a retroussé stern, while hull and superstructure appear seamless thanks to cleverly concealed windows and openings.
Beneath the waterline and behind the spectacle lie further flourishes: groundbreaking hybrid technology developed, expensively, for her alone; an underwater glass observation room set into the keel; and a vast library holding many of mankind's most significant works. If her scale is hard to fathom, consider that a 50-metre dredger sits behind her in photographs, and the classic 78-metre SS Delphine looks modest in the foreground.
