World's Most Awesome Yacht.

[Crossroads Inc.]

For anyone who has followed posts in the past, you would know that when it comes to the way the super rich spend their money, I am one of the first to mock and lampoon it.
Because lets be honest, when it comes to Custom Cars, Mega Mansions and Super Yachts, so many of them are tacky tasteless behemoths that lack STYLE.
Well, recently I discovered something that even my jaded nature had to agree was rather bitching and freaking sweet. Ladies and gentlemen...
The World's most awesome Yacht



At almost 150 meters it is about the size of a corellian corvette. It's sleek, it;s smooth, it LOOKS awesome.

[AATC-86]

Looks like a Wraith Dart.

[PeZook]

Bah. It's not a yacht unless it has sails.

[Iroscato]

Bah. It's not a yacht unless it has sails.

What it is is beautiful. THAT is how you build a boat/yacht/starship.

[Darth Tedious]

40 knots! That doesn't just look awesome!

The helipad is a nice touch...

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

For anyone who has followed posts in the past, you would know that when it comes to the way the super rich spend their money, I am one of the first to mock and lampoon it.
Because lets be honest, when it comes to Custom Cars, Mega Mansions and Super Yachts, so many of them are tacky tasteless behemoths that lack STYLE.
Well, recently I discovered something that even my jaded nature had to agree was rather bitching and freaking sweet. Ladies and gentlemen...
The World's most awesome Yacht



At almost 150 meters it is about the size of a corellian corvette. It's sleek, it;s smooth, it LOOKS awesome.

Color me unimpressed. I'll be impressed when someone actually pays to have one constructed in real life. Until then, the most I have to say about it is "Eh, I guess it's a nice render."

[Dartzap]

Indeed, not overly impressive. We get the odd Russian billionaires private yacht chugging around here sometimes- size of small cruise liners, helicopter pads included.

[erik_t]

I've always thought it'd be more fun to hack something out of a new-built Sprucan or something.

[JME2]

It reminds me of Lando's yacht, the Lady Luck.

[weemadando]

Looks like a scaled up version of the Ady Gill.

*looks at link*

And yes it is.

To be honest, if we're talking most awesome yachts, I'll stick with the Maltese Falcon.

Or the Eclipse. Because you never know when you might need anti-missile systems, laser anti-photography countermeasures and two helipads. Plus a minisub.

[CaptHawkeye]

It looks like that Helicopter has to squeeze into an incredibly tight landing area. I'd like to see the practicality of something like that while the ship is heaving up and down in the water.

[erik_t]

If the weather is nasty, the Boss isn't having a fun time. Ergo, the yacht won't be operating in such conditions.

[Phantasee]

I'm more impressed by Paul Allen's yacht. It's submersible.

[weemadando]

If the weather is nasty, the Boss isn't having a fun time. Ergo, the yacht won't be operating in such conditions.

Actually the design it's scaled up from is a wave penetrating design. It just don't give a fuck about waves. There's a reason that Sea Shepherd chose to use it in Antarctic waters.

Scaled up, it might have issues, but it's not like it's inherently unstable.

[Sky Captain]

Isn't it based on some transatlantic ocean liner concept? I remember I have seen somewhere a concept design for high speed transatlantic liner that had similar design although it was much larger.

[weemadando]

FFS people.

I've already named the boat it's modelled off and the link on the OP spells it out.

It's based off an endurance racing boat that was then bought by Sea Shepherd. Google Ady Gill if you want more.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Indeed, not overly impressive. We get the odd Russian billionaires private yacht chugging around here sometimes- size of small cruise liners, helicopter pads included.

Yes, but so many of those Mega yachts, Eclipse included, look more like barges and mini cruiser liners. There are just TOO big and ostentatious. And most yachts of large size have helipads on them, usually such yachts sail in places where "landing in rough weather" wouldn't be an issue.

If the weather is nasty, the Boss isn't having a fun time. Ergo, the yacht won't be operating in such conditions.

As Weemad states, the whole purpose of the ships design is for stability in rough weather. Somethings tells me this guy would preform just AWESOME in rough weather.

[erik_t]

If the weather is nasty, the Boss isn't having a fun time. Ergo, the yacht won't be operating in such conditions.

As Weemad states, the whole purpose of the ships design is for stability in rough weather. Somethings tells me this guy would preform just AWESOME in rough weather.

And as you somehow both managed to miss, I wasn't making any statement as to the suitability of the hullform for rough weather. Only that if the experience is in any way less than pleasant, the rich bastard won't want to be there in the first place.

Though since you seem to want such a statement, I'll go ahead and make it. A hullform designed for high speed in rough conditions isn't necessarily designed for a comfortable ride in such conditions. Earthrace was designed for the former, probably to some degree at the expense of the latter. The US WW2 DEs were considered very safe rough-weather boats, but this is because they were too stable, and tended to snap back from large angles of roll. In a letter to the USN Bureau of Ships, the captain of HMS Duckworth noted:

...they are agreeably dry in most weather and after riding out a sharp North Atlantic gale I can report that there seems to be a small risk of weather damage... Rolling -- since this report is written at sea it is difficult to describe with reticence the nauseating movement of these vessels in the open sea...

While we're at it, the original question was not of safety or comfort, but the ability to operate the helo in rough conditions, which is a still different matter.

Finally, we're talking about a scale-up of some six times in length, probably a 200x tonnage increase. Small hulls cannot naively be scaled up and necessarily expected to preserve their operational characteristics.

I'm not saying it necessarily would behave badly, but one cannot point to Earthrace and chant that this yacht is assuredly designed and planned from a naval architecture standpoint. More validation work would certainly be needed by the designers (which they might well have done, but that is not in evidence here).

[Crossroads Inc.]

Fair enough fair enough...

You seem to know a lot more about how ships behave then I so I shall defer. Afterall, at the end of things I am far more interested in how cool the ship LOOKS, how practical it is is not important since really, it's not like any of us would ever HAVE such a ship.

Although one would think that the design company would have taken that into account. Of course just as likely they may have put this ship up knowing it would never actually be built. So the question remaisn if you did just Scale up the Earthrace to 150 meters, how stable it would be in rough seas. Or more importantly, how stable it would vs OTHER mega yachts in rough seas.

[erik_t]

I don't know; I'm not qualified to judge. I would note how much trouble (and $$$$$) has been involved in the USN's trimaran LCS (and, for that matter, in the semi-planing monohull). These are both classically small-vessel hullforms.

[PeZook]

And as you somehow both managed to miss, I wasn't making any statement as to the suitability of the hullform for rough weather. Only that if the experience is in any way less than pleasant, the rich bastard won't want to be there in the first place.

Counting on the weather to always conform to your expectations is folly,and the sea has a way of murdering people who subscribe to that line of thought.

However, that said, they can easily restrict operating the chopper to good conditions. It's not like it had to be able to take off and land in a gale, like on a military vessel. If the ship behaves properly (as in doesn't sink at the slightest provocation), they can just ride out the occasional suddenstorm and catch a flight a few days late.

[Sea Skimmer]

At least with the helicopter shown that pad is obliviously not realistic, more like completely physically suicidal. To actually land on the center of the pad the rotor blade would strike the bridge, leading them to model it with the rear wheels a few feet from falling off the rear… brilliant! You also gain all the docking problems of a trimaran in a hull big enough to be seaworthy without that bullcrap… fun.

Anyway if you look around that site, the catamaran Wavepiercer Giga-Yacht with a RO-RO vehicle deck and usable helicopter pad looks way more practical and way more fun.

[Chardok]

You know - this got me thinking - for smaller craft where a pitching deck is a big problem (re: Landing helicopters) - how feasible would it be to have a hydraulically stabilized landing pad (gyroscopically controlled, say?)

[Mr Bean]

You know - this got me thinking - for smaller craft where a pitching deck is a big problem (re: Landing helicopters) - how feasible would it be to have a hydraulically stabilized landing pad (gyroscopically controlled, say?)

Your talking about something that's going to have to move VERY quickly if you want to achieve a stable pad never mind the fact that ship is also moving vertically constantly, the amount required would be rather massive. You need a nice thick deck to begin with to take the impact of 5000+ pounds of helio hitting it at ten miles an hour, now take that nice thick chunk of deck and mount the sucker on hydraulics.

[Sea Skimmer]

Yeah that would be one crazy pad to build and maintain. An easier, if heavy solution is simply to actively stabilize the entire ship with underwater fins. Quite a few warships designs do this, in part to make aircraft operations easier. Also other reasons like better search radar performance. But for a mega yatch you really want a design that needs none of this extra mechanical stuff, so you have as much internal volume and deck area as possible for yourself and passengers and doesn't need anything extra like that maintained while you sail about the world blowing coke.