The incredible vessel known as the “Sailing Yacht A” was recently spotted on a test voyage in Kiel, Germany and it attracted a good amount of attention. The reason why? Well at 468-feet long with three masts that are 300-feet high, it’s kind of hard to miss. It also has an extremely unique design that we’ve never seen on a yacht before. Needless to say, it’s quite the head turner. This new yacht is at the final phases of its completion, and it is now officially the largest sailing yacht in the entire world.
Sailing Yacht A was built by the German Naval Yards for a man by the name of Andrey Melnichenko. Who’s he, you ask? Only a Russian businessman who’s one of the richest individuals in Russia with a net worth of around $9 billion dollars, and the 137 richest individual in the entire world. And what does he do with his money? He spends it on a $400 million dollar yacht of course!
It’s taken quite a long time for the yacht to be constructed, and while it’s not 100% finished just yet, it’s still quite the sailing vessel. Sailing Yacht A can easily accommodate up to 20 guests in total, and that’s not including the 54-man crew that’s needed to operate the machine. The Sailing Yacht A offers eight massive decks in total and it even has an underwater observation room which features one of the largest single pieces of curved glass ever produced. The massive 15,679-ton vessel is operated via an advanced touch-screen interface that controls it’s twin diesel and twin electric engines.
While Sailing Yacht A is an amazing feat of engineering, it’s not done just quite yet. The yacht is completely sea worthy as of this point, however the interior still needs to be completed. When it comes to expensive yachts of this nature, that’s actually where a large portion of the money is spent. Given it’s price tag, once the Sailing Yacht A is finished, it will essentially be a floating mansion. There’s no word as to when it will be completed, but hopefully whenever that time comes we can take a look on the inside as I’d imagine that the world’s largest sailing yacht will be pretty epic.
Photos from EPA
