A peek inside the Maltese Falcon, a US$150 million 88-metre superyacht
The revolutionary DynaRig concept made famous by the 88-metre Maltese Falcon superyacht, is getting a second outing more than a decade later
In 2006, the yachting world witnessed a spectacle. The late Tom Perkins, one of the world’s most successful and infamous venture capitalists, launched his pride and joy, the Maltese Falcon. The story behind the 88-metre sailing superyacht, then the world’s largest, is the stuff of maritime legend.
Perkins had already amassed a fortune from his time as one of the founders of what we know today as Silicon Valley. He was, in many ways, the ideal of a venture capitalist, having staked early claims in Google, Genentech and Facebook.
He was also an MIT-trained engineer with an unabashed love of technology.
When Perkins found an 88-metre hull left over from a previous superyacht project, he bought it with the aim of building the world’s largest sailing yacht. In the early 2000s, Dykstra Naval Architects, one of the Netherlands’ best known yacht design companies, had given Perkins the idea of the DynaRig. It was a concept first conceived by German engineer Wilhelm Prölss in the early 1960s. Prölss had wanted to bring back square-rigged ships (so named because their sails face across the direction of the wind) and reintroduce wind power as a means of propulsion for the cargo industry. The aim was to reduce pollution and reliance on oil.
Prölss filed his patents in 1960, with his design sketches showing a giant set of furling sails and independent masts that didn’t require large numbers of crew working in dangerous conditions. The idea was to have sails that were efficient and could be controlled by a handful of people – the rigging on any sailing vessel can be extraordinarily complicated and labour intensive.
The idea gained currency during the Opec oil crisis of 1973-4, but then went nowhere until Dykstra introduced Perkins to the idea almost 20 years later
The idea gained currency during the Opec oil crisis of 1973-4, but then went nowhere until Dykstra introduced Perkins to the idea almost 20 years later. He bought the patent rights to the DynaRig, and yacht history was set in motion. In 2006, the towering Maltese Falcon was launched to considerable fanfare and a cacophony of plaudits. The following year, award-winning business journalist David Kaplan published an acclaimed book about Perkins and the building of his boat, titled Mine’s Bigger.
For a time, the Maltese Falcon and its impressive DynaRig were on the cover of every major yacht magazine, and Perkins was the focus of attention for news organisations across the globe. Inevitably, the plaudits and the media circus faded away. Perkins wound up selling the Maltese Falcon at a loss in 2009 (he reportedly paid US$150 million for it and sold it for less than US$100 million). At the time, he said that instead of sailing the world he’d moved on to new technical challenges. He ploughed his efforts into personal submarines and began exploring the deep.