WHEN PUTTING IN AN order for a new yacht valued at US$35 million (HK$272.6 million), it always helps to own the shipyard. As part-owner of Benetti, a Hong Kong yachtsman set out with cheque-book determination to prove that Italian shipyards could build on a par with those from Holland and Germany.
The triumphant result in 1998 was Benetti's largest boat: Ambrosia, a 54-metre, five-storey (two under the waterline) vessel with a helicopter pad, a gymnasium, sauna, wood-burning fireplace, sprawling teak sundecks, a 7.3-metre tender, two jet skis and gold plating throughout; unadulterated nectar of the seafaring gods.
'The decor and attention to detail is second to none,' says Captain Chris Jones, who has been sailing tycoons' toys to the Mediterranean for 25 years. Nonetheless, Ambrosia's owner, a former naval officer, who requested anonymity, has grown weary of his yacht in three years. 'I'm building a new one,' he says. 'It will only be nine metres longer but will have double the volume.'
Allan Zeman, chairman and managing director of Lan Kwai Fong Holdings, is also no stranger to the own-the-shipyard-before-you-commission-a-new-boat strategy. After an American passing through Hong Kong fell in love with his 33-metre vessel Zebreeze, and 'made an offer he couldn't refuse', the avid mariner says Horizon shipbuilders in Taiwan - which he partly owns - will begin constructing his new yacht next month. It will be about 20 per cent longer than Zebreeze.
Zeman won't put a price on it, but he says it will have the elegance of an Upper West Side penthouse overlooking New York's Central Park. But lavishness has its limits. 'I'm not the helicopter pad type,' he says.
Nobody is creating more yacht envy than Paul Allen - Microsoft's other founder. In a display of ocean-going ostentatiousness, his latest vessel, under construction, will have the requisite helipad, disco, cinema and recording studio, as well as a garage for his fixed-wing plane and a pen for his submarine, splayed out over 126 metres.
With Allen's craft thought to be the biggest private yacht in the world, a tsunami of superlatives is heralding the arrival of the 'mega-yacht' or 'super-yacht'. It's a new era in which mariners engage in ship one-upmanship, blurring the line between cruisers and cruise ships. These ain't no rubber duckies.
