Black Pearl

Ah, right, the Black Pearl. I’m sure you’ve read about it. Of course, there’s Sailing Yacht A, which I think in terms of being as spectacular as an alien space ship would be very difficult to beat. But she’s officially a sail assisted motor yacht (no discredit to her absolutely amazing rig), which leaves the Oceanco-built 106 metre 3 mast dynasty rig yacht currently the biggest sailing yacht in the world.

She’s also technologically a tour de force, so powerful that, without loosing significantly speed, she leaves her propellers unfolded, dragging along and producing enough electricity to cover all hotel loads, such as air conditioning and lights. If you’re looking for pure elegance under a white cloud of sails and you’re a purist, you might want to look elsewhere. For us, the point that sells this concept to us is the fact that her heavily compartmentalised sail plan makes it a breeze to actually sail her, while other large sailing yachts motor along, simple because weather conditions are not stable enough to keep the sails up or even hoist them in first place.

There’s of course another yacht that she’ll be compared with, and that’s the legendary Maltese Falcon. 88 metres, first dynasty rig ever, light years ahead of any other sailing yacht of its time. We were always a bit puzzled why it took so long for a second rig of this kind to be built, but obviously, nobody wanted to be the ‘copy cat’… (before you ask, yes, it is perfectly acceptable to copy a principle for the 150th time…)

Luckily, eventually a client came around who was eager to push the boundaries once more and a bit further. Since we’re talking about the Maltese Falcon, there’s of course another reason why you’d think about both yachts being somehow connected: With Ken Freivokh Design and the team of Dykstra Naval Architects (to name but a few) there are some people who were involved in both projects.

“There’s also a personal connection, even though I wasn’t involve in the Maltese Falcon. It was just after the Monaco Yacht Show that I sent an email to Ken, congratulating him but also telling him that I was struggling to get my head around her (it was mainly the fact that the free standing, rotating masks were simple a bit on the fat side…). Ken did call me the same day and this resulted in me working with him for the next 10 years. And that’s when some years later I took a blank sheet of paper (or rather its Photoshop equivalent) an sketched Black Pearl.”

However, please don’t understand this as our claim to fame. We simply feel honoured that we have been part of the project and that we were able to contribute to deliver this masterpiece, being able to work alongside people like Ken, Damon Roberts (for building the rig), Dykstra Naval Architects for the engineering and everybody at Oceanco. We’d also like to mention Nuvolari Lenard for delivering the project through the detail design phase… a long and often painful ‘bread & butter’ job testing one’s persistence and problem solving skills. And last but not least congratulations to the owner, who’s vision made it all possible.